Guest onuo Posted June 13, 2005 Report Posted June 13, 2005 I've spent months trying to get find ways to get my Road Angel's NEMA serial output working with my palm, C500 or E200 - so I could have satnav in the car and i've just found out the simplest way how.... After researching on the net I found I could buy a pre-built cable to connect the serial output of the Road Angel to my E200 from the makers of the GPS internals in the Road Angel - Holux UK. After biteing the bullet and order one (rather than make my own cable) I was just about to buy one on the Holux website when I seen that they are offering a bluetooth adapter (BTA01) with a pre-built cable for a fiver more! BTA01 is manufactured by Pc-Mobile and it turns most GPS devices serial output (4800 only) with the correct cable into a bluetooth serial com port, which can be connected to any bluetooth device - so rather than order a cable which i could only use with the E200, when my C500 is my everyday phone, I ordered this instead - is it worth it?, what's it like?, does it work?, well here's my story so far... As I tryed to complete the order on the site, it stated I was to insert my credit card number into the box, unfortunately I only have a switch so I phoned Holux up and was told by the girl that it would take my card, it didnt ! Phoned back and spoke to the same girl who was able to take the order over the phone instead, the girl seemed a bit dippy getting very confused as to what I was ordering (the crying child in the background didnt help much either) but eventually she got it processed and she told me it would be with me within 5-6 days as it had to be "made up", I turned to my workmate without any faith and said "I bet I dont see that for ages". Next morning the postie knocked the door at 8.00 for me to sign for a jiffy bag, YES! this was it - Holux, faith restored ! Wrapped in the bubble-wrap and packaging was the BTA01, the cable and a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of paper inside the BTA01 (which would put most cheap Christmas cracker joke manufacturers to shame) which stated the BT bonding number and the PC-Mobile web address for further instructions. On the PC-Mobile site it says you get no printed instructions with the BTA01 only the online ones, so I was surprised to find also that Holux had (badly) printed them out for me, another point to Holux, but tell your printer its A4 to stop the words falling off the side ! Anyway, The first thing that you notice is that its really tiny and only the AA batteries really make it as big as it is. As the case is transparent - you can see the size of the pcb (which does all the work) you wonder why Blackspot never added this into the Road Angel when they designed it, as a further selling point ! As the instructions are only for PPC or palm, I casted them aside and carryed on in the usual fashion, the device bonded but the green light did not stop flashing as stated it should, anyway back on here and followed how to get BT GPS devices working (MS bug apparently), then d/l mapopolis beta from their site and the local map for me, bugger too big for my memory card in the C500 so installed it in the E200 and told it to search for the correct com port and the light stopped flashing - fantastic ! So went out for a quick spin in the car and it works flawlessly with the Road Angel talking to the E200 and mapopolis shouting out the turns as I went... So whats it like ? - Bloody brilliant ! Is it worth it ? - Yes indeed ! Does it work ? - After getting MS to recognise the port (their bug) - Flawlessly with Mapopolis ! So here's my problem, as nice as mapopolis is, its basic and after playing with TomTom on a palm before, i know that its got much more bells and whistles - so in educational interests I managed to find a copy of TT4 and the UK map. It all loads up ok but the TT does not see the GPS, ive installed the traffic update and tryed renaming to "TomTom Wireless GPS" but to no avail - i really want to make up a photo pdf to help others in the same situation as me, so they can get theirs working - but I seem to have come so far and got stuck at the last hurdle... Can anyone help with this ? Also where is the best place to get 512MB Memory for the C500, I was told Mobymemory what does everyone think? onuo FYI : http://www.holux-uk.com/ http://www.pc-mobile.net/bta.htm http://www.mobymemory.com/
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