Virtual COM Port Splitter

**Laidback** · 05-07-2004, 04:11 PM

Originally Posted by fly_dutchie

Well, spring is in the air.

I swapped the usb cable with a serial/ps2 cable.

Michael

Probably the best option! Wonder if I can do that with mine??

**fly_dutchie** · 05-08-2004, 04:54 AM

Originally Posted by Laidback

Probably the best option! Wonder if I can do that with mine??

I have a generic telephone plug (4 wires) on my Leadtek 9532 GPS (it came with Destinator 2 for laptop). You can connect it to a couple of different cables. (ment for use with PPC/Palm)

I think you can solder it together, but you need aan rs-232 plug and a ps/2 plug (power) and the pin-out schematics, but it must be 5V, GND, RX, TX. (however, I think the GPS only generates NMEA data and doesn't need to read anything).

Best option is to order this cable at Powerloc Destinator. I paid about 20 euro including shipping. Then you can solder the telephone plug thingy to your USB GPS.

With the serial connector the GPS runs like a charm, fast fixes and it hibernates!

Michael

**Laidback** · 05-08-2004, 04:58 AM

Originally Posted by fly_dutchie

I have a generic telephone plug (4 wires) on my Leadtek 9532 GPS (it came with Destinator 2 for laptop). You can connect it to a couple of different cables. (ment for use with PPC/Palm)

I think you can solder it together, but you need aan rs-232 plug and a ps/2 plug (power) and the pin-out schematics, but it must be 5V, GND, RX, TX. (however, I think the GPS only generates NMEA data and doesn't need to read anything).

Best option is to order this cable at Powerloc Destinator. I paid about 20 euro including shipping. Then you can solder the telephone plug thingy to your USB GPS.

With the serial connector the GPS runs like a charm, fast fixes and it hibernates!

Michael

yeah, mine's hardwired straight into the GPS unit, but they do this model (HI-202E) in serial version as well, so could be the same inside.

**wi77iam** · 05-12-2004, 08:11 PM

Curiosity, just to give you some more props for your xport program. I just used it to connect my usb Earthmate to Routis 2004, described in this thread, through a virtual port. A direct connection would always cause a BSOD, but with the splitter, everything is fine.

Thanks.

**Curiosity** · 05-13-2004, 07:57 AM

That's hilarious. I consider xport a hack, and you're using it to fix something. Cool. I guess it's not so much of a hack after all. Xport is there without the setup program the next time you reboot, and there are programs that will load fast that you could put in Startup, like NMEAgent and GPS Info here at the bottom of the page. Well, you have to hit a button on GPS Info. I'm sure there's something small like that somewhere?

**wi77iam** · 05-13-2004, 09:31 AM

Originally Posted by Curiosity

That's hilarious. I consider xport a hack, and you're using it to fix something. Cool. I guess it's not so much of a hack after all. Xport is there without the setup program the next time you reboot, and there are programs that will load fast that you could put in Startup, like NMEAgent and GPS Info here at the bottom of the page. Well, you have to hit a button on GPS Info. I'm sure there's something small like that somewhere?

It is pretty funny. I've been tearing my hair out trying to make the Earthmate work with Routis, and the fix was simple. The people over at gpspassion and everywhere else I searched, said it couldn't be done, even the guy from Deluo.

xport may be even more useful. When you capture the data stream coming into the hardware port, can you do anything with it prior to redirecting it out the virtual ports? I'm thinking maybe I can use it to apply a correction to the lat/long from the gps, based on a geographic fix from a known location, and then rebuild the NMEA data stream and send it on its way out the virtual port. Could this work?

**Curiosity** · 05-13-2004, 11:10 AM

Yeah, that's prety funny. Tech support may even be friendly, but they never seem to solve the problem.

If other applications don't cause a BSOD, then they must be breaking some rules I'd think.

XPort takes the data and sends it on the other other ports so it could modify it, but being a kernel driver it can't do any floating point math so it would probably be hard to do want you want. Plus, it's best to send the data as fast as it gets it. I assume it's pretty time critical information for a full GPS program.

**wi77iam** · 05-13-2004, 01:30 PM

The position messages come only once a second, I believe. So the update rate wouldn't be a problem, and the calculations are simple and could be done very fast. The lack of floating point math is a problem however.

I think I'll use your idea though of capturing the port and redirecting the data, and see what I can come up with. I'm interested in doing some on-the-fly position correction to enhance the accuracy.

**Leddy** · 05-21-2004, 06:49 PM

Software works GREAT. My only "complaint" is the fact that you have to open a program to read data from gps and then another to one of the virtual com ports. Is there any software that we can make or already exists that we can put in startup and minimize to the tray so it disappears, then we can setup all the other programs we might use on the virtual ports we created?

**wi77iam** · 05-21-2004, 08:35 PM

Originally Posted by Leddy

Software works GREAT. My only "complaint" is the fact that you have to open a program to read data from gps and then another to one of the virtual com ports. Is there any software that we can make or already exists that we can put in startup and minimize to the tray so it disappears, then we can setup all the other programs we might use on the virtual ports we created?

Try this.