I have come into possession of a Rebel T5 from an estate. The previous owner used it to take pictures while he was hiking in GSMNP, Dupont Forest, the BRP, etc. but many of the pictures are of the "Nice. But where is that?" variety. So I got an idea to get the GP-E2, and heck followed after. I bought one from KEH.
1. The GP-E2 had no cables . However, a standard USB A to mini-USB allows me to (theoretically) upgrade the firmware and run the Log Utility to pull off GPS log data which I get by putting the GPS in my pocket and walking around. So it works that much at firmware 2.02 .
2. The T5 is at 1.02 firmware. It shows the "GPS device settings" menu item, but selecting that says "This menu cannot be displayed/GPS unit is not connected"
3. However, when I try to tweak the flash settings to see if there's some oddball stuff there, the T5 says it can't do that because there is a non-flash accessory in the hot shoe.
So, there are several alternatives -- maybe.
1. Perhaps it's that the T5 doesn't really support the GP-E2. The documentation stands firmly on both sides of that question. Option a would be to buy a used T5i (cheap, but most of my equipment is Pentax so I'm trying to not to get sucked down the more expensive rabbit hole) IF that supports the GP-E2. The doc says yes, but.
(I have the GPS logging thing for my Pentax equipment but the calibration sequence is a PITA and the GPS comes and goes on a K5. It seems to work better on the K-r but we drop to 12mp, which may be irrelevant as I don't blow anything up to bigger than 8x10. That's a whole nother discussion which I can avoid for now.)
2. Option b is to buy a Solmeta unit which says that it supports the T5. (GMAx-EOS2) Availability is the thing, as it's hard to find a source. If it is the hot shoe on the T5, then that could end up being another dust attractor.
3. I could validate which part of the link is screwed up. Taking the GP-E2 to a big box store and asking if I might test it on a Canon DSLR would maybe satisfy whether it's a GP-E2 issue or a T5 issue. How to validate the T5 is trickier as there is no flash unit with the camera. The behavior when playing with the flash settings suggests that the camera at least sees something ....
4. I could look for another, validated-to-work GP-E2 with the magic cable(s) [ plus perhaps a converter thing for the camera side].
5. I could try to get the pinning requirements and synthesize a cable. I will be saving swear words as preparation. The connector into the GP-E2 is the tricky part and a bit of a search on Grainger doesn't show anything, so this might involve visiting electrical supply houses. Possibly one of the legendary OTG USB cables might work ?
6. I could do the maximally inconvenient thing and put the GP-E2 into logging mode in my pocket and let it collect log data while hiking, and then use exiftool / jhead to tweak dates and times on the computer to see if I can then append GPS information. Not being a Luddite, this is really the court of last resort (I believe I need a current version of Lightroom to make this work, or perhaps the Canon image software ).
I'll take any useful hints.
