REVIEW COMMENTS: Fortuna GPSmart

MikeB · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2003 8:04 am Post subject: REVIEW COMMENTS: Fortuna GPSmart

Mine saw something as XP recognised that something had been connected but it was an unknown USB device, and requested a driver for it.
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Mike Barrett

fabzap · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 25, 2003 Posts: 1

Unfortunately I can't get a good satellite connection with the fortuna. Nothing like Dave experienced. Especially in the car, when putting it on the dash board I lose it after a few miles and the device will never really fix again when being on the road. Too bad, it renders my whole PocketPc Bundle useless for car navigation. Do you think it could be a difference in settings, firmware, etc?

Fabian

russgunn · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:12 pm Post subject:

Dave

Are you aware that this review thread is pointed to by the link at the bottom of the 'Points of Interest' page?

Dave · Posted: Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:43 pm Post subject:

Not sure how that happened, I think it must have happened when we switched servers and forums. I'll get that changed, thanks!

Pat Boy Slim UK · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:03 pm Post subject:

My brother Purchased the Fortuna SmartGPS but it didnt come with a car power adapter(Not sure if its supposed to or not).Does anyone know where the car 12v power adapter can be purchased ?

Pat Boy Slim UK · Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2004 12:07 pm Post subject: Fortuna GPSmart

My brother Purchased the Fortuna GPSmart but it didnt come with a car power adapter(Not sure if its supposed to or not).Does anyone know where the car 12v power adapter can be purchased ?

chris.hevey · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 5:10 pm Post subject: Re: Fortuna GPSmart

squid · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 10, 2004 Posts: 1

I read your review on the GPSmart, and ulitmately decided to buy one. What a big mistake! My intent was to have a handheld unit which could also be used via Bluetooth with my IPaq4155. I wanted to use it for geocaching, hiking, and as a GPS receiver for my navigation software on my handeld. I ran into more problems than I can fit in one post.

A small but annoying problem right out of the box, was that I couldn't get the battery door open. The fit was so tight I needed to use a knife to pry the door open, and ended up damaging the case in doing so.

Once I got beyond that, I powered up and I hoped I would get a lock sitting near a window. Failing that, I went outside under a clear sky, and it took nearly 30 minutes TTFF. The best relative signal strength was about 40. I shut it off, and wanted to see how fast a warm start would take, and it took nearly 10 minutes to lock again. The literature stated only minutes TTFF from hot or warm starts. Not nearly so.

I next wanted to set it up to talk to my IPaq. The documentation that comes with the unit is nearly worthless, so I stumbled about till I got it to communicate. It requires a ballet of turning one device on then following a specific undocumented number of steps to get everything to play nicely together. Failing to follow the steps precisely had me hard resetting the IPaq a number of times.

Once getting everthing in order, I found that after about 10 minutes of on time, the unit would "lock up" Requiring me to power it off, then going through the ardous task of rebooting everything again to reset the whole mess.

I went to the company's website, which is fairly sparse. There is no troubleshootnig information or any help at all. I did notice there was a firmware update so I sent an email to see if I should do the update. Being I'm here in the States and the company is overseas, realtime troubleshooting isn't going to happen. I did get a repsonse back days leter, and proceded to update the firmware after digging for some documentation on how to do it. While doing the update, the GPS locked up and corrupted the firmware of the unit. Subseqeunt tries yielded no better results. I sent another email, but being the time difference and being close to a weekend, I didn't get a response for several days. I have now been exchanging emails with them for nearly a week, without any luck. I am still trying to get them to understand that I have a problem. But trying to get past the translation is proving a nightmare. Every response I get urges me to get the special Fortuna USB cable or nothing wil work, and each time I write back saying that I have been using that from the beginning. I am getting quite tired from beating my head a gainst a wall trying to get them to understand what the problem is.

I ended up phoning the seller here in the States who sold me the unit, but they plead ignorance, because they are simply a reseller, and aren't responsible for technical difficulties.

Another small but annoying problem is the case they sent for the unit. It fits so tightly that, it presses against the buttons on the side so tightly, that they are engaged all the time. The case is too tight, so it can't be used.

When I did have the unit working I wanted to see how precise it was. I used the "Goto" feature and entered a waypoint, and wanted to see how accurate and reproducible it was. One intened use is for geocaching, so accuracy and precision are a must have feature. I found that when I was about 30+ meters for the point the unit behaved well, but when I got any closer the unit was hapless. I found the direction of travel was completely off, and would flip flop around as if I were in some magnetic mailstrom. The distance to the point would go from a short distance to something over 20 meters away in an instant. If I were trying to find a geocache clue I would fall down dizzy before I ever found it. There is a serious flaw in the positioning algorithms for close objects. For distant objects it seems to behave moderatly well, but anything under 30 meters, forget it. The stated precision is 10 meters depending on mode, so I wanted to see if I could reproduce that. Getting beyond the previously mentioned difficulties, the best I could do was about 15 meters, or 25 meters total approacing from different directions. Approaching from certain directions was better than from others even though I was in a completely unobstructed area.

In summary this is a poorly designed unit that has little or no documentation, no support, and even when working, performs poorly.

There are many other products which do much better. Stay away from this one. In reading the literature, and looking at it on paper, it looks great, but in actual use it fails miserably. On their website it states one common use for GPS is for distancing, yet there are no distancing features on the GPSmart. If you use it to trace your route, and want to go back and see how far you have traveled, you can't, there is no way to do that. There is no way to do any distancing at all, unless you use it with a handheld, and have some other software do it for you.

My next step is to see about getting a refund for this unit. It doesn't work, and I can't get any response from the company. Even if it were to be repaired, it a decidedly awful piece of hardware.

DeeJay · Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 9:26 am Post subject:

GPSmart Marks and Routes can now be extracted from the
intermediate file READFILE.FEC created by Fortuna's
FortunaSync and logged to a PC file using the GPX file
format.

For details of my Windows application, SmartGPX, and
supporting documentation, please refer to -

http://oldstable.org.uk/GPSmart

At the present time SmartGPX is released free of charge
for non-commercial use. It can only EXTRACT data - encoding
data from a GPX file for transfer back to a GPSmart receiver
is a future project.
_________________
DeeJay
Leicester, UK

e: PktGPS ["AT"] DavidRoberts.Org.UK

DeeJay · Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2004 5:40 pm Post subject:

After SmartGPX, as promised, comes GPXsmart, which is
able to transfer waypoints FROM your computer TO your
Fortuna GPSmart GPSr.

GPX Waypoints ( that is, <wpt> elements ) can now be
extracted from files in the GPX v1.1 xml format and
encoded into a copy of the intermediate file READFILE.FEC
ready for upload back into a GPSmart receiver by using
Fortuna's FortunaSync.

For details of my Windows application, GPXsmart, and
supporting documentation, please refer to -

http://oldstable.org.uk/GPSmart

If you download and use GPXsmart successfully (or even if
you encounter problems), would you consider sending me
an email via the contact address displayed by the
application, to let me know how it is being used?

At the present time GPXsmart is released free of charge
for non-commercial use. This release is at a very early
stage of the project, and the executable program is
time-limited to expire in mid-November.

As of this release GPXsmart can ONLY extract WAYPOINT data,
which it encodes as GPSmart Map MARKs. The GPX file can
contain Routes, Tracks and Extensions, all of which will
be ignored. The GPX file must follow the current v1.1
schema.
_________________
DeeJay
Leicester, UK

e: PktGPS ["AT"] DavidRoberts.Org.UK

Gordini100 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 10, 2005 Posts: 3

The link to this is not working.

Gordini100 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 10, 2005 Posts: 3

re: POI UK Airports

nicholast · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 12, 2006 Posts: 1

any chance that someone out there is doing the poi,s for bookers cash and carry as i am a mobile caterer and do not have time myself

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