TomTom BT GPS receiver not ready for prime time?

djarum69 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 4

I purchased the TomTom Navigator for Tungsten T3 bundle as soon as it was available, but am suffering the slings and arrows often associated with early adaptors.

First, the software installer is a little hokey, and doesn't match the documentation very closely. This bundle doesn't come with a memory card full of maps as the instructions suggest, but you need to provide your own. I can live with that. The second problem that I had was that loading a ~120 meg map from my desktop computer to the Palm via the cradle takes a couple of hours, and the name of the file is so long that you can't see the % complete display in the dialog box, giving you no feedback about progress for the entire 2 hours. All in all, funky but acceptable.

Now the hardware. There is no documentation for the BT GPS Receiver, and it's not clear how you turn this beast on and off, or what the little blinking lights mean. I was able to find enough hints on the TomTom support site and some hardware reviews to get the thing turned off, and understand at least a little of what the lights are telling me. When contacted about documentation for the hardware, the support rep. admitted that this was a problem that another section of the company is working on. A piece of hardware with no documentation is probably not ready for distribution, unless you cut the early adopters a good deal.

The final blow: In four days my palm has successfully talked to the GPS in a meaningful manner for ~15 minutes. On the first day I could find the Bluetooth device just fine, but was unable to capture satellites. When I was just about to give up for the day the device magically connected to 7 satellites and started performing. It did seem to be about 100 meters off from reality, but it was on the right planet. Flush with success I put everything to bed to try it on my way to work in the morning.

Come morning I fired everything back up, including activating BT on the Palm. Unfortunately I couln't connect to the receiver. In a fit of wishful thinking I installed the car kit and got ready for the morning commute. Things continued not to work until I was approaching my parking garage at work at which point the planets aligned and the system burst to life. That was to be the last time I smelled success from this little device. The GPS receiver blinks it's little lights and never shows up on the discoverable devices. How sad.

I'm hoping for an RMA soon so I can try again. I haven't given up, but I'm far less enthusiastic then I used to be. I put a support request in yesterday and have yet to hear anything back. Just updated it today. My impression of the device / company is really going to nose dive if they can't provide me with a replacement in a reasonable time, or don't respond to my support requests.

That's my story,
Ben

MikeB · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 6:36 pm Post subject:

Oh dear Ben.

Where did you get your T3 bundle from?

Mine turned up today from TotalPDA, having ordered it yesterday afternoon. I have the wired version, but I am using one of my BT GPS receivers with it.

Tha package contained all the required hardware and software including a 128MB SD card with the software and maps pre-installed.

Installation was a breeze. MS should take note here. All I did was insert the SD Card and the installation started automatically. Half way through I realised that in my eagerness to get a look at the system I had broken my cardinal rule about documenting the installation process. I did a soft reset of the T3 and removed the SD card and then re-inserted it. Installation then started from scratch again.

My experience so far is that TT for the Palm is far superior to the Pocket PC version. Having said that I havent had a chance to give it a real hard road test yet.

I am using the Emtac BT receiver as I havent had time to cable my car yet, but there are no comms issues with that, and again the Palm BT handling is superior to the PocketPCs. What sort of Windscreen do you have? Some of the coated screens prevent GPS signals reaching the receiver so could account for your experiences. Have you tried the GPS outside the car to see if you get better reception? When starting the GPS for the first time there can be an extended period before you get a fix as the device has to download all the satellite data from the GPS birds. Subsequent starts are faster as the receiver remembers what it downloaded.
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Mike Barrett

djarum69 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 4

Ah, here's the thing... I'm in the 'States where we get a set of 7 CD ROMS rather then the card. The card required to hold all the maps for my little swath of North America would be masive. My bundle came from J & R (JandR.com) the officially blessed distributor for this device.

And good news, my T3 and GPS receiver are talking again! After trying the suggestions made by support (finally) I realized that I should probably just reset my PDA to be absolutely sure that my side of the house was in order. Suprisingly, that got me back on track. It remains to be seen if I stay on track, but I'm optimistic.

In my little testing session this afternoon in a local park my GPS had a little "recentering" event where it finally realized that I was not in fact 100 meters to my left. It's now fairly accurate and I'm hoping that it will stop insisting that my house is really around the corner from it's self. I should also say that the car mounting gear in this package looks to be far superior to that sold for the PocketPC. The GPS device doens't ship with a special cradle, but runs on a power cord plugged into the Palm cradle mount. An improvement in my view.

If I switch to British English for reading the documentation, will it be more complete? I'm almost fluent in both. :P

MikeB · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 9:40 pm Post subject:

Glad you got yourself sorted.

One of the features of TomTom and other GPS software packages is that it will try and "snap" to the nearest road.

I do a lot of testing in my office which is situated at the back of my house. With the GPS signals bouncing around and only 50% of the sky visible I often get snapped to the road behind me. You will find this happening a lot in parks and even sometimes when you are on roads which run parrallel to the main road you are on.

Mostly though the GPS is accurate if it has a reasonable view of the sky.
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Mike Barrett

GPSNoob · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 21, 2004 Posts: 1

Hi Ben,

I also acquired my TomTom Bluetooth GPS for Palm in the US. However, I frequently got this "DataMgr.c line 9529 index out of range" error. I have to deleted all related files and reinstalled the Navigator. Do you experience the same problem?

Thanks.
GPS Noob

djarum69 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 11, 2004 Posts: 4

Not yet... :fingerscrossed:

Kav · Occasional Visitor Joined: May 17, 2004 Posts: 5

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