I’m killfiling any messages sent to tom@ethergeek.com from now on. Spammers have culled that email from my pages, and it’s overrun. Not that I can’t deal with the spam, but I just don’t care enough anymore.

Anyway, my new email address to use is .

Use that for now on.

Since nobody is even reading the old nucleus blog (this is based on the web stats analysis) except people trying to (comment|trackback)spam it, I’m taking it offline. I may generate some static pages later on for archival purposes, but I really doubt I’ll ever care enough to.
*waves goodbye to historical cruft*

Found another glitch with the BC-337. Because the port is always there (not dynamically created like bluetoothe ports are) when the device is plugged in, the WM5 GPS subsystem will actually work!

The WM5 GPS crap is lame though, so I’d recommend disabling it entirely. I wasted 20 mins trying to figure out why nothing was working and it turned out that the WM5 GPS subsys was polling the GPS hardware’s port, so there was no NMEA data for my apps to read :(.

Anyway, after disabling WM5 GPS support via the settings, the BC-337 works wonderfully again.

So I recently bought one of these. Long story short, I love the thing. It has it’s quirks, but they’re easy to work around, especially given the company claims my device isn’t supported.

Here’s my test device and some software I tested:

Axim x51v ROM A06 (Windows Mobile 5/WM5)
Delorme Street Atlas 2005 HandHeld (SA2005HH)
iGuidance
PocketGPSCe
GPS Config Utility that came with the device, whatever that was called

So, GlobalSat claims that while they can make the device work in WM5 on a Dell Axim (as opposed to an iPaq, which they claim works flawlessly and support, */me looks angrily at Dell*), it has problems. I’ll throw them some points for being honest about it, on their website, prominently written so potential buyers can take this into consideration. They’re not kidding. It *does* have problems. Fortunately, they’re easy to get around.

The GPS itself: works like a dream. Time-to-fix times in the specs are overstatements. I usually have a 3-d fix from a warm start in less than 5 seconds when I’m fricken indoors. My old Delorme unit can’t compete with this. The unit even comes with a PCMCIA adapter and an MMCX antenna…gratis. So if you can’t get reception where you are (I haven’t tried it in the middle of downtown yet with all the buildings and RFI) you can run the antenna somewhere better, like the roof of your vehicle. The fact that its free is even better.  The Documentation…well, if you’re reading it you’re either new to computers, or don’t really understand GPS. In either case, it’s probably written for your level. Finding what the hell the “VTG output” checkbox on the ppc app did was a bit of a challenge (I understand VTG string types, I wanted to know why anyone would want to turn them off), spanning a grep of 2 different manuals, but I found it. Didn’t answer my question though. I guess I should say “leave it on unless it doesn’t work, see if turning it off helps in that case” for the VTG issue.
SA2005HH: doesn’t work for shit. This probably isn’t GlobalSat’s or even Microsoft’s fault. SA2005HH polls COM ports incorrectly. Fuck em anyway, as I’m NEVER buying anything from Delorme EVER again!

iGuidance: works great once ya get it running. There’s a gotcha though…if the last app using the port doesn’t close it, it won’t reopen the port. The fix is easy: just suspend the device with iGuidance running and it picks right up! By suspend I mean use the power button on the front, not a reset or anything more spectacular. It takes about 3 secs to reacquaint itself with the CF card, but then it’s back to normal operation.

PocketGPSCe: same story as iGuidance. Suspend, resume, connect will resolve all problems with it.

GlobalSat’s utility: blows bigtime. Only useful for turning WAAS/EGNOS and VTG output on and off. I don’t care though — I bought the thing for the GPS hardware, not the software. There are many tools that can play with WAAS and VTG settings on a GPS. The WM5 version of the software is a bit better, but nothing to write home about.

I was going to test it with TomTom when I got it originally, but I’ve since abandoned TomTom in favor of iGuidance. TomTom’s only advantage over iGuidance is it’s “finger-interface” which at this point I can take or leave. Here’s a tip: put a paperclip over your index finger as if it were a cluster of papers. Instant stylus, no sharp things on your screen, no finger grease.

Bottom line: 9/10. They need to fix their software that they ship with it. Getting in touch with the WM5 team at Microsoft would help too. Also, docs could be a bit more in-depth for those of us technically inclined to read them.