philippe::niquille | irregular niche market thoughts

TomTom/BT gps on Ipaq 5555

May 14th 2005
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Without any special additional software pocket pc’s are boring! Driving around with your car and using the TomTom navigation system and a bluetooth gps is a lot more fun (especially listening to the lady telling you where to drive next :-)).

I bought one of those 70$ bluetooth receivers (nemerix chipset, swiss developement!) on ebay.

They say it is able to receive up to 16 satelites, but you’ll never see 16. Be happy if you have like 9 or 10 (I think you need at least 4 for 3D positioning). Keep in mind one very important thing when first using your newly bought GPS:
Turn it on and leave it (ex. your balcony, free sight to the sky) for approx. 3 hours. Why? The first time the GPS boots, it has no idea where it is on the globe and it has to get a full satelite fix, that needs some time. After that important step your gps should work very reliable and startup really fast (If you change your location for a couple of hundred km without having the gps on, give it like 2 minutes for startup, it needs to get the new position first). After getting a fix, you can even put your GPS in your jacket pocket or attach it to your belt and have a constant signal! Amazing!

So now let’s talk about TomTom. It’s very similar to other navigation systems like the one installed in BMW cars. After installing, you just have to activate bluetooth on your device and enter the desired destination, choose between 3D or 2D mode and drive! It’s really that simple. The country maps don’t need alot of space. Switzerland for example only uses like 20MB (most important roads of Europe like 80MB). The maps can be easily kept on a external storage device like SD cards.

So, have fun, don’t always concentrate on your display when driving and never get lost again. ;-)

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