Mio Digi Walker P550

doogy · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 22, 2006 Posts: 12

Having read through numerous posts I get the feeling the problems with TTN and the P550 (P350 also has a lot of occurrences too) is due to the way TT opens and accesses the comms ports on the device. My Pocket Nav software from Memory Map and Mio Map V2 give instant fixes whereas TT only gives instant fixes if one of these is already running (and presumably has the comms port open). Am hopeful some sort of fix may appear but meantime I find Mio Map V2 more up to date with it's mapping than TT. Previous threads also mention getting no satellite status on the Mio devices...looks like this is due to no GPGSV or GPGSA string within the GPS sentence. If I've got that wrong then feel free to correct me as I'm only getting this from what I've read.

Regards

Craig

philtimm · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 20, 2006 Posts: 15

doogy · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 22, 2006 Posts: 12

Phil,

Can't blame you for being pi$%ed off with the P550 and TTN5.21 but I do think the issue might be with TTN and the way it `opens` the comms port to the GPS. My Mio Map and pocket navigator always get a fix within seconds and if I then close them down and immediately run TTN it's fine. If I just power it on and run TTN it can then take ages. Also I get no sat status for TTN which after looking through this forum seems to be due to the GPS sentence missing the GPGSV and GPGSA string (which contain sat status info). So I assume this string may be needed for TTN to get a fast fix? I notice there's a lot about TTN problems with this sort of stuff but maybe the first port of call is as you say to go back to the seller and take the issue up with them. Would be good if you could try some other 3rd party mapping software from somewhere as it might help in determining if it's the P550 or TTN that's the problem. I'm still reserving judgement on the device as there does seem to be a few issues with it but as I'm in the middle of moving house it's going to have to be looked at when I get odd bits of spare time. I do agree with you on the support side of MIO ...I too have had nil response from emails and have called them up before but at 35p a minute it's a bloody con!!

Good luck and if I get any responses from MIO on my issues I'll let you know.

Craig

indecisive · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 1:00 pm Post subject:

This business with Tomtom and the lack of certain gps messages has been dicussed at some length at gpspassion (in French: http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=57173&SearchTerms=,p550). I've got the gist of it with the translation assistance of google, and the issue seems to be that Mio have set things up so that some gps messages are disabled by default, as Mio Map doesn't use them. If you reset the Sirf chip using something like CE Monitor (http://www.gpspassion.com/fr/downloads.asp?id=1) , it starts sending them again, and TT is happy. I believe you need to do this every time you reset your device (not sure if thats all types of resets).

My P550 seems ok with TT5, although as a gps newbie I don't haven't anything to compare it to. I've also just bought Destinator 6 as it came with European maps at less than TT's maps alone. It also seems to work, but the display seems to lag actual position more.

Ian

dougproctor · Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 4:00 pm Post subject: Gloom and despondancy!

I have a brand new Mio P550 waiting at home for me to unwrap. I also have TomTom V5.21 which I want to use on it.
Is it going to work or do I not bother unwrapping it and just send it back to gps ltd? I want the Blutooth, the wifi and the PDA functions but need GPS as well.
Anybody happy with it? What settimngs do you use in the GPS section on TomTom?
Decisions!

dougproctor · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 2:29 pm Post subject:

Well, I sort of unwrapped it and had all sorts of problems with it. Feels cheap and tacky as well. So much so, I put it back in the box and it's going back. Too much hassle.
Doug

neil01 · Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 11:52 pm Post subject:

Very interesting since they appear to be so similar. Even though the conclusions that one is better than the othermay be correct, the testing is I believe flawed. http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=56706

A comparison will only be valid if the PDA's are tested at the same location at the same time. As many of us know, even if a PDA is at a fixed location, TTFF, signal strength, and number of satellites will vary depending on the weather conditions and at diferrent times. There may well be other variables which may need to be catered for too.

If there really is a difference, two possible candidated spring to mind - the increased power of the P550 is interfering with the GPS reception, or that there is a significant diferrence caused by diferrent batches of components.

rwk3 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 14, 2006 Posts: 3

Right, so clearly I've got one of these P550s without doing my homework. I'm having all of the same issues with getting a GPS signal -- no love.

It was set up with TomTom 5.21 and looks good and all, but the 'no valid GPS signal' continues in the Flat, walking to the store, sitting outside the car in the parking lot.

Is the answer to buy the extra antenna? Has anyone tried that? Defeats the purpose, but if I can get it to work, I'd like to try...

Any word on software fixes?

thks

morphus · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 17, 2006 Posts: 4

Sorry I have not been here before

Ive tested p550 against 168 old firmware 168 latest firmware and a201
first fix is very poor against any of the above with tt 5.21.
Heavy cloud cover and rain seems to make it even worse.
No lock inside at all 1 168 and 2 a201 do lock fine
Once locked on the 2 tested seem to work fine.
Destinator 6 locks on much faster but it does with all 6 devices on my trail
p550 in 5 weeks has had to be reset 12 times The external arial does improve things but is not much of an opion for handheld operation.
Mio tech have not responed to my emails other than to send me the doppy newsletter.I would recomend test before youbuy lads some seem better than others reading through this thread.

hope this helps sorry about the spelling Andyb

geoffwrobb · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 13, 2006 Posts: 5

Hi,

I have had my P550 for over a month now and not had any real problems (apart from initial set-up).

I have just been on 10 days holiday in Scotland and it worked great. Sometimes it takes a little while (~ 10 mins) to get a signal, but it always finds it. Occasionally I have had to fo a soft re-boot but I think this is the TT5 problem and not the P550.

I guess this doesn't really help you guys but I can only say as I find it. A very good PDA that works well with TT5

cheers

Geoff

rwk3 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 14, 2006 Posts: 3

I got my P550 from Discount Sat Nav, and so far they have handled the faulty equipment situation well. I'll let you know if and when I get one that works.

I spoke with Mio -- they said it was a software issue.

Here is the dialouge with DSN and what they are saying about the problem.

tacticalmarine · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 18, 2006 Posts: 3

I have bought a p550 today and after installing tt5 i am having no luck at all getting a gps signal even with a gps antenae pluged in the back so i also instaled destinator lite which i had on a spare sd card and the gps sats was found within seconds and very strong too so i am starting to think after reading the threads and with my own experience that maybe tt5 is the problem?

tacticalmarine · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jul 18, 2006 Posts: 3

after several hours of adjusting settings and adding and removing tomtom and swopping and changing its compents i finally got a signal with tomtom using an external gps receiver pluged in the socket at the back, but not good enough i thought to myself, the first day of owning it and i was not going to settle for an external receiver every time i wanted to use the damn thing but when i unpluged it and started tomtom again usin the internal gps receiver it found sats!
so fingers crossed and i hope my experiences helps others who will no doubt be experiencing the same frustrations!
Mark... Laughing

pinkllama · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 17, 2006 Posts: 4

hi all,

i have a p550 & ttn5 5.21. guess i'm lucky but i've not had any problems. try these settings.

on the p550 gps program port = com4. gps hardware port = com 2. baud rate 4800. access, manage gps automatically is ticked.

on ttn5, other nmea gps, 4800 baud rate, gps_com.

if you want ttn5 to get a slightly faster fix then download visualGPS(free, do a google search), drop the .cab file over to your p550, install and run it. then click connect, serial port(comm port) then choose com4 and 4800 baud rate. you should do all this outside/by a window to get the connection. then after it has a connection, open ttn5 and change the port from gps_com to com4 (the virtual port)

if you always leave ttn5 open then you can now close visualGPS or(like me) just leave it open in the background so you can open and close ttn5 at will.

slow/ no connection is the fault of ttn5 interacting with the p550. try running igo on the p550 and you'll see what i mean (it auto finds the right settings and gets a connection in a snap.

hope the above helps.

doogy · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 22, 2006 Posts: 12

Got to agree with pinkllama and others...my earlier post in this thread seems to be the opinion of a few others. TTN seems to have problems with the GPS com port addressing and as such can seem like a problem with the device. I've had the P550 a month and recommend winfast navigator along with visual gpsce as essential tools to help set the unit up. I run Mio Map V2, TTN 5.21 and Memory Map pocket navigator all on 1 SD card and they work great. Indoors I get fixes on 6-10 sats and regularly have up to 11 in view. The unit has never lost a fix so I guess I may be one of the lucky ones as another post mentions a problem MIO are aware of whereby 1 in 13 units seem to have a `GPS alignment issue` (whatever that means).

If running MIO map be aware that it disbales the GPGSV and GPGSA strings in the GPS sentence so if you the use another bit of GPS software it may not show any satellite status. To re-enable them use winfast navigator (user instructions on this website) and all will be fine. Easy to do and makes TTN 5.21 work a treat.

Regards

Craig

	PocketGPS
	Web