Some months ago I purchased a GPS mouse from the map shop. The device is a; G-Mouse GPS, Model GGM309. Its USB, has a 1.5m cable and has a magnetic base. Cost me about $140. You can get them a little cheaper on ebay, but I couldn't wait ;)
So, I've been driving around, with the laptop and gps in the car, mapping out various roads on my commutes and side trips =). Many of those trails have been uploaded to the Open Street Map site. I also joined the Australian OSM talk mail list. It has been very useful as there are a bunch of local folks that have offered lots of advice on specific problems that I experiencing. The main one was the tools was the gpsdrive to gpx conversion tool. With this new gpsdrive2gpx.pl tool, I can convert the gps trails easily. Lots more fun to be had =)
So the setup is pretty simple, the gps plugs into the USB on the laptop, GPSd talks directly to the gps and all the clients connect to GPSd. I fire up gpsdrive, wait for the gps data to sync as the satellites coverage to settle. From there I drive to my destination and save the gps trail. When I land on a network, I convert the file to .gpx format and then upload to OpenStreetMap. Wait for the .gpx filed to be verfied then fire up the online editor and trace out the gps trail and name the streets and roads. Some time later the streets are rendered and shown on the public map.Easy.
