Sirfstar III, what's the point???

Dougw133 · 11-19-2008, 06:12 PM

I have a Holux 213U "Sirfstar III" receiver. In the car it has been loosing it's signal frequently and the only way to get it up and running is to open it in Sirf Protocol in SirfDemo. Now that has stopped working. I have tried factory resests etc..I have unplugged it ans shorted out it's battery in the past and that got it running well. This time nothing worked. I pulled it from the car, plugged it into my laptop, opened it in Sirfdemo and it grabbed 12 sats! ?

My point is, what is the point of Sirfstar tech if all programs use NMEA protocol. I use Iguidance 4. I have to switch it from Sirf after allocating sats to NMEA at 4800, 9600, or 38400 baud and it works for iguidance or any other program. So if these programs only use NMEA whats the point of Sirfstar?

galvitron · 11-19-2008, 10:04 PM

Sirfstar is a chipset inside the receiver. NMEA is a data format for sending the data from the GPS receiver to whatever is using it. My BU-353 is sirfstarIII and outputs NMEA.

I know this doesn't answer your question. I just wanted to clarify.

There may be a way to permanently set your receiver to output NMEA format strings.

Dougw133 · 11-19-2008, 11:42 PM

Yeah i have it set to output nmea, I understand that Sirfstar is the chipset, I guess I just figure whats the point of it in USB puck etc..I know higher end more multi logging GPS uses Sirf Technology to transmit serial data etc...

galvitron · 11-20-2008, 12:28 AM

The sirfII chipset has better capabilities than others (except for really high end). Actually, sirfstarIII has better ability to get data from satellites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SiRFstar_III

If you have to put a cheap GPS device in a puck, why not put the most capable?

Woofnstuff · 11-20-2008, 03:36 AM

i have the same one and it works sweet, ive managed to get 4 or 5 sats inside car park buildings before.

i have found mine dosnt like being in a roasting hot car sitting in direct sun.
but that was easily fixed

Marvin Hlavac · 11-20-2008, 06:14 PM

Dougw133, is it possible your unit is faulty? A new BU-353 is only about $35 these days. Why not order it, to see if a new unit works better?

Dougw133 · 11-22-2008, 02:47 PM

I was thinking of doing just that. I think something happens upon resume. When coming out of resume the thing just doesn't get any satellites to lock. If i reboot and reset the GPS mouse I'll get 12 sats until my next hibernate.

Marvin Hlavac · 11-22-2008, 04:11 PM

...then you don't have a bad receiver, you just have a hibernate issue...

Dougw133 · 11-22-2008, 05:21 PM

I don't understand what could be happening though. Something has to be missing between my carpc and my laptop. Even after hibernate, even if I restart etc...I cannot get it to connect again. IF I take to the laptop it fires right up. Move it back to the carpc and it works until the next restart/hibernate. When I can't get it to connect on the Carpc it see's the sats (blue strings data in sirfdemo) but doesn't connect.

Dougw133 · 11-22-2008, 05:37 PM

What services should be running that the GPS would use? Obviously my CARPC is somewhat of s tripped version of Xp as opposed to full operating on my laptop. I want to make sure I didn't disable something the GPS needs. Still wouldn't make sense to me why it would work at all on the Carpc if that were the case though.

Dougw133 · 11-22-2008, 09:53 PM

Never mind. Using Devcon has seemed to solved this for now...

Aze · 11-23-2008, 04:59 AM

Are you using a Car-PC with a VIA chipset?

Dougw133 · 11-23-2008, 02:54 PM

Yes I am, Jetway C7 via chipset..

Dougw133 · 11-23-2008, 09:28 PM

And you ask this because.......?

Aze · 11-24-2008, 05:06 PM

OK. VIA chipsets has some problems with varies USB devices when disconnecting before hibernate/shutdown.

You can actually solve the problem by hardware, instead of running software aps...
If you look at the motherboard you will find a jumper called J1 and a jumber called J3. These jumbers sets whether the USB port should allow a device to wake up the system, which means that they will keep the USB ports powered, instead of making a "hard-cut" of the power.
The difference is that the USB ports will be powered as soon as the system is turned on, instead of having an application "calling it" before use. This will make the GPS turn on immediately, so it is ready when your GPS software trying to calls it.

The jumpers are set to "disable" by default. Try to change this to "enabled" by moving jumper to pin2-3....

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