TomTom Mobile Review & How2 Guide Now for C500

[Guest chucky.egg]

I don't think it's a TT issue, I think it's a Smartphone/Parrot issue because there was something about that a while ago in a thread about the Parrot car kits.

It's something about the order that you do things in when you first get in the car and connect to the car kit over Bluetooth, but I can't remember what the solution was!

Try a search for "Parrot +3300 +gps" or variations on that theme.

The Shop sells these things, and they have "product chat" threads on each of them so you might find the answer (or at least be able to ask the question) there.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Read all the tips on renaming the bond to TomTom Wireless etc

You do not rename the device etc, have a read of the first post in this thread and it explains what to do to get your TomTom GPS unit working on the C500.

Also you must always turn on the GPS unit before starting TomTom Mobile otherwise it will not see the GPS unit.

[Guest MalT2]

Thanks for the input, just to clarify I am attempting to connect to the GPS in the Parrot kit not the TomTom one.

I found a post saying that you must start the Nav software before turning the ignition on, so that the Parrot finds the sat nav first. This works everytime, a bit of a pain in the butt... but at least it does work. The Parrot doesn't pair with the C500 until you make a call but that is no hardship. What made it harder is that the Parrot has a long "warm start" time, so even when they were talking to each other it took around 30 seconds to acquire a fix. The way to tell if they are talking is to look at the "gps configure" screen in the TTM & look for the spinning circle, if it is spinning it means that the TTM & Parrot are talking but no position fix yet. No spin = no communication. Power off & start again. This worked the same on Mapopolis, fire the sat nav up first & then turn on the ignition this then worked ok. The twister in this is that my laptop will connect autoroute at any time..... it must be an issue with the smartphone or Parrot in the way they tie up the com port. the question is it fixable.... any suggestions?

Regards

Mal

[Guest chris_reboot]

Thinking of getting the c500, so its nice to know it'll work now - thanks for that!

But am I right in thinking TTM comes on an mmc card?

As I understand it the c500 supports only mini SD.

Therefore do I just dump it all off the mmc to my PC using my old phone, then copy it on to the mini SD.

One of the main reasons I would get the c500 is for this GPS purpose so I need to know I'm doing the right thing!

Ta,

Chris

*Update* Its OK, I answered my own question. I didn't realise there were 23 pages of this thread!!! Sorry to waste your time, this was already answered.

Edited January 13, 2005 by chris_reboot

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

No waste of time, have fun with TomTom when you get it :D

[Guest mattyduk]

Bought myself an Emtac Wireless GPS from Expansys, to use with TomTom Mobile, after losing my TomTomGPS in deepest Devon (damn it was too small !!).

Thought with the patch I'd be able to get the emtac working, but no luck. I can pair the SPV C500 to the Emtac no problem.

I've disabled port 7, and launched TomTom, but it just sits them counting the minutes of lost gps signal, so I guess this one isn't compatible. Looks Like i'll have to a buy a brand new tom tom kit, unless anybody else has had any luck ?

[Guest chucky.egg]

I'm using an Emtac CruxII (not the Trine, haven't been able to try on of them yet) and it's working fine now, although I did have the same problem as you at first.

If you rename the 2577 folder in the root of your mSD card it might help. I'm not sure if that was what was doing it, but I think AutoRun was screwing up the bT pairing

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Don't pair the devices, follow my guide on page one of this thread and if it is one of the compatable devices it will work.

[Guest mattyduk]

Looks like its not compatible then.

I did everything as per page 1 (delete devices, and turned off com7).

But my tomtommobile just continues to count, no beep or question.

[Guest nads]

Hi,

I'm having a few roblems getting the software to work, I keep being tod that no maps have been found. could someone please confirm what I am doing..

I have the following folders on my storage card...

\2577\autorun.exe

\Great-Britain-Map\ <11 files> including mapinfo & 6 other datfies

\Program Files\TomTom <49 files>

\TTMobile\ <6 files>

Can anyone help with this please?

Thank you.

[Guest pmassop]

Looks like its not compatible then.

I did everything as per page 1 (delete devices, and turned off com7).

But my tomtommobile just continues to count, no beep or question.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Try this:

delete your gps device.

enable com 6 and 7!!

than pair,

pin: no pin (leave empty) or 0000 or the pin deliverd with your device.

Edited January 15, 2005 by pmassop

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Do not pair the gps unit, if you do it will not work as tomtom handles the devices in it's own way.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Hi,

I'm having a few roblems getting the software to work, I keep being tod that no maps have been found. could someone please confirm what I am doing..

What phone do you have? if it's a C500 then just copy the exact image from the mmc to the miniSD.

If you have an E200 does the TomTom card work ok?

[Guest]

Can anyone help me with the best place to buy from? I want TTM, a 256MB mini SD card (or can I get away with a 128MB? I don't install anything on the card like games or anything) and the holder thing to stick to the window.

Ideally I'd like to buy everything from the same place but Dabs only do a 128MB card (but maybe that's enough?) but no holder, ebuyer do the card and TTM but are more expensive than Dabs - you do get an option for priority shipping though.

Ebuyer seem to be in the lead at the minute, just need to source a holder.

[edit] Will also need a card reader to copy from the SD to mini SD. Cheap as poss cause it'll only be used once. Yup, I'm a miser :D

cheers

Edited January 15, 2005 by Guest

[Guest spenh]

i got my memory card and mount (flexible arm on suction cup) from www.mobilefun.co.uk

i use a 128mb card for ttm and have also downloaded and added the speed camera poi on to it as well. if you go for a bigger card though you will have space to add more programs, mp3's etc.

they do a 128mb scandisk card for £19.99 the same as on modaco shop, but they also do an unbranded one for £15-95 but not sure if this comes with an adapter like the scan disk cards do. i got one of those flexible mounts that stick to you windscreen for £14-95, halfords sell them too for around the same price. got a cheap and nasty card reader from aldi for around £5

and for £6-95 they do a twin cicarette lighter adapter to charge your phone and gps unit at the same time, which is a godsend as ttm eats your battery on your spv

Edited January 15, 2005 by spenh

[Guest pmassop]

Do not pair the gps unit, if you do it will not work as tomtom handles the devices in it's own way.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have a C500 with a Rikaline 6030.

When i don't pair my gps device, tomtom mobile doesn't work.

I have Com 6 and 7 enabled and my Rikaline paired.

And it works very well.

[Guest dc_demand]

For those who already owned TomTom Navigator 3 before getting TomTom Mobile > you can get all TTN3 maps to work on TTM !

(not sure anyone mentioned this in the thread earlier, I skipped through it, but didn't see it yet)

Anyway, here's how to do it:

You should already have a 'major roads of europe' folder. This folder contains a 'majorroadsofeurope.mid' file. What to do when installing a new country. Copy over the new folder (e.q. /france/) to the same directory the 'majorroadsofeurope' folder is located in. This folder 'france' will contain a 'france.mid' file. Copy the majorroadsofeurope.mid to the new country's directory, delete 'country'.mid (in this case that would be france.mid, and rename the generalmapsofeurope.mid in /france/ to 'france.mid'.

This can be done for all country's, and you should be able to get all TomTom Navigator 3 maps working on tomtom mobile this way!

Hope that'll work!

Roderick

[Guest chucky.egg]

To free memory you can remove voicefiles...

E.g. if you have data04.chk, data05.chk, data04.22k and data05.22k (all english voices), you can delete ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry for the time lag, but something just occured to me about this info.

Are you saying that DATA04.CHK, DATA04.22K, DATA05.CHK and DATA05.22K are all of the English voices? There's no part of the English voices anywhere else?

Does that mean that if I only want English voices (and no others) I can delete all the other CHK files?

[Guest mattyduk]

I have a C500 with a Rikaline 6030.

When i don't pair my gps device, tomtom mobile doesn't work.

I have Com 6 and 7 enabled and my Rikaline paired.

And it works very well.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

EDIT:

Just done that and it now works !!!!!

thanks very much pmassop. Maybe its different for each type of GPS, but set com6 and 7, then paired, and the GPS worked fine

cheers again

Edited January 17, 2005 by mattyduk

[Guest pmassop]

EDIT:

Just done that and it now works !!!!!

thanks very much pmassop. Maybe its different for each type of GPS, but set com6 and 7, then paired, and the GPS worked fine

cheers again

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I Think the settings in the startpost only works with the original tomtom gps-receiver,

with other receivers you have to enable com6 and 7 and pair the device.

[Guest mattyduk]

one last thing, I thought I'd do a one month trial of the traffic info system. However, on my TomTom mobile the option is greyed out, although I have seen it available.

I have setup my userid/password on the tomtom website, and activated it from my mobile, but still nothing. Any guesses, as I'm quite happy to pay £30 a year if it works well.

[Guest]

i got my memory card and mount (flexible arm on suction cup) from www.mobilefun.co.uk

i use a 128mb card for ttm and have also downloaded and added the speed camera poi on to it as well. if you go for a bigger card though you will have space to add more programs, mp3's etc.

they do a 128mb scandisk card for £19.99 the same as on modaco shop, but they also do an unbranded one for £15-95 but not sure if this comes with an adapter like the scan disk cards do. i got one of those flexible mounts that stick to you windscreen for £14-95, halfords sell them too for around the same price. got a cheap and nasty card reader from aldi for around £5

and for £6-95 they do a twin cicarette lighter adapter to charge your phone and gps unit at the same time, which is a godsend as ttm eats your battery on your spv

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the mobilefun link, ordered the suction cup holder and cigarette lighter. Got TTM and a 256 card from ebuyer. Meant to be delivered today so sopefully will be playing around with it tonight :D

[Guest Tobers]

Some more info on another GPS receiver for TomTom Mobile. I use mine on my motorbike and lost the TT receiver at about 95mph on the A3 :cry: so a new cheap one was required.

So, I bought a Polstar BT GPS receiver from eBay for £59 + £10 p&p (arrived next day - excellent service!) from this guy:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/bluetooth-gps-discounted-com

Info on the device here: http://www.polstargps.com.tw/products/pbt-111.htm

Nice small bit of kit with 3 AAA batteries, plus mains adaptor and car charger - cool! Cheap as chips too.

Getting it set up was a bit of a pain to be honest, but 3 hours later all was fine. I am running TomTom with the Traffic patch (1.15mb size). Here's what I had to do to get it running...

0) Switch on the Polstar. Go outside somewhere so it has clear line of sight of the sky. Blue light and red light will flash on the Polstar.

1) On the C500, go to menu->configurations->BTSerialPortSetup and ensure Inbound COM Port and Outbound COM Port are ticked, then click "Done". This automatically launches the BT pairing function on the C500

2) Pair the Polstar and the C500 (you can launch this manually from menu->settings->bluetooth do menu->devices and then menu->new. It will seach and find the Polstar

3) Select the Polstar. A passkey will be asked for. Dont enter anything, just click done

4) Very Important! It asks for a name. The name displayed is "Polstar". Rename it to be "TomTom Wireless GPS" (case sensitive) and click done. If you dont rename it, TomTom wont recognise the Polstar when it runs and will display "No GPS device" on the TomTom menu->preferences->Configure GPS screen.

5) Launch TomTom

6) After a few seconds, the blue light on the Polstar should stop flashing and be lit continuously. This indicates that the C500 and the Polstar have paired correctly. If it stays flashing, the pairing has failed. It will display "no GPS device". Suggest the phone is switched off & on, the Polstar is delieted from the Bluetooth devices list, the BTSerialPortSetup is run again, both items are unticked, Done is clicked, run BTSerialPortSetup again, tick both items and click done, and re-do the pairing and renaming in steps 2-4.

7) If the blue light stays lit, you have a valid pairing. TomTom will instruct the GPS to search for a position. On TomTom, go to menu->preferences->Configure GPS. You should see vertical bars at the bottom of the screen indicating satellite reception. These are grey if it is still searching, or dark if locked on.

Pairing seems to be the main problem area. The GPS unit must be named "TomTom Wireless GPS" in order to be recognised by TomTom.

I downloaded the Polstar PC test program from www.polstargps.com to determine if the GPS was sending a signal correctly. I ran this on my BT equipped laptop and found that the connection was fine and the PC was receiving data from the GPS correctly, was finding satellites and fixed my position. This confirmed that the Polstar was working correctly and it was the C500 that was faulty. Initially I found that it hadn't locked onto any satellites so I moved to a more open location and it then picked them up and gave me the solid red light.

So there you go. Hope this helps someone.

[Guest rhysdean]

hi, the method above works with my altina 708 gps receiver aswell but works with the device named "TomTom GPS" aswell, figured it out while sitting in the traffic.lol

[Guest]

Gah! TTM arrived Tuesday but with a dodgy MMC card that can't be read by anything. Ah well, after a days testing in loads of kit at work ("Give us yer phone/mobile/gadet for a minute to test this. Yoink") it's on its way back tomorrow.

Hmmm, wonder if I'll get my return postage refunded...