Any other Palm Mapsonic users able to give advice on basics

jblackmore

I got my Zire 31 GPS bundle yesterday, and am overall very pleased with it, the GPS side works great, and routing is adequate, user interface is a bit quirky, but I am getting the hang of it, however I have some basic questions which I hope someone can answer.

1. I hotsync to multiple PCs (work and home), and Mapsonic is giving hotsync errors, is this not supported ?

********** Mapsonic conduit : Start ********** 11/25/04 08:22:25
********** Mapsonic conduit : Closed ********** 11/25/04 08:22:25
Conduit 'mapsonic' Error: Unknown error. (FFFF)

2. I have added a POI type 'FAVES' on the Palm for my frequent destinations, but after hotsync these don't show on mapstore on my PC ? Can I sync POI's between the PC and Palm or is this not supported ?

3. Is there a way to 'move' POIs by dragging etc, either on the Palm or PC, as I can only delete and re-enter them, and that isn't straightforward.

Anyway, hope someone can answer these, but overall I think it is a good solution, and compared with the Medion bundle I am glad I chose the Palm solution, due to the other Palm benefits.

James.

jblackmore · Posted: Thu Nov 25, 2004 9:55 am Post subject:

Sorry, just realised there are two different hotsync errors, the first one and also this one:

********** Mapsonic conduit : Start ********** 11/25/04 08:43:19
### Sync files ###
********** Mapsonic conduit : Open ********** 11/25/04 08:43:19
Calling remote 2
Result : ERROR / 2
********** Mapsonic conduit : Closed ********** 11/25/04 08:43:20

This is with Mapsonic 2.5, PalmOS v5.28004. MapStore 3.5 on Win2000/WinXP (Work and Home).

matty2767 · Regular Visitor Joined: Jun 27, 2004 Posts: 85

as far as i am aware you can sync poi's from pc to palm but not the other way round. well it doesnt work for me either

jblackmore · Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 11:58 am Post subject:

Thanks Matty,

I can import POIs from PC to Palm only using POI manager, but they are then read only on Palm (ie cannot delete modify them).

If I add POI's just by clicking and 'add POI' on either PC or Palm they are not transferred across at all - is this what you meant ?

Seems a bit of an oversight if they have not implemented this, or maybe the hotsync errors are when it is trying to transfer the POI's ??

Do you have these errors in your hotsync logs or is it just me ?

Kirrio have forwarded my email to ViaMichelin, but I haven't heard back yet.

matty2767 · Regular Visitor Joined: Jun 27, 2004 Posts: 85

yep. i carnt sync the poi's back to the pc from the palm. it is a pain becuase when you do a hard reset you lose all the poi's.

i havent had the errors in the log though. have you installed the software to the unit and not to a memory card?. you can put the maps on a card.

you could try a hard reset and just install the mapsonic before anything else to make sure there isnt a conflict.

jblackmore · Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 1:14 pm Post subject:

Thanks for info, I have found that by installing Mapsonic onto SD card, and deleting it from internal memory, I get 12Mb internal memory free, and Mapsonic runs without problems.

From my experience it appears that Mapsonic Requires 11Mb free memory to operate properly, not the 8Mb claimed by PalmOne/ViaMichelin.

Details are in the Mapsonic thread for this.

jblackmore · Posted: Wed Dec 15, 2004 5:26 pm Post subject:

Just to update this, I realised afterwards that you need to install Mapsonic into internal memory, as if you install it onto the card, you still need a bunch of settings files in internal memory, also I think the Palm copies the program into internal memory (from the card) each time it runs anyway, so this is no benefit at all !!

You can free up some memory by uing filez and deleteing any sounds you dno't need (ie all the Metres announcement are not used as I have it set to MPH), this free's up some memory.

From talking to ViaMichelin today, they have admitted that whilst they say 8Mb free memory is required, it is actually more than that depending on the size of the maps on your card, they don't have any exact figures, but they think that 1-2Mb internal memory is required for medium sized maps on the card, and they don't have any figures for full UK map (140Mb).

I have not used any other PDA GPS software, but have got the hang of Mapsonic now, lack of postcode is not that annoying, the fact it only knows house numbers by ranges is a pain, as it is not that accurate, and often number 27 is not next to number 28 etc in the UK.

The POI functionality is superb for importing Speed Camera etc database onto the PDA, this is easy and quick to do (using POIedit to convert to .asc, then POImanager to copy to PDA).

Negative points are:
- You cannot turn off audible navigation commands, but still hear POI warnings, these should be indepentantly selectable.
- No syncing of POIs is done between PDA and PC, so if you have to reset your PDA you lose all POIs !
- memory management issue, although to be fair, it sounds like if you have a 32mb PDA and use a memory card sensibly, you would never fall below 15Mb of memory anyway, so this would not be a problem !!

Positive points:
- GPS receiver works brilliantly, and is fast and accurate
- Navigation is generally very good
- Map details is generally very good
- Fantastic POI functionality, once you manage to work out the tricks to using it
- Zire 31 car cradle mount is superb, its a custom cradle not just generic springloaded clamps, and cables plug into the side, which is much tidier than plugging into the bottom.

Having said all this, I am hoping to upgrade to the GPS Solution TE edition, which is effectively the same bundle but with a Tungsten E PDA and a ugly spring loaded clamp, the advantage is 32mb memory, so I should get away from all the memory problems AND a TFT screen which will be nicer for pictures etc

The STN screen on the Zire 31 is fine for navigation in night mode, which is perfectly OK, but is not viewable in day mode - this is a very minor issue as night mode works great day and night.

James.

DennyL · Regular Visitor Joined: Jan 24, 2004 Posts: 114

that's a very interesting summary, James. I have a Tungsten T3 so am not familiar with your Palm Zire 31. But two thoughts occur to me on reading your last post.

Maybe you could ameliorate the problems of moving Mapsonic between internal RAM and SD card by using a utility such as PowerRun. In my experience this works well. (zLauncher also has this capability among its many fiunctions but would itself occupy quite a lot of your RAM.)

As you risk losing your POIs if you need to do a hard reset, have you considered buying a utility to backup your Palm to SD card, such as Backupman, CardBackup or BackupBuddyVFS. In my experience, once one has such a utility one would not want to be without it, and hotsyncing takes on just a secondary importance, because with a backup on SD card one can restore one's Palm in just a minute or two after a hard reset, even away from base, and backups, being differential, are usually pretty quick, and you can schedule these utilities to do backups in the middle of the night or even every time you turn your Palm off.

To bone up on backup and other programs and utilities visit the forums at www.brighthand.com, or www.pdastreet.com.

I find that Mapsonic v1.3.2 is the biggest source of crashes of my T3, to the extent that I have even resolved (not always stuck to!) to backup my Palm before every use of Mapsonic. My crashes quite often require a hard reset, and the almost always occur on starting Mapsonic, as it is starting Bluetooth, or as I am quitting Mapsonic (I ALWAYS quit Mapsonic 'properly' by going to File>Exit, rather than just starting another app). Mapsonic has only ever crashed once while I was using it, as opposed to starting or quitting it. I'm not sure that all Mapsonic users experience the crashes I do, and my Palm is loaded with software, and I use BTtoggle. As you are working with v2.5, I would be interested to know whether it crashed your Palm often.

Good luck with your endeavours.

Dennis

jblackmore · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:11 pm Post subject:

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for your comments, and suggestions, I will look into them.

Regarding crashes, the only problem I have had whilst running Mapsonic 2.5 is the 'not enough memory' error, which then exits Mapsonic when I hit OK.

I can restart mapsonic straight away, but have to reselect the map and route as all that is lost, and I cannot connect to wired GPS unit without a soft reset, which loses no data and I can then restart Mapsonic and it will work fine.

This has happened about 6 times, and seems to be due to lack of memory on the Zire 31 which causes problems with big maps.

Other than Mapsonic, FileZ and 5N launcher, I have nothing but my contacts and schedule on the Zire 31, and have 10.3Mb internal memory free which seems to be borderline for mapsonic to work on big maps.

Sounds like 2.5 is more robust than your version, but obviously this is a pretty unscientific comparison.

James.

jblackmore · Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:21 pm Post subject:

Just had a look at PowerRUN and it seems to work the same way as the internal launcher, when you copy an application to SD card.

Basically when you launch the SD card app, it is copied into internal memory before running it, so this would only help if you have several large apps, but only run one at a time.

Other than Mapsonic I don't use anything but the internal apps, so this doesn't help with the memory problem on a 16Mb palm.

Still, was worth looking into.

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