2scouts Posted June 4, 2003 Share Posted June 4, 2003 I would like to connect the Etrex Vista to a compact notebook computer which has no serial ports but has a couple USB ports. If I use a Serial to USB converter, will this unit interface ok? I'm hoping to do some in-car navigation, on the cheap. Quote Link to comment
+shegget Posted June 4, 2003 Share Posted June 4, 2003 Yep, should work just fine. That's what I do with my Fujitsu Lifebook P-2040 that doesn't have any serial ports. I use a Belkin F5U109 USB->Serial adapter, but as long as the adapter has drivers for your operating system, you should be fine. [edit] You can search the forums here and should find several threads with information on the USB->Serial adapters as well. sean Quote Link to comment
+smithdw Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Some USB/Serial adapters have problems with certain serial devices. Most of the posts I have read said to be sure that it has an external power supply for the adapter. Belkin is usually a good brand, but I'd buy it at a store that has a good return policy in case it doesn't work with your particular laptop/GPS or even be able to try it out at the store before buying it, if possible. "The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec/sec." -Marcus Dolengo Quote Link to comment
+jollybgood Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 Everybody seems to have their favorte brand of adapter. I'm a huge fan of the Iogear. it's the only brand I've found that works consistently with my Mac running VPC. I use a GPSV but I also had good luck with other garmin units (etrex and vists) Jolly R. Blackburn http://kenzerco.com Quote Link to comment
2scouts Posted June 5, 2003 Author Share Posted June 5, 2003 Shegget, I'm using the same Fujitsu Lifebook. Does your adapter require a power supply. I'm hoping to avoid that, since that would reduce the whole portability thing. I wouldn't take one with me for the lifebook either, as I can get about 7-8 hours continuous use off the battery with it. Thanks Lou Quote Link to comment
+tirediron Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 I am using a Toshiba 1900 with WinXP Home Edition and an Garmin eTrex Legend. I bought this converter, and so far it has worked perfectly. Inexpensive too. Quote Link to comment
+dwiener Posted June 5, 2003 Share Posted June 5, 2003 I had the same problem when I bought my HP laptop. No serial port. I picked up a cheap adapter at buy.com (around $20) and it works great. The only problem I've found is that the com port changes depending on which of the 3 usb ports I hook into. Quote Link to comment
+Cactusjeep Posted June 7, 2003 Share Posted June 7, 2003 I also use a Belkin F5U109 USB->Serial adapter, no external power suply. Works great with garmin V, and III Plus. Just my 2 cents. Quote Link to comment
+arrowroot Posted June 7, 2003 Share Posted June 7, 2003 Mine's a Belkin FSU509, and it's been troublesome. No problem at low baud rates or small downloads like a bunch o' waypoints, but downloading maps at high speeds tends to lock up at one end or the other -- I don't know where. I am Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt. I have many names, you know Quote Link to comment
+catcher24 Posted June 7, 2003 Share Posted June 7, 2003 Did anybody ever use one of these adapters with a Magellan? I have considered getting one for use with my Meridian, and wondered if it would work OK. Thanks for any info. Catcher24 "You see, you spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." Jim Bouton Quote Link to comment
+crashmore Posted June 8, 2003 Share Posted June 8, 2003 I use a serial to usb cable I bought at radio shack. I'm using it to connect my Etrex Legend to my toshiba pokcte pc. The cable ran me about 40 bux. It's not cheap but it works great and should work with any gps that has a serial interface. I'd recomend it. http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&category%5Fname=CTLG%5F003%5F001%5F011%5F000&product%5Fid=26%2D183 ------------------------------------- Hope is the destination that we seek. Love is the road that leads to hope. Courage is the motor that drives us. We travel out of darkness into faith. -=The Book Of Counted Sorrows=- Quote Link to comment
Nascat Posted June 8, 2003 Share Posted June 8, 2003 crashmore thanks for that Radio Shack Link, the item is'nt available Online, but with a print out of the page I have the part number. PS: "Book of Counted Sorrows" you wouldn't by chance be a Dean Koontz Fan? I'm reading "By the light of the Moon" right now. "Deep in the Heart of Jersey" Quote Link to comment
+Woodbutcher68 Posted June 8, 2003 Share Posted June 8, 2003 Catcher24: Magellan has adapter cables available on line. You could e-mail them and ask about adapters too. I'd try the latter first. I bought the same canvas case they charge 14.99 for my GPS315 at Gander mountain for 8.99. No shipping charges either! Quote Link to comment
+woodsters Posted June 8, 2003 Share Posted June 8, 2003 Ok, here's a question. Why the heck aren't Garmin and Magellan making the connections USB rather than the old serials? Try to go and buy something now for your computer and good luck on finding it by serial port and not USB. You would think they would at least offer a variance. Brian Wood Woodsters Outdoors http://www.woodsters.com Quote Link to comment
+shegget Posted June 8, 2003 Share Posted June 8, 2003 quote:Originally posted by 2scouts:Shegget, I'm using the same Fujitsu Lifebook. Does your adapter require a power supply. I'm hoping to avoid that, since that would reduce the whole portability thing. I wouldn't take one with me for the lifebook either, as I can get about 7-8 hours continuous use off the battery with it. Thanks Lou Nope, my belkin adapter works just fine feeding off the P which is running XP/FreeBSD (and makes for a nice setup when driving!) . For clarification, I have a GPSMAP 76S, but it should work just fine with an eTrex. As a side note, you may be able to pick up an F5U109 cheap if you hunt around... they're older units and I picked mine up at the local Microcenter for around 20 bucks because it was on a "returns" table. Quote Link to comment
+catcher24 Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 Woodbutcher: Thanks for the info about the adapter. I am also interested in getting a case, so the info about Gander Mountain is appreciated, too! Catcher24 "You see, you spend a good deal of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time." Jim Bouton Quote Link to comment
+RobAGD Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 Well I have another thumbs up for the Belkin F5U109. Worked fine with the laptop (HP ze5300) and my Garmin GPS V. As with anything your mileage my vary. As to the USB thing. I think its teh standards that govern the interface for GPSs that have to use serial. While USB is serial its not quite the same as a real serial interface. Thats kind of the problem. Now that serial is really going the way of the dodo they are going to have to start tweaking the interface to play nice with USB. At least thats my understanding of how it all works. -Robert Quote Link to comment
Duck Chay Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 Considering the amount of information being transferred, consider even upgrading your PCI to a USB 2, instead of the USB 1 or 1.1. Also, think about getting a USB hub. Honestly, as someone had mentioned before, people will be brand devoted, but you can get some great bargains on the generic side as well. Check out pricegrabber.com (have to do a search for it - direct link not available) for some great deals. The Duck Quote Link to comment
+shegget Posted June 9, 2003 Share Posted June 9, 2003 The speed of data transferred won't increase with a USB2 card. The data transfer is slowed by the max speed of a serial port, which is still around 115,200 - well below the max throughput of a USB 1 channel, so you won't gain anything by going to USB 2. Quote Link to comment
Duck Chay Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 quote:Originally posted by shegget:The data transfer is slowed by the max speed of a serial port, which is still around 115,200 - That blows! What's the point of the restriction? Donno makano sensa. The Duck Quote Link to comment
+RobAGD Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 The restriction is teh GPS that is a serial device Just because you hook your straw to a fire hydrant, dosent mean you going to be able to put out a fire. Your pipe is limited to the limits of the unit. -R Quote Link to comment
+Crusso Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 Wow! Was just gonna post this very same question as I just picked up a used laptop which only has USB. I called Garmin this morning for an adaptor for my V & was told to try to find a "common" PCMIA card to serial adaptor as a USB to serial wouldn't support a fast enough transfer for real time use. I called around for this "common" adaptor & all the computer stores thought I was nuts! "No such animal", "Not made anymore", etc. Finally bought a Belkin F5U409-CU for $40 at Comp USA. Gonna try it out but but from what I've read here I feel more optimistic! Someone oughta tell Garmin to get up to date! Wherever you go, there you are! Quote Link to comment
+crashmore Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 I am definatelty a Koontz fan I've read just about everything he's written with the exception of the brand new book. I enjoyed by the light of the moon very much. BTW I bought that cable I linked to at my local radio shack. quote:Originally posted by Nascat:crashmore thanks for that Radio Shack Link, the item is'nt available Online, but with a print out of the page I have the part number. PS: "Book of Counted Sorrows" you wouldn't by chance be a Dean Koontz Fan? I'm reading "By the light of the Moon" right now. "Deep in the Heart of Jersey" ------------------------------------- Hope is the destination that we seek. Love is the road that leads to hope. Courage is the motor that drives us. We travel out of darkness into faith. -=The Book Of Counted Sorrows=- Quote Link to comment
+arrowroot Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 As a follow-up: When I first got my GPS, I e-mailed Garmin about USB to Serial, and they said that their experience is every model of adapter had about a 50% success ratio. They wouldn't recommend any particular model, because they all misbehave about as often. I understand that the GPS standard specifies a serial interface -- that's important for all kinds of applications out there. Cool. But why don't they put a USB on the models? It can't be that expensive, and would, IMHO, increase sales. I mean, take a look at digital camers: they usually have USB, a memory card and a video interface, for similar price points to GPSr's. I am Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt. I have many names, you know Quote Link to comment
robertlipe Posted June 10, 2003 Share Posted June 10, 2003 quote:Originally posted by arrowroot: But why don't they put a USB on the models? As a former designer of award winning serial systems and a current implementer of USB protocol stacks, I can answer that somewhat. If all the world were geocachers, connecting these things to their PC's, and I were a maker of GPS, I'd have my electromechanics guys figuring out out how to build a waterproof USB connection and start taking your money as soon as I could. (I'd also be lobbying the USB DWG to implement a base class for these things in USBDI so the s/w guys could still get their real-time position updates over a pipe even beyond the GPX over mass storage spec that's the obvious ringer for portable waypoint storage.) Unfortunately, there are a *lot* of these things sold as NMEA devices and NMEA specifies an EIA-422 (maybe 423, I can't recall) multidrop mutant that's most like a serial port so it can be hooked to process control devices, plotters, seismographs, autopilot devices, boat & plane navigation and so on. So we'd have to pay for the serial electronics _anyway_ or screw up the bill of materials/cost of goods by hosing up our volumes by splitting either splitting the volume or having unused electronics. The most reasonable compromise I've seen so far is Magellan's Meridians where you can use industry standard SD memory card that you can use to store maps to and write with a USB card writer without the grief of implementing a full USB mass storage protocol (and aforementioned electronics) in the device itself. Magellan didn't get it without warts, but the major pain of map uploads can be done over USB in this way. Now, with all that said, I'd expect the volume curves on these two markets (the traditional navigation folks and the consumer/outdoors/hobbyist models) to be crossing real soon. Without any real inside information, I'd think that the NMEA crowd could be satisfied with current electronics for a number of years and that newer designs - especially in the handheld space where available processor power is growing and a number of RTOSes include USB stacks and a number of ARM/MIPS chipsets include HCI silicon - will probably start showing up with integrated USB in the near future. (That's "Near future" in the geological sense....) Any GPS vendors that want to tell me how wrong I am or ask me what I'm smoking are welcome to contact me privately. Quote Link to comment
2scouts Posted June 11, 2003 Author Share Posted June 11, 2003 Ahhhhh. What he said. Anyway, I got a converter at CompUSA for $50 ( only because I could return it), can't recall the brand. I works great, perfectly with Mapsource, but not on Microsoft Streets and Trips. The adapter seems to set itself up as com port 3, and Mapsource lets you select what com port you want to use, but Microsoft Streets and Trips insists that you be on com port 4, or forget it. Their help file indicates that they may not work with USB to Serial converters. Oh well...turns out my Fuji laptop screen is pretty hard to see in the car when it's sunny anyway. Quote Link to comment
+shegget Posted June 11, 2003 Share Posted June 11, 2003 quote:Originally posted by 2scouts:I works great, perfectly with Mapsource, but not on Microsoft Streets and Trips. The adapter seems to set itself up as com port 3, and Mapsource lets you select what com port you want to use, but Microsoft Streets and Trips insists that you be on com port 4, or forget it. Actually, depending on the adapter's driver, you may be able to use a different COM port. For instance, with my Belkin, if you go into the Device Manager, right-click on the Belkin Adapter under "Ports (COM & LPT)", then go to the "Port Settings" tab, and click on "Advanced", you can choose which COM port to use for the USB adapter. Your device may support this as well, in which case you should be able to set it to COM 4 and have it work. YMMV. Quote Link to comment
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