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NightPilot

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Posts posted by NightPilot

  1. Powering off suddenly and intermittently is usually the result of loose battery contacts. Try bending the contacts in the GPS gently so that they make more secure contact with the batteries. Sometimes some batteries are very slightly longer or shorter, and lose contact easily.

  2. Nope. Not unless the PDA is a USB host, and I don't know of any that are. With a PDA, the only choices are serial cable or bluetooth, which also uses serial protocol. USB won't work. IF your iPaq has a real serial port, and IF you can find a serial GPS with serial cable, you can connect it via cable. Otherwise, you're SOL.

  3. Volts are volts, regardless of the battery type they come from. If the GPS has enough volts to power up, it will work, no matter what type batteries are in the device. If you want to believe the battery type affects reception, go ahead, and if you want to believe in the tooth fairy, that's ok too. Both are equally likely to be true.

  4. Volts are volts, regardless of the battery type they come from. If the GPS has enough volts to power up, it will work, no matter what type batteries are in the device. If you want to believe the battery type affects reception, go ahead, and if you want to believe in the tooth fairy, that's ok too. Both are equally likely to be true.

  5. A commercial company used to do this on the Texas Geocaching Assn website, with permission. They were recovering government balloon packages, and offered a decent reward, which declined over time, to provide incentive for quick recoveries. I haven't seen anything from them for awhile. Local groups aren't run by Jeremy, and are usually much more willing to allow stuff like this.

  6. A geek is someone who can spell stereotype, and knows the difference between there, they're, and their, your and you're, its and it's, and loose and lose.

     

    Or maybe that's a nerd. Or both.

  7. I have a T3, and I love it. It has the fastest processor of any Palm, and none of the NVFS issues. Bluetooth, SD slot, and it runs Mapopolis very well. I've been using Palms for several years, and haven't even considered upgrading to anything else. If it ever dies, I'm going to be very sad. I have an M105 which is really better for caching, because it's cheap, greyscale, and easy to read outside, but I don't often bother to sync it and use it. It's so easy to put the caches on an SD card in my laptop and just slide it into my Palm and go, with no need to hotsync or anything else. They go for about $100 or so on ebay, and I've been thinking about getting one as a backup, just in case.

  8. Yes, with a USB/serial adapter, you can connect your Legend. No, the waypoints won't show up on the screen. You can use Mapsource, GSAK, EasyGPS, GPSBabel, USAPhotomaps, or several other software programs to transfer waypoints. If you use USAPhotomaps and download the waypoints from your GPS, they will show up on the maps or aerial photos. You will not see the Legend as a drive on your computer, though.

  9. No, they don't lose accuracy over time. The accuracy is affected by tree cover, reflected signals, and satellite geometry. If you have poor satellite geometry, you can get poor accuracy. Try again a few hours later and see if you get better results with different satellites in view. Also, keep it away from your body and your hands away from the antenna, since those block the signals. Newer units give better results, because they can monitor more satellites, and thus use better geometry, and not just the 3 strongest signals.

  10. Every GPS I'm aware of requires proprietary maps. You can load waypoints on almost any GPS with lots of free or cheap software, but maps are another story. You can get maps on PDAs, laptops, or some smartphones, and use the GPS to drive the software, but for this a bluetooth unit is far better. If you want a standalone handheld GPS with detailed maps, you'll have to pay the price.

  11. It works, but you need a little knowledge. Trying to jump into a high-tech hobby with no tech knowledge seldom produces good results.

     

    What you are doing with the adapter is making the USB port work like a serial port. You won't see the GPS as a drive, it's just something on a COM port. You need software to exchange data with the GPS - GSAK, EasyGPS, GPSBabel, Mapsource, etc. You have to tell the software which COM port the GPS is on, and you have to go to Device Manager to find that. There are probably a hundred threads on the forum dealing with this, and explaining how to do it. Using the search function should give you lots of reading and details on how to get the connection done.

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