Earthmate Serial Not Working

mattdisaster · 01-02-2005, 01:43 PM

Hey all-
I searched the forum but couldnt really find anything that pertained to my problem. I recently purchased an earthmate serial gps off of ebay, it came with the delorme street atlas 7.0 software and map and go or something. I hooked up the gps to my carpc(m900, 256 mb ram, 2.5" 1.3 gig hd, slime line cdrom, 60w morex psu, lilliput touchscreen, usb keyboard). I cant seem to get the gps working with Ninjamokeys destinator program(my uncle has destinator for his laptop/gps and I took the maps for my area) I cant seem to find the gps or the earthmate, and when I look at my system resources it shows a device found but not installed. Any ideas on howto get it working? I havent installed the street atlas software since it takes up more hd space then I can supply for it. I have installed it on my mothers computer though and it finds the gps fine. Hrrrmmmm thanks in advance for all the help!

-matt

Curiosity · 01-02-2005, 04:06 PM

What COM port is it connected to and have you tried Hyper Terminal on that port to see if it's dumping data?

mattdisaster · 01-02-2005, 04:17 PM

I actually just got done installing the delorme street atlas software that came with it, and it was able to initualize the gps and actually get some locks and work. So I guess now I should rename the thread "How to get earthmate working with ninjamonkeys frontend without streetatlas crap there"

But to specificly answer your question, no I havent treid that, but with the results of the installation and test software I think it's pretty clear it works. grrr. thanks for the help though, any other ideas?

-matt

edit: I didnt really answer your question, sorry, its hooked up to the serial port and I had the software on auto detect, both programs to be exact, and no I havent tried hyperterm yet, I have no idea howto.

0l33l · 01-02-2005, 04:26 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by mattdisaster

I actually just got done installing the delorme street atlas software that came with it, and it was able to initualize the gps and actually get some locks and work. So I guess now I should rename the thread "How to get earthmate working with ninjamonkeys frontend without streetatlas crap there"

But to specificly answer your question, no I havent treid that, but with the results of the installation and test software I think it's pretty clear it works. grrr. thanks for the help though, any other ideas?

-matt

edit: I didnt really answer your question, sorry, its hooked up to the serial port and I had the software on auto detect, both programs to be exact, and no I havent tried hyperterm yet, I have no idea howto.

If you got it working with delorme's software then you installed the drivers wrong. There are two settings when installing the drivers, the one u chose didn't install the USB->Serial driver needed for D3.

jcdillin · 01-02-2005, 04:39 PM

but if it's a serial GPS you shouldnt install any drivers at all, actually in order to get it working you might have to disable the Microsoft Ball mouse under device manager.

mattdisaster · 01-02-2005, 05:01 PM

0l33l-
I'm not using a serial to usb connector, its connected via the serial port on my motherboard, sorry for the lack of description.

jcdillin-
I'll have to check that out in a few minutes, I'm gonna go work on it again after dinner.

Thanks alot you guys for the help and interest in my problem, you never fail to let me down! I just hope I can get this to work, the delorme site doesnt really have any help on there aside for people using the usb version and the serial to usb adapter. Well anything other then, "install our software and be done with it" type of stuff. Wish me luck, thanks so much, just a thought what would I need to install for this to work with destinator? Maybe I should trying to install that from my uncle and see what happens. hmm

-matt

jcdillin · 01-02-2005, 05:22 PM

if that unit is serial you shouldnt have to install anything, just set either autodetect with destinator or set it to whatever com port you have the GPS connected to 4800Bps and NEMA

BoraXP · 01-02-2005, 05:53 PM

you might have to have something 'initializing' it like the usb version

try gps gate
go for the beta version

http://franson.biz/gpsgate/

mattdisaster · 01-04-2005, 04:54 PM

Update:

Well I finally tried as much as I could to get it working with NinjaMonkeys Destinator 3 frontend and have yet gotten it to find the gps. So heres what I've done:

I've installed Delorme Street Atlas 7.0 and it finds the gps hooked via the only serial port on my via m-900 motherboard. It finds it via autodetect though, and I havent been able to find out what its settings actually are.
I've installed the frontend and copied over the maps from my uncles install of Destinator.
I've tried to have the destinator 3 frontend find the gps and it cant seem to locate it.
I tried the gps gate program mentioned above in the thread and couldnt get it to find the gps ither.
And I dont have hyperterm installed on my carpc system since I didnt install it with nlite.
Still in the device manager theres a device listed as "unknown device" that goes away when the gps is removed. And from what I can tell there arent any drivers for the gps unless its a usb one, which it isnt.

Any one got any ideas? I'm stumped and really dun wanna get stuck using Street Atlas. Thanks so much guys for all the help so far. I'm totally stumped now.

-matt

Curiosity · 01-04-2005, 10:42 PM

It sounds to me like that unknown device is screwing things up. What part of device manager is it listed under? Double-click on it. What does it show for drivers, if there are any or under Details does it show anything for instance ID or hardware ID? That's a very odd thing. I would think it's safe to uninstall or at least disable.

Chairboy · 01-05-2005, 12:36 AM

Aaaargh! Reams of bad information abound on this thread!

Fact: The SERIAL Earthmate does not support NMEA. This consumer GPS is essentially unique in this unfortunate aspect.

Fact: Serial Earthmate uses something called the Rockwell Binary Protocol to communicate with GPS programs.

Fact: Very few programs communicate with this.

There are no RBP->NMEA converters that I know of, last time I checked, there was a serial device that would do the conversion, but it cost more then a good USB GPS.

Suggestion, unless you're hip to only using Street Atlas, consider getting another GPS.

How do I know all this? I have a serial Earthmate sitting in my garage.

0l33l · 01-05-2005, 01:02 AM

http://www.hamhud.net/ka9mva/earthmate.htm

mattdisaster · 01-05-2005, 10:50 AM

Chairboy:
Thanks so much for clearing this up, maybe someone should make a sticky in here "Everything you wanted to know about gps's" So poeple know about what brands do what and common questions. I know I had no idea about the earthmate other then, well that it was just a great gps.

0l33l:
Thanks for the link, I read it and it looks like the guy might be onto something, though he hasn't finished it. In which case leaves me back to square 1 with a gps I can use unless I use their ****ty apps. But I could be wrong I just woke up I'll re-read it again to make sure. Thanks alot guys for all the help!

-matt

0l33l · 01-05-2005, 11:00 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by mattdisaster

0l33l:
Thanks for the link, I read it and it looks like the guy might be onto something, though he hasn't finished it. In which case leaves me back to square 1 with a gps I can use unless I use their ****ty apps. But I could be wrong I just woke up I'll re-read it again to make sure. Thanks alot guys for all the help!

-matt

Some guy did succeed in converting his, just search google. That was one of the first links I found

mattdisaster · 01-05-2005, 11:05 AM

Awesome! I'l search it now, but I did find this on the top of the page, a sentence translator that turns the earthmate to nmea.
http://www.byonics.com/gst-1/
Thanks again for all the help!

-matt

edit: I just searched and I think we were talking about the same site, haha. Thanks again!

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