BT Clip on GPS - NO SATELLITES

nickruss · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 05, 2004 Posts: 18

I have been using a bluetooth clip on GPS for about 2 months just fine. Now it cannot find any satellites - I just get an orange light all the time on the satellite status LED.

Is the unit broken or is there some way I can get it to snap out of this problem?

Thanks

Nick

DataMan · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 2:06 am Post subject:

The same here

it happened to me for the 4th time with my 4th device

I bought mine from buyGPSnow.com

the managers name is Joe
well he seems pretty knowledgable and helped me a lot
sent me 4 new devices since I bough this device since Nov 2003

finally this week my 4th broke down for no good reason it just seats their with Red sat. light an d no signal... I go nutz
it use to get 7 sat last night now in the same position not even one...

I took out the batter and put it back in no luck so I'm doing a reaserch on Hia-com as Joe told me about it and I'm changing to the

[url]HAiCOM Bluetooth Slipper™ GPS Receiver (HI-401BTs)[/url]

If Dave could help us with this it would be great...

Joe Kee at www.buyGpsnow.com told me that he just got 1/50 th of the devices back since begining of the sales...

So I was guesing some thing is wrong w/ me
But I guess not since your are expriencing this problem too

well I like the Clip-on thingy since its crazy small and has seperate battery very good receiption (when it works) but I can not bear with furtona any more since they killed my fun when ever I really needed the GPS it did not work on me
I guess 4 not working devices in 4 months is not a good indicator of quality product...

I hope they improve

what I'm wondering is that Haicom and furtuna are both from taiwan so I don't know how much I could trust the haicom or any taiwan company !!

PLEASE share your knowledge and ideas on this

thanks

nickruss · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 05, 2004 Posts: 18

I got it working in the end. Took out battery, put it back in, switched too XT mode (still no lock) then back to normal mode and it worked.

With big RTK survey GPS that I use (www.terradat.com) sometimes the Rover just can't fix itself and needs a big reset. That;s on a $50,000 system so maybe its inherent on all GPS?

Dave · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 9:05 am Post subject:

Most GPS companies are form Taiwan or Asia, in-fact if you look at most electrical products now a days, they're made there, so avoiding companies in Taiwan isn't going to help much.

I speak with Joe on a regular basis and next time I speak with him I'll ask him about the clip-on's. We haven't heard of any mass failures, but a few people have experienced charging problems. We have 2xFortuna's here, the reviews try to put them through a heavy bombardment of tests in everyday life and if a units going to fail we expect it should fail within 4 weeks of use (and we have had a number that have done this) but not the Clip-on.

If you are only using the supplied charger, then it could be a generic fault within the charging circuit of the Clip-On, or something that is blowing eventually inside. The Haicom slipper is a little big and cumbersome, not as small as the Clip-on so it doesn't fit very well in your pocket, but it is a good Bluetooth GPS, but I'd recommend buying the CF card with the slipper so you know it's definately going to work.

nickruss · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jan 05, 2004 Posts: 18

My sister company www.terralogic.co.uk sells ruggedised PDAs / laptops and we have several people from Taiwan working for us, so if anyone needs some research or contacts in TW, let me know!

I love the clip-on bt GPS, but a nice feature would be if you could get it to store a few hours worth of GPS positions which could then be downloaded to memory-map or similar. Great for running when you may not want to carry a PDA as well or use maps.

Nick

DataMan · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 1:54 pm Post subject:

wow thanks dave I love your board here
it is amazing fast!

thanks nickruss
well I don't think that is such a convenience to do it everytime it happense
b/c openning the battery needs screwdriver, changing the XT mode need a tool or something, I really like the fortuna clip-on but why is it so flimzy
I use the charger that came with it. ok I try your point once I get back home and I hope it works.

I know Taiwan and china now are taking the worlds tech in electronics... Laughing Out Loud

US and other countries are very expensive countries so they could not make these electric stuff as cheap as they do!

so dave you never had any problems with the Clip-On s?

so you sugest I should keep it if this reset makes it to work?
I like the fact that the haicom could also be used as CF and mouse + BT
but yeah I read the sizes on it and it almost 1.5 times bigger than fortuna but don't forget the MMF one has a battery life of around 14 hrs! which I think is wow. if they give out the Solar panel I would say the haicom would be the way to go. you just leave it on the dash for days w/o no charge and gets charged by the solar panel!

yeah Joe was very patient w/ the problems that I exprienced with this clip-on... to be honest with you I could not belive he does that much, I mean he was talking to me for hours on his own cellphone sometimes till 11pm.

any how I ordered the Haicom BT w/ 303MMF very late last night. b/c I needed a reliable GPS in my car, so we see which one will win this comparison.

any idea on which one has a better GPS reception?
any help on choosing which one to keep? Idea

again thanks I feel lucky finding this forum
farjad

DataMan · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 2:05 pm Post subject:

sorry to Re-post again

DavidW · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 3:21 pm Post subject:

The problem with the Haicom is that there are some HI-303 series GPSes that won't work in the Bluetooth slipper. There's a hardware modification needed for the GPS to work in the HI-401, as mentioned in Dave's review, and earlier examples of HI-303 series GPSes lack this modification.

The best thing is to buy the GPS and Bluetooth slipper together so that you can guarantee not hitting this problem (or you have grounds to get it sorted if you do!).

David

DataMan · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 3:26 pm Post subject:

oh, right
I read his posts
I mean ALL of them, so I bought mine as a pkg and just lastnight so i should be fine
what do u think about its sttability and preformance?

DavidW · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 5:38 pm Post subject:

If you look back over my old posts, you'll see that I rate the HI-303MMF highly, though I am ticked off with Haicom over this compatibility issue with the Bluetooth slipper.

My HI-303MMF is one of the older ones, so I can't upgrade to Bluetooth just by buying a HI-401 without a GPS. As I'd rather stay SiRF (the cheapest bundles seem to contain the HI-303E), it would probably be cheaper to buy a Fortuna Clip-On and have XTrac capability, retaining my existing and otherwise perfect HI-303MMF - though I suppose I could put my existing HI-303MMF up for sale either here or on eBay and buy a new one with a HI-401.

I can't think Haicom are going to offer me any solution - I can't think I'd be allowed a warranty claim because of the incompatibility, though maybe someone should try it.

Stability and performance with the HI-303MMF have both been top notch in my setup.

David

DataMan · Posted: Mon Feb 16, 2004 7:20 pm Post subject:

Oh I ordered my Haicom BT with 303MMF last night for just 200 US $
is the same price or even lower than fortuna

as I mentioned I got it from
www.BuyGPSnow.com

well only thing that I'm concerened about is that haicom is a bit bigger
but I don't think that bothers me more than broken Clip-on fortuna which happened to me 4 times...

OH by the way I tried the trick that mentioned on top

took out the battery and put it back in after a while
changed the mode to XT and then back to ST no luck still it does not get a fix... crazy oh listen to this I was so disapointed so I left the clip-on in the charger behind the window for 3 days I checked it last night and still no fix! but this morning it got a fix in ST mode after 3 days or more, but guess what once I turned it off and back on the fix was gone for I guess another 3 days. I emailed www.Fortuna.com.tw but all of my emails was rejected and returned so by now I'm pretty sure that as Dave mentioned in his review of the clip-on ""Fortuna is not a Quality company" I should have really belive his wording. ok still is not Toooooo late accept his exact wording about this low quality comapny and change to hiacom I spent a lot on this BS clip-on so I guess Byebye fortuna you are ver UNfortune!

thanks for all your helps guys... see you in the HiaCom forum!

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