VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Springboard Modules (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=10)
-- HandyGPS (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=5386)

Anyone know what happened to the HandyGPS?

I wrote their sales department and no response. The only explanation is some other delay.



------------------
Mike Vidal
Ice Owner
Corvette Enthusiast
Racecar Spelled backwards is Racecar!

My patience is wearing VERY thin with the HandyGPS....


GRrrrrr...

you know, you beat me to this one.. i have been waiting on them since they said they would have a product last november! now thet act like they have amnisia on their web site... as if they dont even plan on distributing one now... did anyone else get that impression from their latest change? i went ahead and spent the money i had set aside for one last week. That company should be put up as an example of how NOT to do things!

[This message has been edited by sastian (edited 05-08-2000).]

I am also reather upset at Navicoms total lack of response on an item that has a high degree of interest.

Amazing how companies like this stay in business.



------------------
Mike Vidal
Ice Owner
Corvette Enthusiast
Racecar Spelled backwards is Racecar!

Forget HandyGPS. This will be the GPS I'll get for my Visor!
www.geodiscovery.com

indeed, forget the handygps.

The only response I got from the sales team from marcosoft was a very rude one...

I'd rather spend more $ than being insulted by a sales rep!

I think you people are crazy to use up your expansion port for a GPS. Why not use a GPS that connects to the com port? That way you can still use the expansion slot for extra memory for saving your maps on.

quote:

---

Originally posted by bnjacobs:
Forget HandyGPS. This will be the GPS I'll get for my Visor!
www.geodiscovery.com

---

EE_Fun:

Do you know of a GPS unit that's compatible with the Visor's serial port? I've only seen units for the Palms, and they're not compatible AFAIK.

evan666:

Why? Unreliabity and unprofessionalism on the part of the company. Navicom originally slated the HandyGPS' release for last November. Then they moved the shipping date to the "end of April" -- which came and went with no units in transit. This in itself is arguably forgivable. But the company then chose to post no advance notice of the shipping delay on it's website and didn't respond to would-be customers' emails until several days into May. Because many VisorCentral members went through the same debacle with Handspring last year, they're not anxious to repeat that frustration, especially when there's a communicative, customer-friendly alternative.

Gameboy70,

Lets think about it some more. The GPS connects to the Pilot using serial (three pins GND, TxD, RxD). We have all three pins on the visor, but you need to convert the visors serial from TTL to RS232. Now what does this mean?

TTL has logic 0 that is 0v and logic 1 that is 5v. Now RS232 has logic 0 ranging from -3v to -13v and logic 1 ranging from 3v to 13v. Do you see the difference?

In conclusion (in theory) if you have a device that is connected to the Pilot and you want it to work on the Visor then all that is need is the serial cable from my webpage at http://get.to/engineer. The software (PalmOS) works the same in both the visor and pilot, or that is so far my experience, so just load the software to your visor and connect the GPS.

But one more thing, the Pilot has two more pins for serial communication that allows the serial to be greater that 9600kbs (the visors max, because the lack of the pins DTR, CTS, and RTS). The good thing is that the GPS don�t use these pins, all they use is the three pins GND, TxD, RxD at 9600kbs.

I hope this helps, I have yet to try it. I can try it on an Eagle Explorer GPS but I haven�t found a program that is compatible with it. Maybe I will just have to write my own software to test it? Good luck anyway and have fun!

EE_Fun

Info on this subject is at: http://discussion.visorcentral.com/...TML/000192.html

[This message has been edited by EE_Fun (edited 05-14-2000).]

[This message has been edited by EE_Fun (edited 05-14-2000).]

In response to why tie up the slot with GPS when you could use it for memory....

The GeoDiscovery springboard will have MMC slots for all the memory you will need. And if it is like the MiniJam specs, you might be able to use the extra space for your other Visor data... and swap MMC cards between different functional modules. I think a pure memory springboard may turn out to be the true waste of the slot!