GPS stops responding to Navigator 2

Fuego

Dave, how many BT entries do you have in BT Manager, please? And have you used device groups?

TIA

Paul Carl

I have done a fair bit of testing during the last few days. Since I have turned off receive incoming beams, and kept the GPS receiver out of the sun in the centre console of the car all has been fine no lockups at all. Over the next few days I will move the GPS receiver back to the dashboard and see what happens.

Fuego

Keep us posted please Paul. ;)

catken96

I use a Toshiba E330,TTN 2.22,TTNGPS 2.05. Since the latter two upgrades,I've had 1 problem. GPSAssist and Voice Instructions don't get along now, so I've removed it for the time being.To the E350 owners locking-up, I don't think the problem is caused by the cable. DavidW is correct when he mentioned Toshiba's implementation of the USB connector using a chip.They use a PL2303 Universal Serial Bus-To-Serial Bridge Controller.The Driver is in the Toshiba.Brief spec :- onchip USB transceiver,12Mhz oscillator,full USB spec compliance,over 1Mbps transfer rate,remote wake-up,auto handshake, and 2x 96bytes buffers for upstream / downstream data flow.I think that should be able to cope with the 2(Tx/Rx)connections from the GPS. I've been running my setup for the past 24hours, GPS mouse sitting on the sofa in the bay window, all running off a golf trolley battery, no hangups,occasional beeps, lowest count- 4 sats,highest 8!!!.Disconnected GPS,Re-connected,

2seconds had 5sats.Switched off and unplugged PPC, GPS flashing away, (after waiting for 5 minutes) plugged-in and switched PPC on, 3 seconds and a warble later 7 sats.

So, is it a bug in TTN, Processor overheads, or IR?. Regarding the first question-I don't know.Regarding the second, I shut down everything bar TTN, and GPS. I don't use BT, but I would think that it would keep the PPC pretty well occupied.The third, interference from sunlight? Could be. I know that around here on sunny days certain car alarms go off with annoying regularity, and then stop of their own accord. So, shut down "Receiving beams". Sorry this is so long-winded.

Tom.

Fuego

Well, unfortunately, after going back to just the BTGPS connection in BT Manager, yesterday I had a freeze again.

So now I have put back all the BT connections (half a dozen of them) and turned off incoming beams and I am testing this now - fingers crossed.

Had only one trip since then, and it was fine; obviously need a couple of days before I can report for sure.

Paul Carl

Fuego

You wanted me to let you know how things went.

Well I turned off the IR receive and kept the GPS receiver in the centre console of the car for a few days and all has been well. Over the weekend used the system all the time but this time I put the GPS receiver on the dashboard. Again all has worked well with no lockups. Seems that the problem was not the GPS receiver heating up but the SUN and the IR port on the Ipaq trying to communicate with each other. How has your testing gone??

Problen SOLVED !! ?

Fuego

I agree. I have now racked-up a few hundred miles, including two hours stuck in the blazing sun, in Islington high street, on Saturday, with the GPS receiver on the front dash.

Turning off Incoming Beams appears to have solved the problem completely (hope I'm not speaking too soon).

Yes, I would say that the number of BT devices I had configured, did seem to play a part in how frequently the freeze occurred, when Incoming Beams were on, but these were not the root cause of the problem in themselves.

It looks like it is some interaction between the serial drivers (used for IR) and the serial drivers used in the BT stack, which are probably shared and one and the same, on the iPAQ 3870.

I am betting that if you took your BTGPS receiver indoors, turned on receive incoming beams, and started playing around with your Sky or TV infra-red control, you'd cause the setup to lose it's BT connection and not be able to recover (without a BT stack reset).

Anyway, well spotted to who ever came up with the turn off incoming beams suggestion in the first place.

I can live with that solution, very easily.

mshah

This seems like the reason to the problem. Now that I recall, all the times it has locked up has been during quite hot days on the way to my destination. It never locked up on the way back even though it was the same route in reverse (because I always arrived back at night). I will have to do some testing to confirm that this cures my problem but it does sound like this is a work around.

Does switching of incoming beams only stop the IR? Must this be reactivated if you want to receive something again?

Also, is this a bug in Navigator that it locks up when the sun fools the IR port in thinking there is an IR signal or is it down to the Ipaq?

My last question is, it seems to be only happening to Ipaq 3870. Is this because the other Ipaq's have the IR port on a different location or is it that the hardware is different and not prone to the same situation wiht the sun?

Thanks for everyones view, comments, contributions, testings, etc etc...
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kartracer

Quote: Originally posted by mshah on 30 June 2003

Also, is this a bug in Navigator that it locks up when the sun fools the IR port in thinking there is an IR signal or is it down to the Ipaq?

No it's not a Navigator bug. In the Navman SmartST Pro user manual they also advise you to switch off IR beam reception to prevent Ipaq hangs triggered by sunlight.
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Kam

mshah

Quote: Originally posted by kartracer on 01 July 2003

No it's not a Navigator bug. In the Navman SmartST Pro user manual they also advise you to switch off IR beam reception to prevent Ipaq hangs triggered by sunlight.

Do you think then this can be fixed by a software upgrade with the Ipaq? Although it isn't a big issue just switching it off, it would be nice if it was included in the next upgrade.
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kartracer

You would think that they could update the Ipaq to distinguish between the flashing of IR communications and the the more or less steady state of the sun, but I don't expect that they will.
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Kam

DavidW

It's more that the sun contains some IR radiation of the right wavelength to trick the Pocket PC's IrDA hardware. I guess the drivers could be made to be more robust - but there is an option that deals with the problem.

Turning off "receive incoming beams" (Start Menu -> Settings, Connections tab, Beam) is recommended to everyone using Pocket PC 2002. Some of the more recent ROMs have this setting off by default (I think it's off by default in 39xx x.1x ROMs).

This doesn't stop your IR port working. All that it means is that if you're going to receive information over IR, you have to enable the IR port manually (Start Menu -> Programs, Infrared Receive).

David

cuve

Hi guys,

it seems indeed that disabling "receive incoming beams" is the solution to our problem. After having tried every single option that was mentioned in this Forum, we have finaly the key and can enjoy our beautiful GPS/Navigator combination with our 3870. Thanks to all of you who contributed to this with a special thanks to the one who found the work around and to Fuego who redirected people to this topic. I had opened an incident at HP and Palmsoft (with very little hope) and will now inform them that a user group made it ... At least they will be able to update their sites. I'm sure many people abandonned their solution because they thought it was hopeless.

hollis_f

The 'receive incoming beams' problem was first announced on Usenet about two years back. It was spotted as a cause of 38xx iPAQs slowing down in bright sunlight. When I read about people having problems with TTN2 it seemed a good guess that it was a related problem.

I reckon it must have been fixed with the 39xx series as I've never found any problem with my 3970 - which has had the setting turned on all the time I've had it.

There's another good reason to switch it off - it supposedly increases battery life.

a.d.grant

Note the combination of the treads and the fact that this is on the subject of TTN and GPS freezing.

I have a similar prob running TrafCam spped camera warning software on an iPAQ 3970 linked to a Emtac BTGPS. With no other apps running the TrafCam freezes with speed and sat nos freezing, restarting TrafCam restores the link.

BT Manager is v1.1 and I suspect that the BT link between IPAQ and BTGPS is the prob. One thought I have had is that the magnets within the speakers on the dash of the car may be interfearing with the BT radio signal as I sit the BTGPS beside the speaker - I will need to experiment but do note freezing problem exists with another forum member when placing BTGPS in sunroof void.

It may be a iPAQ system resource prob as I run Battery Bar 2003 - I may try removing this and see if the prob continues.

Bluetooth seems to be somewhat unstable sometimes!
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