Free (ish) GPS software and SiRF GPS on PPC (incl. ASUS P750, maybe Kaiser/Tytn II)

[Guest rireed]

Hi all,

I got my ASUS P750 last week and have been trying to test the GPS with whatever cheap software I could find. 'GPSS' and 'GPSSppc' were recommended in another post -- here's the link:

http://www.gpss.tripoduk.com/index.htm

Search isn't working tonight, but the topic was like 'best mapping software'.

This is free software with gentle encouragement to contribute. It may not be to everyone's taste, as it doesn't do 'turn-by-turn' without purchased maps, such as AutoRoute (40ish). Google Maps is also apparently compatible, but all of these take some work. With the road maps supplied and the voice functions, GPSSppc worked fine. I found the small size (compared to Tom Tom Go) of the P750 screen an advantage. I completely agree with the author of GPSS, Robin Lovelock, that drivers must watch the road, not a simulator display.

P750 has the SiRFStar III GPS chipset. Trying to get GPSSppc working on this was an education. Apparently most GPS receivers output a text format called NMEA. Robin of GPSS has been using NMEA in all his products for 10 years or more. ASUS built-in receivers output a protocol called SiRF. There is a utility called SiRFTech that has been used on older ASUS ppc's to switch the chipset to output NMEA. I wasn't able to get this to work on P750, so I tried somethng recommended by Robin and some of his users.

There is an adapter/application-multiplexor for GPS called 'gpsgate' here:

http://franson.com/gpsgate

This has a 14-day trial period and costs £9.95 for each PPC, £19.95 for full Windows, such as a laptop.

gpsgate was quite slick finding my GPS port and protocol, apparently at the same port and speed as the default for external GPS listed in WM6 Settings on P750. gpsgate has no trouble with SiRF for input, and creates a 'Virtual COM port' for each of the applications it services.

You'll want to make gpsgate run automatically, so do the Advanced settings: Click Wizard, then chose Manual. This will wipe out your automatic Virtual Com port and any thing else you did the first time, so do it all again manually. Select 'Virtual Com port' for Output, 'Start after Soft reset', and 'Close input when idle' (important for battery saving). It sits in the WM6 tray. A red icon scheme means the GPS is off. It will come on when the client application (like GPSSppc) opens the Virtual Com port. With GPSSppc, when you close the program, the gpsgate tray icon stays green for a bit and then turns red when it closes the GPS receiver.

One more tiny annoyance with gpsgate is the 'safe mode prompt'. By default this comes up after you've stopped Windows without stopping gpsgate. The prompt should only have 'Start after soft reset' checked. If so, you can safely check 'dont show me this again'.

I imagine more expensive stuff like Tom Tom 6 will handle SiRF directly. A number of newer sets use SiRFStar. In any case, this is quite a reasonable solution if there are problems. I'm guessing this will work on a lot of PPC devices.

Richard