CF Plus Failure

[Baggy]

I finally took the plunge yesterday and bought a CF Plus receiver from Global Positioning Systems. It arrived today (good service) but unfortunately will not talk to my Ipaq 3970.
After repeated calls to technical help (leaving the phone ringing for over an hour total - I am pretty sick of their recorded messages but pleased it's a local rate number) I was answerd by a really helpful guy. He checked that I had gone through all the settings (NMEA, Com...) and then emailed a returns form for me as he decided the unit was faulty.
So the receiver goes back tomorrow and I just have to decide whether to try again or go Blue Tooth. Ironically the final deciding factor had been the many reports on Blue Tooth failure and, just for once, I wanted to buy some electronics that didn't go wrong!

Baggy

[Dave]

First, which settings did you try to connect under ? The reason why I ask is that the earlier models came configured to NMEA 4800 but the later models seem to be on either SiRF 9600 or SiRF 38400 and a lot of software won't work with SiRF.

You can change it by switching to NMEA 4800 which can be done easily by following this technical article.

I haven't heard of any SOC CF Plus's to be faulty, most are just configured wrong.

If you want to go Bluetooth then it's a good option, it will drain less battery power compared with a CF card so if you plan to do a lot of walking or hiking with a GPS then it would be better.

[Baggy]

Well I am surprised!
It works on NMEA at 38400 on COM6.
I wonder why manufacturers could not provide the same type of instructions you do? I checked again and the instructions with the receiver clearly say for an Ipaq 3900 series COM 6 (OK) NMEA (OK) at 4800! I had tried some changes with the supplied software but had not gone as far as you suggest because there was no indication that I should.
It would have been better to list no settings than the wrong ones.

The TTFF from cold seems longer than I expected from the "Tweaking" comments and your review, it takes around 1minute 20 seconds with the aerial up against a window with no buildings or trees around.


Blue Tooth
Your comment about Blue Tooth power useage being lower is very interesting. During my "research" on the web ( I liked the look of the Fortuna clip) I tried to find out the relative power consumption/battery life for a CF vs the Blue Tooth in my Ipaq without success so I went for the simpler solution, hard wired rather than a secondary radio.
Do you have any idea/experience of the sort of time each option would last with a 3970. I actually have a 950mAh secondary battery in the CF jacket but any indication of performance would be welcome.

Many thanks for your help Dave.

Regards Baggy

[Dave]

Great it worked (providing you still want to keep hold of it!) :D

Manufacturers don't include half as much information as they should, that was one of the reasons for us starting the website was to try and provide all the knowledge and articles in a single place so everyone knew where to go.

In Bluetooth tests we've found that a regular SiRF IIe/LP card will last less than a constantly connected Bluetooth GPS. Mainly because the Bluetooth GPS has it's own integrated battery where as the CF card is pulling battery power from the Pocket PC. I don't think there are any technical tests that show the drain difference, but depending on the cards used it can be significant. I think when Mike last checked you could get a couple of hours more useage, but don't quote me on that!

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