GPS users

I got one of those, it does have an irritating habit of losing lock for no reason whatsoever, requiring it to be powered off and back on again to regain lock, and also if I walk away from it so bluetooth gives up, it then needs to be power-cycled again before it will re-link with the phone/PDA, this despite it having a "special feature" to make re-connection fast.. This special feature appears to be responsible for the problem!

Mind you perhaps yours is a newer revision. Given that the GPS in my N95 appears to be excellent, I've not used any of my bluetooth GPSes since I last ran tomtom on it.

As for multi-channel receivers, one advantage of being able to track loads of satellites is that when you're getting a fix, it can listen out for large numbers of satellites on all its channels at once, so in theory it can get a fix much faster than one that can only listen on a few channels. Once it's locked on though, there's only a few visible at any one time anyway so any more than about 7-8 or so isn't needed.

Nope. But then I don't sit watching it. B-)

How well does that deal with slow/small movement? I have a TomTom blue tooth GPS receiver that doesn't "see" short/slow movements like walking

15' and stopping particulary well. If you want it see small movements you need to move it quite quickly, like a jogging speed. I heard that this is down to the TomTom Rx having a "smoothed" output so it doesn't cause the TomTom software to leap about between roads that are close together.

IME that model quite simply fails to register slow or small movements rehardless of what software it is talking to ;(

On or around Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:49:30 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@btopenworld.com (Tim Jones) enlightened us thusly:

well, it was cheap. And it works well enough for navigating in the car. Next trick will be to persuade Tomtom that it knows where it is and can switch to the built-in receiver on a warm start.

Gotta say, Tomtom has better maps and navigation than Route66, but it's utterly s**te at getting a fix and cold starts, or seems to be. Route66 and google maps are both able to cold-start in the open within 30s using the built-in receiver, but Tomtom often fails completely, even if left standing still for several minutes. This seems to be a recurring complaint about Tomtom on non-Tomtom devices, I suspect they deliberately downgrade it.

Google maps has excellent maps, but it's only usable in good signal areas and with a contract that includes plenty of data.

It's a pity that Igo 8 wouldn't load. Mind, their website implies that there is/will be a Samsung Omnia version, so might bear watching.

I've seen one satnav that runs OS maps, 1:50,000 and 1:25,000, but it's expensive and not apparently available for other devices. If it were, I'd consider buying it, as I reckon there are few maps to compete with OS.

Shouldn't make any difference as it's the hardware that gets the fix and reports it to the software, are you sure the fix issue isn't due to something else and you've made the connection because tomtom just happened to be running at the time, similar to the people at work blaming my landy's transfer box issues from a few years back on me running the truck on vegetable oil?

The OS maps don't have routing data though, being just bitmaps, like scans of the paper maps, some software has an additional database of place names and I suppose there's some that have routing data and can overlay the OS maps onto their routable maps and sometimes they might even match!

On or around Sun, 2 Nov 2008 19:23:34 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

well, put it this way:

Route 66: start software, display GPS signal strength screen. Signals from

8 or 9 sats, all red, all changing more or less the same as they do once it's tracking. After not-too-long, it latches on to 3 good 'uns and gets a fix, they go green, followed by usually 3-4 others. This typically takes anything up to about 15-20s on a cold start.

Tomtom: start software, display GPS screen. First it says "no GPS device" for about 5s or so, then it says "poor reception" for 10s+ (typical) and then it finally admits to having found some sats. It displays a set of signal strengths in grey, and then does sod-all else. If you're lucky, 3 of the sats it found are over the threshold level (about 3/4 way up the signal strength bar) and it locks on, they turn dark blue, and then it tracks and the signal strengths and sats acquired dance around like they do on any other thing. If it doesn't lock on, it seems to sit there for a long time doing sod-all - I've left it on the roof of the motor while I was doing summat else, with a good view of the sky, for about 15 minutes and comeback to find it showing the same display.

I assume it doesn't like the receiver.

By contrast, using the bluetooth receiver, it latches on with minimal fuss in the same way that Route66 does with the built in one.

Ah right, if it's with a built-in receiver then that might not be helping, as tomtom doesn't make much allowance for the platform it's on, seeming to prefer to just pretend it's on tomtom's own hardware and not take advantage of any spiffy features the hardware might have. I suppose this makes it easier for them to offer it over a number of platforms, I know that on my N95 it won't even recognise the inbuilt GPS let alone use it badly!

What OS is your device running? TomTom on both WM5 and WM6 seems to benefit from running GPSutil in the start folder. This also has the advantage of allowing more than one piece of software to use the GPS at the same time.

On or around Sun, 2 Nov 2008 19:23:34 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

dunno how they do it, but they must have routing as well. I'll find the site in a bit, Top Gear's on...

...later

fecking expensive, mind, but that's probably 'cos of the OS maps...

TG's lorry feature was sillier than most, but amusing.

No, they don't do routing, when they say "route planning" they mean you can draw routes on the map, they're intended for walkers and not drivers. If you read the FAQ they state without ambiguity that they do not do driving directions in any way.

Yep, very expensive indeed, and if you upgrade your kit with anything other than a minor update, you have to buy all the maps again, one of the OS's licensing requirements.. Memory map 4 could be upgraded to memory map 4.x for example, but if you wanted memory map 5 then you had to re-buy all your maps. That's imposed by the OS not the software vendor.

I believe that the "Road Angel" or something can have OS maps loaded into it, and it does also do routing, but I'm not sure if it can do both at once as it uses its own maps for routing and I don't know if the OS maps can be overlaid on top of that. I expect probably not.

.. from looking at the reviews it seems you can't even draw maps on the unit, but need a personal computer to plan routes and then download them to the unit. The maps you get with it are very large scale, so not much use even for walking! So that's 300 quid and then you have to start shelling out for the maps that show you any detail. Not much use.

No routing. From the FAQ:

Does the Active 10 offer turn by turn driving directions?

No. The Active 10 is designed for use in the great outdoors: it is not a= n in-car system, so does not offer road navigation. The demands of outdoor= s sports are much tougher than those of in-car systems and we have focused= on developing a product that meets these tough demands.

I'm not sure what mpas it comes with "out of the box" Additional maps lo= ok to be =A350 to =A3100 each. Cumbria is split into 3 "maps" at =A370 each= ! for

1:25k. The =A329.99 maps look to be the 1:50k county ones. =A360 for a 3= 0 x 30 km site centred map.

On or around Sun, 2 Nov 2008 20:17:35 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

found what was happening with that last aspect: the port number needed to be com4. Set the inbuilt GPS to use port com4, Tomtom sees it. As standard the Omnia uses port 3, and most things manage to connect automatically, presumably by using the windows settings.

Also found something on the net, Samsung apparently left data logging active on the GPS service, which is a development thing that should be turned off and doesn't improve either the response or signal. Does seem to give better results but tomtom is still ornery.

On or around Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:42:09 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@btopenworld.com (Tim Jones) enlightened us thusly:

WM6.1 - I think it has inbuilt ability to share out the GPS, although knowing windows, it's probably compromised or broken. If I start tomtom with Route66 already running then it picks up the same satellite pattern as route66, but still won't reliably fix.

On or around Sun, 2 Nov 2008 21:26:05 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

yeah, that's about what I concluded. The main cost is probably the OS, they charge like an aggravated rhino.

On or around Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:41:12 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice" enlightened us thusly:

yeah... OS to blame there I think. On the computer I have Auto-street 2000 which is out of date but used OS maps, and has way better maps than any comparable stuff even now, never mind in 2000. But shortly after they stopped doing it 'cos OS wanted too much to licence the maps.

Great isn't it? From:

"Ordnance Survey is required by the Ordnance Survey Trading Fund Order

1999 (SI 99/965) to recover all of the costs of collecting, maintaining and disseminating data to users, together with funds for investments and to meet financial obligations to HM Treasury."

So the Orance Survey has gone from government funding for the military to a profit making organisation for the government.

On or around Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:24:20 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Liquorice" enlightened us thusly:

precisely...

On or around Sun, 2 Nov 2008 20:17:35 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

Been playing more today: got Igo 8 up on it, and played around with it, compared to tomtom 7:

Plus points:

• map/nav display is better.

• talks nicely to the built-in GPS, at 38400 baud (auto-detected) which tells me that the receiver will run at that speed.

• nifty "overview mode", when there are no turns for a (custom-settable) distance, the map zooms out to small-scale, so you can see the next 5, 10 etc miles.

• auto night colours

• cute building display in 3d mode. Not sure how much of a plus this is, but it's clever.

Much-the-same points: maps appear to be the same data as tomtom, i.e. good

Minus points:

• doesn't have the nice smooth zoom-in-real-close on junctions that tomtom does - this is more irritating than you might think.

• navigation not quite so easy to set up, no "navigate-to" button

• directions not as good, it missed a turn left off main road, and worse, it had previously said "drive for 5.6 miles". If I'd not known where I was going and/or watched the display, I'd have missed the turn. This junction is one that Route66 also gets wrong, so it's not down to map data, as Igo uses different map data from R66. It's also a bit intrusive for my taste -

3 warnings of approaching junction, for example.

• tends to get confused at times and think you're off-route when in fact you're not. Might be a tracking error - or it might be better with "keep the pointer on the road" turned off.

• won't talk to external receiver. Relevant in that the external one is more powerful.

Sadly, it's just not quite good enough. It's got equally good maps, and in some ways (screen layout, e.g.) it's better than tomtom 7, but overall, it's just not quite good enough. Shows a lot of promise though, worth watching to see if newer versions manage to cure the irritations.

It's better than Route66 for the maps and the display layout, otherwise, it's about equal, I reckon. Tomtom scores on ease of use and better directions, still, and the irritations on tomtom are not enough to put me off.