Is anyone using an external gps with their X7501?
My internal seems so hit or miss - works sometimes, then not at all. And usually slow to acquire a position.
I would be using a Garmin RINO gps as the external receiver and haven't found a male mini B to male mini B USB cable yet to connect them.
Any thoughts are appreciated.
Ron
ron-powell said:
Is anyone using an external gps with their X7501?
My internal seems so hit or miss - works sometimes, then not at all. And usually slow to acquire a position.
I would be using a Garmin RINO gps as the external receiver and haven't found a male mini B to male mini B USB cable yet to connect them.
Any thoughts are appreciated.
Ron
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well can't help with cable but would think the 4 in 1 would let you
access USB port,I use a BT332 receiver with 7501 occasionally and it works
well,possibly a bluetooth off Ebay would be simpler.
I've been thinking of doing the same with a USB GPS I have which I know is extremely sensitive, and fast. I just don't have a 4-in-1 to test. I would leave it in the car for road trips and use the internal (and pray) when on foot.
If it helps, you aren't the only one. Many people have had problems. One person opened his up and claims that messing with the internal antenna fixed his problem, so it might be a manufacturing issue. Others have tried various ports and baud speeds and found solutions that way.
OK, I bought the 4 in 1 cable.
I tried a program called "VisualGPSce" to see if the receiver was passing on a position. I tried selecting any/all of the various serial ports available in the program, but none were getting any information from the receiver.
The Garmin interface is set to NMEA.
Any ideas?
Did you set up the port in the Connections > External GPS?
techntrek Did you set up the port in the Connections > External GPS?
I finally got around to playing with the ports but was never able to figure out which port the 4 in 1 cable USB was supposed to be.
I also thought I might have a bad cable since it would not "see" a brand-x thumb drive. Plugged in a friend's Kingston drive and it was immediately recognized. (learned all this from another thread here)
Last night the internal GPS was working but I had to remove the 7501 from the metal case. Perhaps this is part of the intermittent reception problems, although if I remove the device from the case, acquire a position and then put it back in the case, signal strength drops but it will still provide position data. That case has saved my bacon a couple of times, having dropped the device from desktop height twice. No damage whatsoever to the unit.
Anyone have any idea where the GPS antenna is in the 7501 case (edge?) I could modify the metal case somewhat to give it a clearer field of view and go back to working the internal GPS.
On the back of the 7501 there are 2 small rubber pop outs.
One of those is connection for an external gps antenna,
it's located closest to the camera lens.
http://member.america.htc.com/downl...vantage X7501/HTC_Advantage7501_Manual_US.pdf
If you look around the net you can find the Athena service manuals, which may describe where the antennas are. Only from memory, I believe the person that opened his up and played with the internal antenna said it was along the top near where the antenna ports are (which makes sense since antenna ports usually plug in at the base of internal antennas).
Keep in mind those antenna ports are for external antennas, and not external GPS receivers. As you look at the back, the one on the left is for cellular, the one on the right is for GPS.
I guess it's again not necessary to allow for a clear view of the sky for the internal GPS antenna because it stopped working again. No amount of settings tweaks have gotten it going again.
I'm still interested to see if an external GPS receiver will provide position data for loaded software, but when I connect the Garmin RINO to the 4in1 cable, the Advantage asks for a "driver name" for the receiver. I doubt Garmin has such a thing.
I looked for a generically named driver in the /windows folder onboard and was unable to ID anything.
Related
Hi boys and girls,
I'm considering getting the XDA2, mainly i want it for a navigation system, so without using a bluetooth gps unit I imagine i need the backpack right?
So do you remove the camera to clip the backpack on?
Does backpack obscure the bottom mounted port which I would want to use the thumboard for?
backpack enables CF as I understand it, so are there any issues with wifi CF's remaining connected to the w/lan on windows pocket 2003? (I am plagued with periodic loss of connection with my old laptop using a 16bit wifi pcmcia card on XP)
Anyone use a bluetooth gps and do u loose connection much?
Anyone use the thumb board thing and what do you think of it?
Any pics of the thumb-board mounted on the device or the backpack mounted on would be ACE
Cheers
You dont need the backpack to use a gps with xda2, just buy a wired system, it will set itself up on com1, you must make sure that under setting/connection/beams, that the box "receive incoming beams" is not checked. www.globalpositioningsystems.com do a good cheap range of gps modules, any unit that fits xda1 will also work on xda2. As to the bluetooth gps, I have used Fortuna GPSmart and find it to be very good, the one I am using at the moment is the Holus GR-203e but I had to install a patch to get that working, the GPSmart is also usable as a cabled gps so with the cable which is very cheap you can connect to laptop or other non bluetooth devices. You can use the GPSmart as a stand alone unit also, I bought a cable which charges the xda, powers the gps and also carries the data.
cruisin-thru said:
You dont need the backpack to use a gps with xda2, just buy a wired system, it will set itself up on com1, you must make sure that under setting/connection/beams, that the box "receive incoming beams" is not checked. www.globalpositioningsystems.com
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for your reply, I think I'm in need of the backpack in any case because I want wifi
the bluetooth unit you mention that can run as wired sounds good, and how much was that multi charging cable? Cigar lighter effort I assume?
If you just want to charge the gps you get a mini usb lead and one of those usb liger sockets, the cable has a lighter socket included with the y cable., it was less than £20.
Was this the one you meant mate?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3079911961&category=15005
The url you posted was invalid, so i tried www.globalpositioningsystem.com and that site didnt look all that hot??
Globalpositioningsystem are one of the best suppliers I have used, that gps on ebay is not the one I use, that is GPSmart. it can be used as a handheld, bluetooth or wired system and is very cheap, runs on 3 x AAA batteries. The cable with lighter adaptor and data/charge cost less than £20. I inadvertently added an "s" to the end of that url.
I read in these threads about using an external antenna. Someone posted Radioshack# 17-345 Universal Antenna plus a 17-349 adapter pigtail to connect the 8525.
I was planning to use this in a sports car with bluetooth so I could set the phone in the back.
The short story is, I uncorked the external antenna port and plugged in this antenna. I got no signal bars. I disconnected the antenna....now no signal bars where I used to get 4.
I pulled the battery, let it sit, same problem. Pulled sim and used a different phone, 4 bars.
So this external antenna seems to have killed my radio!
Cell phone today with just the handset alone is almost good for anywhere you go will get you a decent signal strength. Unless under extreme condition such in a forest or up in the mountain where you might need to pull in a stronger signal, there's where those external antenna comes in play. Most ppl like me do not use external antenna while in car. There's just no point of using an external antenna in car. Not sure how you fried the radio, is this some kind the amplified antenna?
RemE said:
I read in these threads about using an external antenna. Someone posted Radioshack# 17-345 Universal Antenna plus a 17-349 adapter pigtail to connect the 8525.
I was planning to use this in a sports car with bluetooth so I could set the phone in the back.
The short story is, I uncorked the external antenna port and plugged in this antenna. I got no signal bars. I disconnected the antenna....now no signal bars where I used to get 4.
I pulled the battery, let it sit, same problem. Pulled sim and used a different phone, 4 bars.
So this external antenna seems to have killed my radio!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it's a passive antenna, simple design about the size of a pack of cards. I simply plugged it in and then saw no bars, just searching. I un-plugged it and it was toast.
I believe that the 8525 connector disconnects the internal antenna when a external antenna is connected. I also believe that that connector was somehow damaged by the external antenna and now there is no antenna connected.
I won't be trying this again!
RemE said:
I read in these threads about using an external antenna. Someone posted Radioshack# 17-345 Universal Antenna plus a 17-349 adapter pigtail to connect the 8525.
I was planning to use this in a sports car with bluetooth so I could set the phone in the back.
The short story is, I uncorked the external antenna port and plugged in this antenna. I got no signal bars. I disconnected the antenna....now no signal bars where I used to get 4.
I pulled the battery, let it sit, same problem. Pulled sim and used a different phone, 4 bars.
So this external antenna seems to have killed my radio!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just killed my Hermes using a Radoshack external antenna adapter, too. It worked great for about 5 minutes, giving me 5 extra bars, and then the cell signal went dead. I haven't been able to get it to find a signal any more.
Do you think it was physically damaged? Broke a solder point pushing the connector on or off- or it somehow shorted out the device by drawing too much power or something? My reception sucks in my new apt here in Shanghai and I really want to get an antenna for use while at home, but I don't want to kill my Hermes!
Did you try a Hard reset - after backing up of course...
Other than that you may need to pull you Hermes apart and see if the radio antenna has popped out (unlikely,but....). For any manuals go here - http://michael-channon.spaces.live.com/
You may get help from our HTC Hardware Guru, Mike Channon...
Cheers...
Hi,
Have a Kaiser on the way and want to have an external GPS antenna and an external phone antenna ready to go when it gets here.
But I can't find anywhere what types of antenna sockets the Kaiser has for these two antennas?
Does anyone know???
Thanks.
Great forum, by the way!
As far as i can see it only has a socket for a GPS antenna so i assume this would probably act as both although not sure
you can get the official antenna from expansys
http://www.expansys.com/htc/p_htc_item.aspx?i=151025
I can confirm spooki37 says, from what I can tell, there is only one port. It is located the rubber GPS stamp that is on the back of the device. eBay has them shipping to the US for about $15 - $20 non-oem from China.
When I remove the battery cover, it sure looks like there are two jacks. I too thought the other must be for external Cellular antenna.
So does anyone know what the 2nd port is used for?
Whatever you do dont use the second port because it will damage your phone. I plugged an external antenna into my original phone and when I removed it the phone had no signal at all. The only way to get any signal was to use an external antenna after that.
That second port is an antenna port but htc doesnt support any antenna for it and is supposed to be used for debugging purposes only.
I use an external antenna all the time with mine... (TyTN II / Kaiser) works ok.. not great, but gets me one more bar, and seems to hold the signal better in a low signal area.
I use this adapter:
http://www.wpsantennas.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=441
with one of their antennas.
I don't have any problems with signal after I disconnect it, but i'm pretty careful with connect/disconnect, and I cradle it while connected. I bet a little torque would probably damage the connection which would probably damage the internal antenna connection as well.
So you remove the battery cover and plug that antenna into the smaller of the two ports? Ive damaged 2 phones trying external antennas and so have others. This one is a htc titan http://pdaphonehome.com/forums/ppc-6800-xv6800/96140-phone-signal-horrible.html and theres more reports like this one.
Ren13B said:
So you remove the battery cover and plug that antenna into the smaller of the two ports? .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I usually just pull my battery cover off, carefully seat the antenna into the port on the left, and then cradle the the thing.
I've done this with this phone, a moto blackjack, and at least two other moto phones in the past, and never had an issue. Again, though... I've pretty much ALWAYS immobilized the phone while it's got the antenna jack plugged in. I actually try to do the same when USB is in too... the boards inside these tiny devices are too thin and the amount of torque you can apply accidentally is quite high... best to be safe... but I get intermittent signal where I use it most frequently, so I accept the risk.
Thanks!
KarlFlick said:
I use an external antenna all the time with mine... (TyTN II / Kaiser) works ok.. not great, but gets me one more bar, and seems to hold the signal better in a low signal area.
I use this adapter:
http://www.wpsantennas.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=441
with one of their antennas.
I don't have any problems with signal after I disconnect it, but i'm pretty careful with connect/disconnect, and I cradle it while connected. I bet a little torque would probably damage the connection which would probably damage the internal antenna connection as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's exactly the answer I needed - thanks heaps!
So obviously it takes the some patch lead as the Tytn. In that case I'll just get a Tytn patch lead off ebay and hope for the best.
The owner's manual I found for the Tytn says you can use the antenna plug, so they obviously thought it was safe then, but maybe hid it on this model because of a few reported breakages. I'm going to use mine only occasionally and in a cradle, so I hope I'll be OK if I'm very careful. Maybe I'll never end up using it given the risk...
Another option would be one of those universal antenna leads. They clip on the back of the phone and work by an induction coil. Their performance is very variable - mine works OK (+1 bar) on a friend's phone, but seems to make no difference on my phone.
I want to add this as well: plugging in an external antenna can damage your phone. I have plugged a wilson antenna into my 8925 and now my reception is extremely poor... I am not sure of the cause, or how to fix it.. just hope to help people avoid this.
We have the 8925 here at our office and have found that the port on the right side is for GPS only. The left port is for cellular reception.
We have not damaged the phone that we have here and have had the 8925 for about 6 months.
There are a few issues with using external antennas:
First of all, the connector must be properly sized for the phone.
With some device/connector combinations it is normal for the connector to appear to not be fully seated. If you try to force the connector on further you can do permanent damage to the phone.
In the phone there is a tiny mechanical switch that gets tripped when you plug the external antenna in. This physically disconnects the internal antenna and connects the phone's radio to the antenna port. Sometimes this switch gets stuck in the port position, so you get poor performance when you disconnect the external antenna. This is especially common with CDMA Motorola V3 models.
-Jay
any body uses a wifi external antenna????
How hard is it to fix this "switch"? I have a kaiser that will only work with an external antenna after using one. Port isnt damaged as far as I can tell and ive never had problems with external antennas with other phones.
Jay2TheRescue said:
There are a few issues with using external antennas:
First of all, the connector must be properly sized for the phone.
With some device/connector combinations it is normal for the connector to appear to not be fully seated. If you try to force the connector on further you can do permanent damage to the phone.
In the phone there is a tiny mechanical switch that gets tripped when you plug the external antenna in. This physically disconnects the internal antenna and connects the phone's radio to the antenna port. Sometimes this switch gets stuck in the port position, so you get poor performance when you disconnect the external antenna. This is especially common with CDMA Motorola V3 models.
-Jay
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DaMilky said:
How hard is it to fix this "switch"? I have a kaiser that will only work with an external antenna after using one. Port isnt damaged as far as I can tell and ive never had problems with external antennas with other phones.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've never actually had this happen to any of my phones, so I don't know how hard it is to fix. If the external antenna was forced onto the connector you may have to send the phone in for service to have the port replaced. The only other thing I can think of is to put a small amount of contact cleaner on the port itself, the gently work it in with the external antenna connector. This may loosen the switch and let it return to the internal antenna position if this is your problem. In all likelihood I'd say that a warranty exchange is probably your best bet.
-Jay
has anyone notised a 3rd port? its between the camera and the speaker and slightly higer than the other 2 I bet that ones for wifi at 1st glance I thought it was a screw.
I don't understand why the port were designed in the first place when things seem to be such a useless purpose ...etc
comes with INTERNAL GPS ... so why the need for EXTERNAL ??? and if you do need to use it ... it is delicate and chances are, you're screwed and damage it !!
so why bother designed it ?? <scratching head> !!!
External antennae that are properly sized for the operational wavelength will always have higher effective gain than any built-on antenna that is capable of fitting on a typical handheld device.
The External GPS antenna has 27 dB Gain (typical)... I cannot find specifications for the internal antenna on our Kaiser's, but I am willing to bet they are probably at best a unity antenna, maybe 3db on the good side.
That means you will recieve SIGNIFICANTLY signal strength and more satellites when you are doing anything involving GPS, and weather, antenna position, and all standard environmental factors will have significantly less effect on your GPS activities.
The same goes for an external antenna for the cellular portion. The internal radio boosts power output when it has degraded reception which means when you're in a poor reception area, you burn more battery doing the same things you typically do.
A "gain" vehicular antenna directly connected to your phone will increase battery life when using wireless connections to the cellular network, as well as provide you good reception where you would otherwise have poor to none.
Of course, if you live in an urban area, this is probably of no use to you... but in a built up area with many large buildings around, you may not have as good GPS resolution and reception as you could with an external antenna..
*
The primary reason they put these on there is moreso for diagnostic purposes probably... hook it up to a freq counter and/or spectrum analyzer and you can tell that the radio is actually putting out what frequency and it's strength as well. Without those, there's no external way to ensure transmission is occuring without possible interference.
mech_supernova said:
has anyone notised a 3rd port? its between the camera and the speaker and slightly higer than the other 2 I bet that ones for wifi at 1st glance I thought it was a screw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've examined this very closely under a bright light, and I have concluded that it is a screw with a Torx head.
I cant find a pinout for the 16pin plug and was wondering where I can find it, but I dont think that would help me anyway.
I have a requirement for a Standard Serial port (RS232 type not USB).
Does anyone have any experience/advice on how to do this?
Do USB to serial adapters work?
Is there a mini SD to Serial port that anyone makes?
Any other ideas?
Thanks in advance
Jon
Have a look at something like this http://www.roalan.com/Bluetooth Wireless Serial RS232 Converter.htm you will have to code your own application for the phone to make use of it, I have used a similar device with my Athena - Mike
Thanks,
I am trying to avoid a wireless conection. What I am trying to do is use the Athena as a moving map for a glider. To do this I need to make use of an external GPS NMEA source. The software I am using works fine on a pda that has a std com port, I am hoping for a 'quick fix' to try it on the athena.
will this work, I havent looked for drivers yet tho!
http://www.roalan.com/USB to Serial RS232 RS422 RS485 Converter.htm
Cheers
Jon
I have to ask the obvious question though, why not use the internal GPS receiver in the phone? - if the application software you have isn't capable of switching the internal GPS on (some struggle with this) use Fransons GPS Gate to activate the inbuilt receiver and configure the ports, I would expect the inbuilt GPS to work quite well in a glider to be honest, and it does output NMEA data - what mapping application are you trying to use?
USB / RS232 converters are not the way forwards though, the mini USB port on the device is not a true USB port, it will not work with this sort of hardware, even if it did the converters generally don't work well as they don't use standard RS232 voltage levels - Mike
A good question. The external NMEA source contains additional sentances for things like accurate air speed and vertical speed that comes from a flight computer making measurements of the air. This is used for some of the calculations on the PDA. The software I will probably use is called SeeYou http://www.naviter.si/products/seeyou-mobile.php. There are several others, but this seems to work best in Landscape which is how I want it.
The internal GPS works fine with the software just to give map position.
I have managed to get it working by emulating a NMEA output over Bluetooth from a PC. I will try something like the Bluetooth to serial adapter and see what happens!
Cheers
Jon
I don't know if this is known already, but I thought I'd share.
I recently (rather stupidly) bought the wrong type of micro-USB cable, the one with the completely rectangular profile on the micro end. Not wanting to throw it away, I decided to file the corners down so it would fit.
I confirmed the pin-outs were the same, at the site below
http://www.leadsdirect.co.uk/technical/usbwiring.html
The only difference being that there was an identifying pin that was either unconnected, or connected to ground.
When I plugged the cable in, it automatically took me to Navipanel!! I was going to use it in the car anyway, so all in all, very useful!!
ALSO
Just discovered it does not appear to allow data transfer, as the phone does not show up in Windows when connected up with this cable.
I can confirm that if you connect a 'Motorola Mini-USB to Micro USB convertor' to the socket then you will also get the NaviPanel. Not sure if it is a good thing though because it annoys the hell out of me, not being able to access my Emails etc very easily. Of course I would not be driving at the same time as playing with the phone anyway.
Same happens when you just plug-in in the hd2 a microusb-to-female-usb adaptor (ment for nokia n85?) which i had bought to test (without success) some usb-host drivers mentioned somewhere in this forum.
I can add that it is possible to disable navipanel autostart (i did it but don't recall now exactly were among settings) and after that (obviously in my case using an additional usb/microusb adapter) the connection is fully functional as an usual cable.
wibberly said:
I can confirm that if you connect a 'Motorola Mini-USB to Micro USB convertor' to the socket then you will also get the NaviPanel. Not sure if it is a good thing though because it annoys the hell out of me, not being able to access my Emails etc very easily. Of course I would not be driving at the same time as playing with the phone anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same motorola conventor and the same problem. I just tried other charger and navipanel doesn't start.
so, if i read you all correctly, to activate navipanel electronically, ground pin 4 (not usually used)?
navipanel blues
does anyone know how to completely cauterise navipanel...? when using my hd2 as a usb drive the lead (as supplied with the phone!) makes the unit think its in the car.... zzz and vice versa