... or any other PDA for that matter!
Iīve been struggling for the last few days with this little gadget I bougth:
Spectec SDG-810 (
GPS Receiver ). It seemed to be such a good idea, you know, a GPS receiver that can be plugged in the SD socket, which carries a microSD reader, so that you donīt have to loose storing capacity. Great!
But there are a few glitches to say the least, so I would suggest all of you, deceived SDG-810 buyers, to use this thread to gather every problems and suggestions that might fix them.
Maybe we could also send these complaints to SPECTEC.
That said, let me start with my own experience (I own a Dell Axim X30 624mhz):
1. First of all: SDG-810 does not work with X3i, no matter what Spectec site says (
GPS Receiver ). This is because SDG-810 needs Pocket PC2003SE at least, and X3īs OS is Pocket PC 2002 or 2003 (not Second Edition).
From my experience (i also own a X3i), it doesnīt even recognize the MicroSD card. I believe this is because PPC 2003 doesnīt meet SDIO standards.
2. Setting it up
Itīs easy. I recommend you to get the latest drivers on the Spectec site.
Test with "GPS Viewer" or "GPS Tweak".
Important: The driver assigns a COM port to the SDG-810. In my case it is COM6. But thatīs not all. You have to figure out which baud rate it works with. In my case it is 38400 but that may be different between different GPS receivers. Remember to choose the NMEA protocol.
3. Fixing on to satellites. This is a very common complaint: "I canīt get my SDG-810 to fix on satellites". There are even cases where people have replaced their units, but nothing new happened. Why? Because there was nothing wrong with them in the first place!
From a cold start, it takes as much as 5 to 10 minutes to get a fix! So, go out in the sun, and be patient. After that first fix, things start to be quicker.
4. Real life experience: SDG-810 and GPS navigation software. These are the really important issues.
I tried two software: Destinator and Tomtom
Destinator: Couldnīt get it to work with SDG-810. Destinator installs ok, and it even lets me choose COM6, 38400bauds, NMEA, everything. But when it tries to connect, nothing happends. I tried it over and over again, with the same results.
I remembered to test the connection with GPS Tweak. Before running Navigator, GPS tweak connects ok. After running Navigator (with no success), I go back to GPS Tweak, and then it gives me an error message when trying to connect: "couldnīt open com port".
My guess is, and itīs just a guess, the SPECTEC driver creates a virtual COM port, while Navigator tries to access a physical COM port directly. The result is no good!
Tomtom:
This one connects ok. Recognizes the GPS receiver, fixes on to sattellites, etc. Cool, right? Not so fast.
Navigating a map is extremely slow! I mean, maps are stored in the MicroSD card, and when both things in SDG-810 are in use (the GPS receiver and the MicroSD card), the access speed to the MicroSD card gets very, very slow. The result is that the map shown on the screen is allways behind your real position.
Once again, my guess is that both the GPS receiver and the microSD card share the same resources on the Pocket PC, so that when they are both working at the same time, they conflict with each other.
Now, I found a way to go around this problem, at least for a while. Before running Tomtom, I run GPS Viewer and force a cold start. I immediately close the GPS Viewer, and run Tomtom. For a while (20 minutes or so), everything works just fine. But only for a while.
My conclusion is that, in the hardware point of view, this Spectec SDG-810 is pretty much impressive. The real fault, i believe, is software, meaning drivers. Drivers are poorly written and need to be re-programmed.
SPECTEC should do just that, and then run extensive testing with the most popular GPS software, before they sell their product.
This could have been a little wonder. Instead, and until now, itīs nothing but fancy rubbish.