liquid_smoke

Ok, i jumped on the gps boat about 2 weeks ago. I picked up the Delorme Earthmate USB GPS reciever that came with Street Atlas 2005. Since this is the first gps software ive ever used i guess its good but still left me wanting more. So today i picked up MS Streets&Trips 2005 (only30bucks so i said what the hell).

PROBLEM:

I cant seem to get my earthmate USB GPS to work with MS S&T
Ive installed the usb to serial emulation drivers from the CD, even downloaded them from the site just to make sure i had the latest version of the drivers.
MS keeps saying that it sees my gps device but the data coming from it is not NMEA compliant.
This is the receiver I have http://www.delorme.com/earthmate/specifications.asp
and right on the site it says the device IS NMEA complient

How do i get these two to work together?
Or did i just buy a 30 coaster

I also search but still cant get it to work.

Thanks

MP3Car.com

 

liquid_smoke

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?

wi77iam

Get the driver with the latest date. That usbmate2 might be the one. After install, look in your Device Manager to see if the Earthmate appears on a comm port.

The Earthmate is definitely NMEA compliant - mine works with SA, iGuidance, Routis, Mappoint, etc. and I can read the data stream with Hyperterminal.

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liquid_smoke

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

MatrixPC

This you look into this thread yet?
http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/show...=USBEMATE1.exe

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liquid_smoke

yup

liquid_smoke

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.

liquid_smoke

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

DaRacerz

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.

bbrother

MS streets and trips is not meant to be a navigation program and it doesnt do a very good job for this. I am very happy with iguidiance, it works great and fucntions very close to my friends navagation system ( i think he has a pioneer or kenwood system).

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Jailer

Asked the same question a while back. Best I could come up with is that it's possible to write a script for it but alas scripting ain't my thing. I may look at some of the other GPS software since I'm not thrilled with either MS S&T or Delorme SA

liquid_smoke

@ DaRacerz
Thanks for the confirmation that this is basicly the way it works, so i can stop the trouble shooting. Wish it were a switch on the gps device to choose what format you want it to spit out. Would be a lot easier.

@bbrother
unfortunately im finding this out after buying the soft, really wish there were trials for this stuff. Wouldnt be too hard to do either.

@Jailer
I know some people that know some people that know people No seriously, i know a bunch of programers that could help me out with scripting it to start automaticly, but dosent seem like its even worth it at this point.

I think im going to trade in both the Delorme and MS to get hopefully 2 copies of Copilot 8 for 100 bucks each. Probably sell the other copy here for someone who dosent have soft to trade in for the discount.

harrisonpowers

The new S&T has a special version for use with a gps. I have yet to try it out but it looks pretty neat.

The software for that version is in the package that includes a usb gps.

Bugbyte

I've got the new version of S&T that works with GPS. It sees my generic NMEA device just fine but all of the same complaints still apply - the washed out colors, have to tell it to track all the time, etc.

I've also got Delorme Street Atlas 2005 and it's a better product. I agree that the bread crumb trail it leaves is kind of lame, they're huge presumably so it doesn't look like you're tracking off the road or something.

Still, it's worked better for me than Streets and Trips.

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GruvThang

Just so you know, the Earthmate works fine with Routis!

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