modifying navman sleeve

RootBreaker · 12-21-2006, 12:18 AM

Ok so let me first fill yall in...
i have been away as this year was bad..
had to be rushed into surgery for a abses behind my tonsill.. doc said 5cc is a severe case and I had 18.5cc!!!!! he said 2 more days and my throat would have closed all the way (so I like waiting before i goto the docs)
then 2 weeks later my wife had a baby.. our second son... then 2 weeks later I had surgery.. tonsills out, punchin bag and soft pallet (meat around punchin bag) that surgery put me out for 6 weeks... then I threw my back out.. that has been 5 weeks....

dagon now I am in good shape....

so anyway... I posted on mobilitysite.com but seems they dont mod things only buy them... sorry if that is taken rude but shouldnt be...

I got this deal..
so I was told there was a computer recycling place near work.. so I went and checked it out... well it sucked...

but there was a box trailer where the box was on the ground..... so they had crap computers missing all kinds of stuff.. and other crappy computer stuff... well this white bag with twine handles cought my eye...

well I looked and lowe and behold... tons of compaq ipaq power cords...
so I ask them how much.. the lady comes over and says..well what is it worth... I route through it...

3 x desktop cradles
3 x ac adapters for cradles
1 x belkin car/usb charger
1 x car charger
1 x Navman gps jacket (YAY)
1 x iPaq 3955 ipaq with 256mb SD card

so I tell her I can use the cables and since the pda is there.... it doesnt work as it wouldnt power on...

so I bought it...
put in my car and started charging the unit up...
after a while I powered it on...

VIOLA!!!!!!!!
WORKS!!!!!!!

oh yeah... $10 was my score

now to the techy part of my long dagon post...

Ok so I have the old Navman Sleeve and love it... however the connection is ok but does drop every now and then. This weekend going to Dave and Busters in Philadelphia it disconnected while in the city... so I just pulled out our trusty maps.google.com printout that I brought just in case....

well here is my question..

Does anyone know how I can open this sleeve up and add an external antennea like in the new navman sleeves? Has anyone done this? if so where is there a walkthrough...

As a test today I did this..
car in garage has 0 of 11 satellites
car driving to work had 3-6 of 11 satellites (clear day so this was good)

my other gps solution is the older cf globalsat with external globalsat at-65 antennea
car in garage has 8 of 11 satellites
car driving to work had 8-10 satellites

my globalsat wasnt worth a darn before I bought the external antennea for it but now is solid but slow....

so the trusty old cf card has better reception but differences...

Globalsat 307 CF Card............................Navman Sleeve
4800 baud............................................56 ,700 baud
CF in dual sleeve jacket (bulky)................It is its own sleeve and not so thick
Internal Extended Battery.........................No internal battery

so they both have their plus and minuses but I may just have to buy a new navman sleeve to get the external antennea ability.....

bLindmOnkey · 12-21-2006, 02:45 AM

I had the old navman 3420 sleeve for my ipaq 3950 and hated it. It took 20 minutes(if i was lucky) to acquire a crappy signal on a clear day. I tried several fixes for this (first putting aluminum foil between the ipaq and the sleeve which didn't really help). I also looked for a mod to install an external antenna but people reccomended using a re-radiating antenna (which is an external antenna attatched to a transmitter which reradiates the GPS signal through a wire which you loop around the acual GPS receiver you have (the navman) This worked great but came with too many wires and eventually broke. I believe the navman 3450 sleeve has an external antenna but people said it didn't acually improve the signal all that much.

After giving up for two years I bought a Magellen Meridian portable gps for other reasons which has a serial port connection. This past summer I bought a serial/car charger adapter for my ipaq and successfully used my portable gps with my Ipaq using TomTom5. This was a godsend. Since I was using an independent GPS i never had a problem acquiring a GPS signal and the TomTom software is just phenomenal.

Oh and I also got a suction mount for both the GPS unit and the Ipaq although the mount for the ipaq is acually an extended arm with a sleeve that fits over the navman sleeve(i still use the navman to put maps on its CF card). Once mounted and plugged in this setup worked like a charm.

I'd say ditch the navman and go with another solution. You could get the serial adapter, TomTom software, two mounts, a GPS unit and the necessary cables. However, for the price of all this I'd reccomend getting a TomTom standalone unit. But if you already have half the stuff lying around like I did it's a worthy option if you don't mind setting it all up. Cheers.
-Greg

RootBreaker · 12-21-2006, 06:00 AM

interesting.... I love the thing.. I believe it works just as good (almost) as my other one.. I just dont like how thick my dual sleeve jacket, cf gps and external antenna are.... it is sooo bulky...... well I guess ill just keep on using it.. I did notice that it worked better mounted on my windshield.. I had the correct mount and it worked nice but seemed to have misplaced it....