GPS Navigation on my PDAphone

I have been fascinated by this GPS thing for quite some time. I like to explore things that could be done on my PDA & find ways to utilise its functions. At the same time I also like to travel & found that the maps from books & internet are inadequate to show me the way. Then I stumbled on this GPS thing, i forgot from where, & started to search for GPS maps of malaysia. To my surprise, there is this group of enthusiasts making their own GPS map of malaysia & singapore called malsing maps. You can check them out at www.malsingmaps.com/forums/. I learned so many things aboug GPS through their forum & am still learning.

I just want to share what I do on my phone to make GPSing work. I prefer & use Windows Mobile phone hence I can't tell much about symbian phones, except that GPSing also works on symbian.

GPS basic

GPS stands for Global Positioning System. You can google it for more info. We have many satellites around the earth courtesy of the US army, which can pinpoint your position, with the GPS receiver. If you remember your geography, the earth has virtual horizontal (latitude) & vertical (longitude) lines which tell positions on earth with respect to another. as a reference, the equator is the horizontal line with 'zero" latitude while the vertical line crossing Greenwich in England is the "zero" longitude line (for lack of better words). The GPS location will tell you how far North are you from the Equator & how far East are you from the Greenwich line. Hence, you'll see something like N02...E101... coordinate which is somewhere in West Malaysia

The Ingredients

First, you gotta have a GPS receiver (GPSr for short). previously I used an external GPSr (holux 236B) which I connect via bluetooth to my PDA. But now since I have a PDAphone with built in reciever (HTC P3300) , I don't use the external one anymore.

Second, get your GPS navigation program. I use Garmin Que because it's free, small size, quite easy to set up & most importantly, can take the free map from malsing. I also use mapking 2007. this is another program which can use malsing map. For Garmin Que to work on my phone, I also use another program called gpsgate. You see, Garmin Que is supposed to work with garmin GPS receiver, the 10X. So, since I don't have that, I need gpsgate to make the que sees my internal gps receiver as garmin's. Alternatively, you can use program called gpsproxy.

Third, the map. what is a gps navigation program without the map, right? so this is where malsing come into play. without them, we won't get so many people in malaysia exposed to GPS. Through their effort, we have such a great, detailed map for the whole of Malaysia & Singapore, for free. I have also contributed in a very small way to make the map & forum better, by answering newbies' questions, informing new POIs (that's point of interest) etc. So, you can download the map from their website, after becoming a member. by the way, there is also a group (spinned off from malsing for some reason) which starts another website for the free map at www.malfreemaps.com. So you can also get the map from there.

The Set up

Now, install garmin que to your phone. It'd be much better to install it on your memory card, since most PDAphones have tiny space in the main memory, but this applies to most programs as well. you'll see garmin folder on the memory card (\storage card\garmin). but in my case i also see another garmin folder on the main memory. just ignore it.

Put the map file (gmapsupp.img) that you downloaded from the map providers (malsing etc) to the garmin folder on your memory card.

If you run garmin que without gps set up, you won't get to see the map straight away. This is because, as default, it will show the location somewhere in USA, probably where garmin's HQ is located. TO see the map, you gotta locate Malaysia by scrolling the map away. Malaysia is just above the equator which is zero in latitude, so it won't be so hard to find it.

In order for garmin que to see the gpsr other than garmin 10X, you'll need to install gpsgate or gpsproxy. Previously I used the free gpsproxy on my old PDA but somehow I couldn't make it work on my new phone. Hence, I switched to gpsgate which is better (but not free) & easier to set up. Basically, you gotta set the input by letting the program detect your gpsr. Then for the output, select "virtual com port (garmin emulator)".

Back to garmin que, you gotta set that the gps device communication port to "franson...". This can be found under menu -> system setup -> Interface tab. If you are unlucky, you can't even find interface tab, but there is a way around it .

You should be able to get a gps fix , after sometimes depending on the strength of the signal, & you should see the malaysian map & ready to navigate!

Happy GPSing!