Thread: Bu-353 and CentraFuse, Arrow 200 Meters behind

Tony, even though BU-353 has been out for about 5 years now, it still is a very good performer. The occasional issues you may hear, may be specific to the particular installations, and may have very little to do with the quality of the GPS unit.

If you are really set against BU-353, have a look at Quarz Q818X. It is based on the MTKII chip, which may even be a dB or two more sensitive than BU-353's SiRFstarIII chip. But keep in mind that BU-353 is one of few units that are weatherproof and w/magnetic base. By placing BU-353 on the roof of the vehicle, you will gain more than a dB or two of signal strength.

Qstarz Q818X can work at 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5Hz. Some software takes advantage of this (eg. Garmin Mobile PC), and some doesn't (iGuidance).

Qstarz Q818X is a dual, Bluetooth and USB, GPS receiver. You have the option to use BT or USB, which ever suits your needs.

But pretty much any modern GPS unit has a very decent performance these days.

__________________
In BU-353 we trust.

THanks for getting me up to speed

I've read that it's old and since I seen they go for under a hundred bucks on ebay, I figured they was old and out dated.

Thanks for answering.

Any verified solution to the lagging found? I'm having this problem too.
I've read a bunch of threads and here is a summary what I've seen suggested as a fix, but never confirmed by more than one person:

• Configure GPS to com port <= 3 ??
• Enable track smoothing function on GPS with SirfDemo (maybe disable as that makes more sense to me)
• Mess with Sirf mode vs. NMEA mode (but I'm using iGuidance) using SirfDemo
• Limit the # of streams of NMEA data being sent..using SirfDemo?
• Set GPS to send non-NMEA data every 5 seconds instead of every 1 second...SirfDemo? (xport has a feature to filter non NMEA data...maybe this would work?)

I wonder if some of these solutions inadvertently toggled the GPS into a default state, and if they did how did they get changed from that state in the first place because it can happen again. My GPS used to track just fine...

I'm hesitant to start hacking around with SirfDemo because I have read it grenaded a receiver or two.

I'll try Xport's filter NMEA data setting first as that seems harmless.

I had the same problem during my final evaluation of my truckputer. I ended up switching to GPSGATE. I ran the eval version through normal driving as well as some long distance trips (>100 miles) and it ran without incident.
I really believe in freeware, but sometimes paying for something that actually works makes the effort worth while.

Spend $39 on GPSGATE. I'm sure you probably spent more than that on your carputer up to this point.
DNR

Originally Posted by ramrod

I wonder if some of these solutions inadvertently toggled the GPS into a default state, and if they did how did they get changed from that state in the first place because it can happen again.

Keep in mind that any settings change(s) you do to your GPS receiver with the help of SiRFdemo will be lost when the internal battery of the GPS receiver gets discharged. The GPS receiver will be reset to the default factory settings at that point.

Laptop GPS World

I played around with a bunch of stuff in sirfDemo with no luck.
I found just avoiding xport and having iGuidance just read the GPS port directly seems to solve the problem. Now I have consistent, usable GPS just none of the functionality that you get when you split the port with RR. I was only using speed controlled volume though.
I noticed it had about a 2 second delay that over the course of a few hours of driving would end up as an 8-10 second delay making the gps navigation useless. Omitting xport was a consistent ~1 second delay.

Could you use GpsGate instead of XPort? I've never experienced delay issues, but I don't use XPort.

GpsGate has a 14-day free trial. You could test it to see if the lagging issue gets solved.

I'll give it a try before my next road trip as this is usually when I'm using my GPS for extended periods.