Thread: earthmate usb gps with MS Streets&Trips?

still doing some searching everywhere, it seems that there are multiple versions of the usb driver, not sure which one is the one that will work. THe latest version on the delorme site is usbmate2.exe (something like that). Is this the version i should be using?

the driver is installed correctly, that was my first place to look to make sure it was in right. Ive had similar problems with bluetooth devices not being installed correctly because of windows forceing its own drivers. I wish i had something else to test this with, all i have is SA and S&T and the test utillity that comes with the earthmate, none of which will work except the SA. Ill keep trying though. Im glad that others have gotten it to work, so ill just keep hacking at it.

Thanks

yup

OK, I seem to have it working now.

Not sure what the hell the problem was, i didnt do anything different than what i was already doing before i even posted. I just kept installing and uninstalling the driver, connecting hyperterminal, and trying to get MS S&T to work. Then BOOM it started working.

Anyway, does anyone know of a way to make it auto track my position, it sucks that you have to tell it to do it everytime you start the program. Also, is there anyway to add more map views (different colors). Ive gotten really fond of the high contrast view in Street Atlas, its easy to see everything in the day and night. The MS maps dont have enough contrast and look washed out. They are more accurate though than the Street Atlat maps (it seems) and dont have that damn bread crumb thing and just use a line. Damn car icon is way too small.

One of the things i notice between these PC gps applications and OEM nav software, is that the OEM nav stuff has way better maps and way easier to see and understand where you are. Are there any PC apps that come close to this. I dont think im close to being happy with either Delorme or MS products.

Although, delorme did save me a boat load of time the other day. There was major traffic on 290 in chicago and i wanted to bypass all this and take local roads. Local roads which i dont know from a hole in the ground, and it helped me avoid the traffic and even put me back on track when i made several wrong turns. Turned a 45min stop and go trip to 15min.

Well it seems that it dosent work 100% all the time. Im not quite sure why but MS Streets will still say the data coming from the GPS is not NMEA. Is it possible that Street Atlas is changing the data output of the GPS device when it loads. When MS says its not NMEA data, i connect the hyperterminal and the data is a bunch of non recognizeable characters. If i reboot, and dont connect anything to the gps com port and load hyperterminal the data looks fine.

I also cant seem to get the XPORT app to work either, it keeps crashing and hanging or giving errors that the imput com port is wrong or something. Or it dosent even show the com port that my gps is on as available (missing from list of ports).

any ideas?

Hopefully i can get some better GPS software that works better and more supported in the frontends like destinator or routis or whatever.

Thanks

Well, with the Earthmate driver installed for 3rd Party usage, there are quirks. One being that which you described. First, you must make sure the 3rd Party Driver is Installed via the Device Manager, and not the installed software Delorme provided which is buggy.

Beyond that... if you start by using a NMEA Navigation software such as Ms S&T, the Earthmate will send NMEA signals. The moment you start up any DeLorme Software, it will trigger the Earthmate into the binary Rockwell Signal and will no longer send any NMEA signal. From this point on, the only way (that I know of) to get it to send NMEA signal again, is to restart the computer or to unplug and replug the Earthmate to get it to reset itself.