REVIEW COMMENTS: Rikaline X5

Dave · Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2003 7:39 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: Rikaline X5

Mike has completed his review of the Rikaline X5 GPS. The Rikaline 6010 X5 GPS receiver is available in a number of configurations and is built on a modular cabling system, more of which later. The X5 sports WAAS/SBAS and a SiRF II chipset.

The full review is available here.

queenb · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 06, 2003 Posts: 7

In the review, you don't make it clear whether the backup battery can be used in full tracking mode or not. Does it need to be permanently linked to a power supply?
Also, what is the battery life like on the Rikaline Bluetooth receiver?

Dave · Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2003 4:30 pm Post subject:

All cabled GPS Receivers require to be powered. The backup battery is only for storing the almanac and ephemeris data which is part of the data you download in a factory fix, which saves you having to have a factory fix of 12.5 mins each time you power on the receiver.

We will have a review on the Bluetooth X7 Receiver as soon as it has arrived and we have had time to test it alongside other GPS Receivers.

stefans · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 02, 2003 Posts: 5

I have a brand new X5 and first testings were quite disappointing. As Dave wrote there were no "lags" during his testings. I cannot confirm this. I almost had overshoots in positioning up to more than 30 meters especially after sharp bendings with lags up to 20 seconds after those turns to become more accurate positions.
Currently i think the unit was not a good choice but i'll give it some more testing. But as now it seems that high sensivity means also more inaccuracy compared to conventional receivers (as my good old Holux 210).

Stefan

Dave · Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2003 7:33 am Post subject:

Actually it was Mike who reviewed the X5 not me.

MikeB · Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2003 12:36 pm Post subject:

Stephan,

Before writing the review I used this GPS receiver for over a month, including a solid week of driving in Florida. I tested it with numerous applications including TomTom, NavMan, Delorme, Memory-Map and others, both on my PDA and connected to my PC.

At no point in the testing did I experience either lag or overshoots. Now it may be that the conditions under which it was tested would not induce these issues. I did not do a lot of driving in London, and there are not too many Urban Canyons near where I live, nor in Florida.

I can only document my findings during testing, and I was aware of and looking for these problems during my testing.

After I have finished testing my current setup I will re-install the X5 and retest to see if I can duplicate your findings. Can you supply any more information about the general conditions Weather, Buildings, Number of Sats fixed etc. I will see if I can recreate the environment and see what happens.
_________________
Mike Barrett

stefans · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 02, 2003 Posts: 5

Mike,

i collected some further informations which should explain more detailled what i found out. Please click here

Dave · Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2003 7:53 am Post subject:

Stefans, how accurate do you really want to be ?

When we test the XTrac GPS Receivers like the GPS Mouse kind, we test them in-car with the applications they're meant to be used with. Most (95%) of the in-car apps (Street Nav) have snap to road features, this means that you will not see accuracy issues unless you use a tracking or topographical application.

You won't get spot on accuracy with a GPS anyway, the closest you will get is with WAAS which might get you better accuracy.

I do agree though for critical based applications like tracking, XTrac really isn't the type of GPS you want. SiRF do now market XTrac for AVL situations, partly due to being able to hide the antenna away under all the bodywork and not have to worry about having an external patch antenna showing to the sky, but there are draw backs.

When using most Street Nav software, you won't see accuracy issues going off road due to snap-to-road technology, but you may experience lag/latency in hard acceleration/deceleration, or under built up areas where there are a lot of parallel roads in close proximity you may notice a slight problem, but in most tests XTrac will perform pretty well.

stefans · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 02, 2003 Posts: 5

Dave, i want to be as accurate as possible :-)

I just got a reply from Rikaline, Taiwan. They said that "this behaviour is a well known problem that our engineers are working hard to solve ".

Currently my opinion is that high sensivity devices are well suited for pedestrians or (with some limitations) bikers. They are not quite good for car-navigation.

You're right that software use snap-to-road where it doesn't really matter how exact your position is. But there will be situations were software takes the wrong assumptions. I also tested with TTN1 and found some of these. Test on parallel roads while switching from one to another. Also you'll find lags with these applications, because on intersections they'll just wait a few seconds because it can't be said which direction you'll take.

But to get back to XTrac in general. There are only a few situations were you'll have a real benefit. Maybe you'll find places were ordinary receivers won't get a fix. But most of the time XTrac receivers are lying with respect to calculated positions. They predict positions and these predictions are quite inaccurate.

I think best would be to wait for next generation of XTRac, where receivers only automatically enable XTrac under bad reception conditions and most of the time they should work just as normal GPS-receivers without lags.

MikeB · Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2003 7:00 pm Post subject:

Stefans,

Sorry for the long delay in responding to you, I have been tryiing to get to the bottom of what is going on with the Rikaline receivers.

I have been doing some extensive tests over the last few weeks, and have not found any lag at all nor has there been any positional inaccuracies in my GPS receiver data. This to me seemed very strange as it was at odds with your findings.

I think I may now have discovered the cause. I have just been speaking to Sam Goldsmith at Rikaline UK. He tells me there are a number of versions of GPS receivers that are very similar, namely the 6010 and the 6012. Even worse it has come to light that some of the early prototypes may have been sold in Europe.

It looks as if you may have one of these prototypes as it is showing the types of problem exhibited in the software of the early X5s which were not intended for sale.

Sam says if you contact him he will arrange for the receiver to be replaced. You can contact him on sam@rikaline.co.uk.
_________________
Mike Barrett

	PocketGPS
	Web