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Help External GPS

Q

Qwasi

Lurker
Hi there,

I'm a cross border employee and would like to use navigation my Galaxy i7500 whilst roaming and minimize cost at the same time. I have AndNav2 set up with maps of western Europe cached on the SD-card. Since A-GPS still generates data traffic (and having disabled this option whilst roaming), no position data is available. I still have an external bluetooth GPS receiver and paired it with my Galaxy. How do I get my Galaxy to use the external GPS source for apps like AndNav2 or Google Maps for that matter. Any help is highly appreciated.

Bets regards,

Qwasi.
 
"Since A-GPS still generates data traffic"

Does it? I thought the A- bit used triangulation from the mobile masts, I wasn't aware of any reliance on data.

In any case, I'm fairly sure that regular GPS should work just fine irrespective of your data settings - I'm almost certain I've done it.

(could be wrong, etc)
 
Dear Cougar,

Don't whether you're planning a trip abroad any time soon. But you should try disabling the 'data roaming' option in the mobile network settings. I'm pretty sure the positioning on your phone will be poor, non-existant. See also this article: GPS won't work unless Data Roaming is enabled.. I experience it every day and there are more related articles. A-GPS uses data to generate a connection more quickly than through original (Sirfstar III) GPS. Less time is used setting up an connection and in highly urbanized areas reception isn't impaired. Triangulation is an alternative to GPS positioning, is less accurate and generates even more data traffic.

My problem is how do I get Android to use my external bluetooth GPS receiver for positioning purposes? Any help is appreciated.
 
Well, that's me told.

Anyway, I wasn't sure so I've just been and done what I should've done in the first place, and looked it up.

With reference to Assisted GPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia it'd seem that the bit I didn't realise was this: "A typical A-GPS-enabled receiver will use a data connection (Internet or other) to contact the assistance server for A-GPS information. Some A-GPS devices cannot fall back to standard GPS, needing cell tower or internet signal as these A-GPS devices won't function with only GPS satellite signal."

The reason I was essentially asking "are you sure" wasn't to be awkward; my understanding is that an external GPS requires serial port support over Bluetooth, and to the best of my knowledge this isn't supported under Android 1.5 / 1.6. I know there's been big changes to Bluetooth in Android 2.0 so this may have been fixed now, but that's not much use to us Galaxy owners.

So I think the short and snappy answer is "you can't." It might be worth checking to see if the GPS's data requirements actually count against you on your data plan or if it's 'special' somehow I suppose, though you've then got to take into consideration stopping every other app using the connection.

All things considered, I think in your position I'd go and buy a TomTom.
 
Cheers! Thanks Cougar.

I'll look up the Bluetooth support under 1.6

I already wondered why I could pair devices but wasn't connected.
 
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