Grimm Spector wrote:iTrax appears to need a lot of proprietary crap to make it work
I assume you mean the iSuite SDK ? Yes that costs money and is proprietary but the SDK also lets you rebuild the firmware of it and make your own modifications and additions in source code level. So you could build simple products using the processing power left over from the GPS processing and the left over I/O the modules have.
But I don't think other GPS manufacturers give you access to their device internals without paying money and accepting some proprietary restrictions either ?
Then if you only need to use the documented features of the basic firmware I don't see why you would need anything more proprietary than with other GPS manufacturers. Also the iTalk binary protocol is documented in the iSuite3 InfoKit also available at the website:
http://isuite.fastrax.fi/sdk/331/index.html
I have used iTrax02 and the iTalk binary protocol in the past and at least then I didn't need anything more proprietary than what was available in the documents from their website. Well maybe it was that all the documents weren't clearly put in front of you but after following the links you got the PDFs from there.
Also Fastrax didn't seem that hostile towards private persons as I remember I contacted their support for some clarification when working with the iTalk protocol and they asked my address and sent me a cd with full reference implementation of iTalk parser code and I think also the source code for their
GPS Workbench utility and iSuite documentation (the free section without access to the internals of course). The same documentation was also freely available through the website but with all the PDFs in one place it did seem a bit easier to follow.
About the pricing I remember seeing a price of about £25 for QTY 1 from UK distributor for the iTrax03-S module. Don't know about current pricing or how larger quantity might affect it.