Thread: GPS on N900 without connecting to Internet?
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myk is offline myk
2010-04-26 , 02:03
Posts: 293 | Thanked: 76 times | Joined on Jan 2008 @ Fremantle, W. Australia
#23
Originally Posted by abill_uk View Post
the prgramme itself does not drive the gps device in the N900
I think you will find that is no different for any other program. Even in a dedicated car GPS-navigator running WinCE, the program just sees the built-in GPS as a generic device on a serial port talking a standard protocol. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMEA_0183 .
The N900 has an API which allows many programs to share the GPS, be it internal or external bluetooth.

the reason GPSjinnie works so well is because the writer obviously had the spec or enough info to write the app to drive the gps chip properly in the N900.
I find that very hard to believe. Did you just make that up, or do you have some evidence to cite?

There are two problems as I understand it:
1) The N900's GPS can be very slow (30 mins or more even) to get a lock without a data connection. This will affect all mapping software in the N900.
2) The Nokia/Ovi maps program in the N900 gives up waiting after a short time, and stops using the GPS.

All it needs to be better than Ovi maps is not give up after a couple of minutes, and keep waiting.

Your advice to get an external bluetooth gps ... as long as it is configurable to the bluetooth gps device directly within its software from within the os of the N900.
Not sure I follow you. With an external GPS, you just wait for the external device to get a lock by itself. There is no fine control. The locating brains is all in the gps box.