Problems, Problems, Problems!

[Sunny Jim]

I am having similar difficulties to those Skeletal posted today.



I've just bought a Pocket Loox with an Emtac using Tom Tom and Oziexplorer. I've bonded the connection.



Tom Tom is eratic to say the very least. On the GPS screen I get "GPS Unreliable" even with up to 8 satellites locked. When I parked the car this morning the map display was showing me travelling off-road miles from where I was. I've had no voice commands at all.



Oziexplorer only seems to work for a few minutes before I get a pop-up window saying either "the com port is in use by another program or doesn't exist" or, "no data received from the GPS".



The BT Manager (Pocket Plugfree) uses com5 with no option for manual setting.



I'm hoping that there's a solution to make this work reliably but I'm beginning to wish I hadn't sold my relatively cheap and reliable Garmin.



Any help much appreciated.



SJ.

[Darren]

OK, no need to panic here because with that set-up you should, can (and will!) get a stable system. We need to eliminate a few possible causes of your problems though.



Firstly, Start|Settings|Connections|Beam. Is 'Receive all incoming beams' enabled? If Yes, untick it.



Secondly, as you have no voice commands, in TTNav Properties, is voice/speaker enabled and do you hear the voice when you click the 'Test' button.
_________________
Darren Griffin

[Sunny Jim]

Darren,



Thanks for your reply.



I have unticked the incoming beams.



I don't see the settings you refer to in TT. I have CityMaps and RoutePlanner. Looking at the boxes I can see no mention of voice - is the voice function only on the Nav software?



The problem is still there.



S.J.

[Darren]

There is no voice feature with CityMaps or Routeplanner so that'll explain the lack of voice!
_________________
Darren Griffin

[MikeB]

Regarding the problems with Oziexplorer



Are you trying to run more than one GPS application at the same time. I am not sure about the Loox, but with the iPaq 3870 the software allows 2 or more applications to connect to the GPS. This causes the PDA to slow down and the GPS apps to become a little erratic. Check that CityMaps or RoutePlanner are not running in the background.
_________________
Mike Barrett

[Sunny Jim]

Mike,



It won't even run one GPS application properly. I've loaded Crux-View tonight and this is showing the same problem. It gives me the message "COM PORT Can't Open!!". More evidence pointing to a com port conflict but I don't know what I can do to resolve this. I've raised the problem with Socket so I'll have to see what they can come up with.



Any ideas anyone?



S.J.

[Skeletal]

Talk about the blind leading the blind!! All my trials and tribulations are definitely proving to me that PDAs etc are as “crashy” as Windows based computers. So a totally uneducated guess; is it possible to remove all your GPS software and then download just one? And try to just set up the one.



As you will have guessed from my post, I am only just starting this game myself, so apologies to all if my thoughts are nonsense.



And I thought this was going to be easy!!



Skeletal

[Darren]

SJ, do you have a keyboard driver loaded? I mean for an external thumb keyboard or similar? If so deactivate it and try again, these cause COM Port errors similar to those you describe?
_________________
Darren Griffin

[sdharris]

Another thing to check is the BT Plugree configuration on the Loox, you can run it in Low Power or High Power (Class 3/Class 1). I had a similar problem whereby TomTom was showing unreliable and 6 to 8 fixes. However what actually happened was it had lost comms with the Emtac and every now and then it would get a bit more data through. TomTom just didn't update the fixes bar chart. One thing which did highlight the problem was the tiny animation benneath the bar chart which shows data being sent between the dish and your PDA. I increased the Plugfree to high power and problem solved. You use a bit more battery on the Loox but its not really noticeable.



Com5 is also unusual, I had always thought the Loox used Com8 for BT serial devices. It does on mine anyway.



As for Crux_view it normally takes a couple of attempts to open the com port but it does work.



Be patient, it does work well.


_________________
HW: HP hx4700, Emtac BT GPS (the orginal one that cost a fortune) & SPV C500.
SW: TomTom 5.

[Sunny Jim]

Thanks to all or your tips and suggestions.



I tried everyone but to no avail. As I suspected it might be a fault with the Pocket Loox I returned it and got a replacement. The new one works!



TT Citymaps worked well on a short drive yesterday. I used it with Oziexplorer for a 2 hour walk this morning and apart from losing the connection with the BT module once, it worked perfectly. I've also ordered TTNav.



Thanks again.



SJ.

We see you’re using an ad-blocker. We’re fine with that and won’t stop you visiting the site.
Have you considered making a donation towards website running costs?.
Or you could disable your ad-blocker for this site. We think you’ll find our adverts are not overbearing!