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BlackJack II and CoPilot 7 problem


Guest arturk

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Just tried to get CoPilot 7 to work with my BJII. Unfortunately no luck. I do have Paul's patch installed and GPS works perfectly with WLS, Google and GPS Test but not with CoPilot.

GPS Setup for CoPilot 7 allows to set COM port # and Baud Rate. I tried Auto, which scans all the ports and tries all possible baud rates. I set to COM4 and tired baud rates: 4800, 9600, 19200 - no luck.

I checked ALK's website to see what they have to say:

"

Will the Motorola Q9’s built in GPS work with Copilot Live 7?

No, CoPilot will not work with the Motorola Q9's built in GPS. The Q9’s GPS is an A-GPS (Assisted GPS) and does not output NMEA GPS messages that Copilot requires for Navigation. You will need to purchase a NMEA GPS receiver in order to use Copilot.

"

Strange, I have seen reports of CoPilot 7 working on Motorola Q9H on COM5.

They also provided some info on what receivers are supported:

"

What GPS receivers are compatible with CoPilot Live 7?

CoPilot Live works with NMEA-compliant GPS receivers that meet two requirements:

1. GPS receiver must output the following NMEA messages: GGA, GSA, GSV, and RMC.

Note: The NMEA standard includes seven (7) output messages. CoPilot Live only requires the four (4) listed above. If your GPS receiver does not output all four of these messages, contact your GPS manufacturer or consult your GPS manual to determine how to program the output messages.

2. Optimal routing functionality is achieved when these messages are output every second.

Note: If your receiver outputs these messages less frequently CoPilot Live will continue to function, however, there will be a reduction in performance (CoPilot Live may not provide timely instructions or timely route recalculations). If your GPS receiver does not output the NMEA messages at the recommended frequency (once per second), contact your GPS manufacturer or consult your GPS manual to determine how to program the frequency of the output messages.

"

I am little disapointed by the fact that CoPilot 7 does not work on BJII. I am big fan of CoPilot I have been using previous versions 1-6 for years now and it is excellent software.

Any help will be appreciated.

Edited by arturk
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Guest TruckFreak69
Just tried to get CoPilot 7 to work with my BJII. Unfortunately no luck. I do have Paul's patch installed and GPS works perfectly with WLS, Google and GPS Test but not with CoPilot.

GPS Setup for CoPilot 7 allows to set COM port # and Baud Rate. I tried Auto, which scans all the ports and tries all possible baud rates. I set to COM4 and tired baud rates: 4800, 9600, 19200 - no luck.

I checked ALK's website to see what they have to say:

"

Will the Motorola Q9’s built in GPS work with Copilot Live 7?

No, CoPilot will not work with the Motorola Q9's built in GPS. The Q9’s GPS is an A-GPS (Assisted GPS) and does not output NMEA GPS messages that Copilot requires for Navigation. You will need to purchase a NMEA GPS receiver in order to use Copilot.

"

Strange, I have seen reports of CoPilot 7 working on Motorola Q9H on COM5.

They also provided some info on what receivers are supported:

"

What GPS receivers are compatible with CoPilot Live 7?

CoPilot Live works with NMEA-compliant GPS receivers that meet two requirements:

1. GPS receiver must output the following NMEA messages: GGA, GSA, GSV, and RMC.

Note: The NMEA standard includes seven (7) output messages. CoPilot Live only requires the four (4) listed above. If your GPS receiver does not output all four of these messages, contact your GPS manufacturer or consult your GPS manual to determine how to program the output messages.

2. Optimal routing functionality is achieved when these messages are output every second.

Note: If your receiver outputs these messages less frequently CoPilot Live will continue to function, however, there will be a reduction in performance (CoPilot Live may not provide timely instructions or timely route recalculations). If your GPS receiver does not output the NMEA messages at the recommended frequency (once per second), contact your GPS manufacturer or consult your GPS manual to determine how to program the frequency of the output messages.

"

I am little disapointed by the fact that CoPilot 7 does not work on BJII. I am big fan of CoPilot I have been using previous versions 1-6 for years now and it is excellent software.

Any help will be appreciated.

Have you tried using a gps tester program and leaving copilot running in the background while it acquires a signal? Or you could even try running it before you open Copilot, this may work. I've found with other PDA's that this usually speeds up software acquisition of the gps module. There's a gps tester program for smartphones at smartphones.net

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Guest TruckFreak69
Have you tried using a gps tester program and leaving copilot running in the background while it acquires a signal? Or you could even try running it before you open Copilot, this may work. I've found with other PDA's that this usually speeds up software acquisition of the gps module. There's a gps tester program for smartphones at smartphones.net

* you already have gps test. I just read the post again.

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Just tried to get CoPilot 7 to work with my BJII. Unfortunately no luck. I do have Paul's patch installed and GPS works perfectly with WLS, Google and GPS Test but not with CoPilot.

GPS Setup for CoPilot 7 allows to set COM port # and Baud Rate. I tried Auto, which scans all the ports and tries all possible baud rates. I set to COM4 and tired baud rates: 4800, 9600, 19200 - no luck.

I checked ALK's website to see what they have to say:

"

Will the Motorola Q9’s built in GPS work with Copilot Live 7?

No, CoPilot will not work with the Motorola Q9's built in GPS. The Q9’s GPS is an A-GPS (Assisted GPS) and does not output NMEA GPS messages that Copilot requires for Navigation. You will need to purchase a NMEA GPS receiver in order to use Copilot.

"

Strange, I have seen reports of CoPilot 7 working on Motorola Q9H on COM5.

I have CoPilot Live 7 working on my Q9h with the GPS patch from here on COM 5. I also have a Blackjack II that I cannot get to work at all; same as you, I get a GPS detection failed message, and that's with the GPS patch from here. Funny thing is, the GPS test quickly picks up satellites but I still get the error message, so I don't know. I thought I was alone in this, but I guess not.

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I forgot to mentioned, I did try with "GPS Test" running in the background but it does not help.

Last night I emailed ALK Support about the problem. I am afraid that their current position is no support for internal A-GPS receivers. Decided to email them anyways, if enough people start bugging them perhaps they will do something about it. I would encourage everybody who has similar problem to let ALK know about it.

I will post their response when I get it.

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Guys,

Interesting development.

Just received response from ALK.

They actually emailed me patch to try. I got very excited and tried it immediately. Unfortunately patch did not work but it is good sign. I am happy they are working on fix. I emailed results back but since it is weekend I do not expect to hear anything for couple of days.

I will keep you all posted.

Art

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest quksilver
Guys,

Interesting development.

Just received response from ALK.

They actually emailed me patch to try. I got very excited and tried it immediately. Unfortunately patch did not work but it is good sign. I am happy they are working on fix. I emailed results back but since it is weekend I do not expect to hear anything for couple of days.

I will keep you all posted.

Art

Any progress on getting Copilot 7 to work with the BlackJack II?

Thanks,

Loren

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I have not heard back from Alk yet. It is holiday season, I would give them little more time.

Artur

Yes, it's still too early to expect to hear from them. They've had a message on their Web site for weeks, stating that they'd be out for the holidays until after the New Year. I did, however, bump into a few of the ALK people at a holiday party just before Christmas (most of the ALK execs are Princeton alums, as am I), including the Founder/President, and I can tell you that it is being worked on, but I was made to promise not to volunteer more than that. No one has forgotten, however. :(

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  • 2 months later...

arturk... Don't give up on ALK. I too am a long time fan of CoPilot and CoPilot Live is too good a product not to hang in there. I have also recently contacted ALK so hopefully something is happening.

I hard reset my BJ2 and didn't use Paul's patch but instead the Microsoft GPSID app which is a lot more flexible and allows for selecting the ports and baud rate. Just a heads up though if you installed Paul's GPSActivator patch before the GPSID app the Blackjack II won't work unless you either hard reset the device or change the registry setting at Key name:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\GPS Intermediate Driver\Drivers\SamsungGPSHardware

modify the Value name "Interface Type" value data from COMM to PHONE

Right now Microsoft Live Search, Google Maps, and GPStest by Chartcross run perfectly and CoPilot gives out the GPS Failed message. I sure hope the ALK developers can figure this one out quickly.

I know I can get my Garmin Mobile XT to work on the BJ2 but it is way too slow in updating the screen that it frustrates the heck out of me.

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Guest su6oxone
arturk... Don't give up on ALK. I too am a long time fan of CoPilot and CoPilot Live is too good a product not to hang in there. I have also recently contacted ALK so hopefully something is happening.

To be honest, I don't really understand why you guys are bothering to get CoPilot Live to work on the BJ2. I bought CoPilot Live 6 for my BJ1 and it was a pretty bad GPS program. It misled me to so many locations it was ridiculous. The interface and map design is very outdated. The voice directions are not frequent enough or accurate enough. I've been using Garmin Mobile XT on my BJ2 now, and it is night and day. It works great, has only misled me once in numerous trips, has great looking maps with excellent functionality (e.g. great zooming, map tilting, turn arrows, etc.), has far superior voice directions, and best of all, works great with the GPS intermediate driver. Gamin is worth buying while CoPilot is not worth using even for free IMHO. :D

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Guest PDADoc
To be honest, I don't really understand why you guys are bothering to get CoPilot Live to work on the BJ2. I bought CoPilot Live 6 for my BJ1 and it was a pretty bad GPS program. It misled me to so many locations it was ridiculous. The interface and map design is very outdated. The voice directions are not frequent enough or accurate enough. I've been using Garmin Mobile XT on my BJ2 now, and it is night and day. It works great, has only misled me once in numerous trips, has great looking maps with excellent functionality (e.g. great zooming, map tilting, turn arrows, etc.), has far superior voice directions, and best of all, works great with the GPS intermediate driver. Gamin is worth buying while CoPilot is not worth using even for free IMHO. :D

Well, I've long since given up. ALK never followed up with me, except to tell me that they couldn't come up with a solution because the BJII didn't have the NMEA messaging component in its GPS module, so that was that. I gave it away to my secretary and never looked back, good riddance.

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To be honest, I don't really understand why you guys are bothering to get CoPilot Live to work on the BJ2. I bought CoPilot Live 6 for my BJ1 and it was a pretty bad GPS program. It misled me to so many locations it was ridiculous. The interface and map design is very outdated. The voice directions are not frequent enough or accurate enough. I've been using Garmin Mobile XT on my BJ2 now, and it is night and day. It works great, has only misled me once in numerous trips, has great looking maps with excellent functionality (e.g. great zooming, map tilting, turn arrows, etc.), has far superior voice directions, and best of all, works great with the GPS intermediate driver. Gamin is worth buying while CoPilot is not worth using even for free IMHO. :D

Sorry to hear you have had so many issues. I haven't had anywhere near the kind of experience you are having. In the years I have been using it and I have used it all around the USA and in Barcelona it has been really very good in routing me. I believe I have been misled maybe once but it has been so infrequent I can't even remember the last time it occurred.

Whereas with the Garmin Mobile which I am using on the BJ2 right now is ridiculously slow in updating the screen with where I am. I literally will be seconds past a point on the map before the arrow shows me where I am so I have to get use to turning earlier compared to the performance of the coPilot program. CoPilot will work with the bluetooth GPS it came with but I don't want to be lugging that around if I don't have to. As far as features of the Garmin I must say I really like several things it does like custom POI for things like all the red-light cameras in the city I get warned about before I get to the intersection, Max speed (I love having that on a plane trip), Not sure why you think the voice is better or the maps because I haven't had any issues with that.

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Just a follow up for all you CoPilot users...

ALK is certainly not giving up on working out the Blackjack issues with having CoPilot Live v7 run. I got an early version that I was lucky enough to get my hands on so that I could help them test and give feedback with. So it isn't quite ready for release yet but it is most certainly working on mine as you can plainly see. :D

If any of you make it to CTIA next week in Las Vegas come by the MS Windows Mobile device counter and I will give you a look see.

n826622928_402576_5427.jpg

Edited by pPCp
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This is good news, I almost gave up on them. Keep us posted pPCp.

This test version I am running is using the Microsoft GPSID feature. I don't have the MoDaCo GPSactivation patch from Paul because if installed it breaks the GPSID app. So for my phone it was necessary to unlock it to install CoPilot. I unlocked it using the SurrealNetworksAppUnlock.cab then installed the MS GPSID app that Paul kindly extracted for us from the SDK. I set the Program port at COM4 and enabled the Manage Automatically field. I verified that the GPS receiver was functioning using GPStest. Then I installed CoPilot and basically ignored the GPS setup prompt and the software just immediately started getting the GPS signals and away I went. S W E E T :D

I'll ask how long it will be before it becomes available to the existing CoPilot owners and I will post it here.

UPDATE: it will be a little while but I don't know exactly what that means in terms of an exact time frame. :( The developers have the issue resolved now by getting it to work with GPSID but now they are reworking the user interface to accommodate it. Of course then they need to figure out how to get it out in the next release and as well as out to get it out to existing owners that want this functionality. And as I would suspect there is more than just this one item being worked at being incorporated in the next release and update so it all adds up to time. So the bottom line is good things are coming. More than likely this patched update would be via Tech Support whenever they decide to release it.

As a side note I started running Garmin Mobile XT a lot more for side by side comparison and I have to start taking back some of the remarks I said earlier about it being slow. It isn't as bad as it was before. I must have had some bad apps running at the time because since I have hard reset and started over the Garmin Mobile has been running very acceptable in terms of its speed. It really isn't an issue like it was before. So I would say it's performance is actually usable now. It still is a little slower in performance than CoPilot but not enough to bug me like before.

Edited by pPCp
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  • 5 weeks later...
Guest Evelyn
I have CoPilot Live 7 working on my Q9h with the GPS patch from here on COM 5. I also have a Blackjack II that I cannot get to work at all; same as you, I get a GPS detection failed message, and that's with the GPS patch from here. Funny thing is, the GPS test quickly picks up satellites but I still get the error message, so I don't know. I thought I was alone in this, but I guess not.

Can you tell me how you got Co Pilot to work on your q9h? i can get it to work on gps patch com 4, but i lose internet connection. when i use gps patch com 5, i get my internet connection but loses co pilot..... would really appreciate any help!

thanks

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Guest dm251x

This copilot 7 is totally worthless on blackjack II. app unlocked, gpsid installed, and GPStest works fine. copilot says gps setup failed. TOTAL CRAP, especially considering that I called ALK first to make sure it would work prior to dropping my $$$. I'll be calling ALK again today for return authorization.

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  • 2 months later...
Guest thelostsoul

I just contacted CoPilot. They state that there is no fix for the Blackjack II, and that if they do fix it, it will not be released until CoPilot 8.

In conclusion: Do NOT buy CoPilot for your Blackjack II.

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Guest Bohica

post-401959-1215120923_thumb.png

:D Interesting....especially since the BJI is shown compatible too. Must be for external GPS??

Perhaps CPLive Smartphone 6 is a better fit?

Edited by Bohica
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Guest thelostsoul

Yep, I told them it says compatible on their website, and requested they explain how that isn't false advertisement.

They stated "the program is compatible, the gps is not."

I really wish I could hire a lawyer.....a good one....oo well, we'll just have to deal with it...

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest amynfrank

ALK's customer support is terrible.

I too experienced this problem and wished I'd seen this forum before I purchased the falsely/misleading advertised software. After speaking with ALK, they admit that it is a known problem that their software doesn't work with the BlackJack 2's built-in GPS, but will work on the Blackjack if I use a bluetooth GPS. Why would I buy a phone with a built-in GPS and intentionally want to use a software program that doesn't work with the built-in GPS, but instead want to bring along an external, bluetooth GPS?

ALK's terrible customer support did indicate that I could purchase an upgrade to version 8 when it's released in late this year/early next year. I think any decent company would have offered an apology for misrepresenting the capabilities of their product, and either allow me to return my software to them for my money back or at least offered a complimentary upgrade to the next version.

While I was unsuccessful at getting them to offer any of those, I indicated that unfortunately my only recourse would be to share my experience on the web. ALK didn't seem to care. I will also be e-mailing their founder ([email protected] or [email protected]) a link to this forum...but based on the customer service attitude, I don't expect it will do any good.

What is most frustrating, is that I practiced due diligence and actually used the compatibility check at ALK's own website. For the Samsung BlackJack II it says "Congratulations, your device is compatible with CoPilot Live 7. Click here for full details." Yet, no where in their full details page, does it say that the BlackJack II (BJ2) will require an external bluetooth receiver to perform the navigation features it claims. The suggestion of looking into legal advice is quite appealing at this time...

I am now looking into alternatives, Garmin obviously has a name in the GPS market. Does anyone recommend Garmin's XT product?

Thanks.

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