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Specific Visor Platinum Question


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I have a 3 or 4 year old visor platinum that i use for caching. I use cache mate and have a 60cs with a serial bare wire data cable. I would really like to put the two togather for my spring break trip to florida but i cat seem to make cachemate talk to the 60cs. i looked at cables online for visors and on one particular site they mentioned that it would work on all visors except the platinum. Does that make sense?? can anyone tell me how to set this up??

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The problem with the Visor is is that althought it supports a serial connection, many PDAs do not fully implement the RS232 standard due to power constraints. There are ways round this which work in some cases, such as the special leads which most Clies need. Most Visors can work with a specially designed lead - but for some reason the word is that the Platinum cannot be made to work even like this.

 

I also understand that even where special leads work, the non-standard implementation of RS232 by Garmin means that communication works only one way in certain circumstances.

Edited by Learned Gerbil
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I don't know the details, having never owned a Garmin. but I have seen discussion of this on certain boards. The problem is that the RS232 spec involves a +3v to +12v signal. As most handheld devices run at the lower end of that, various fudges are made by device designers. For example, some devices loop back current drawn from the other device on the assumption that it will be a PC or other mains powered device.

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The problem is that the RS232 spec involves a +3v to +12v signal. As most handheld devices run at the lower end of that, various fudges are made by device designers. For example, some devices loop back current drawn from the other device on the assumption that it will be a PC or other mains powered device.

I've checked the RS-232 output of my Garmin eMap and it had nice clean +6V/-6V rectangular pulses. I was actually a bit surprised that they complied with the symmetrical +/- part of the specification since most interfaces will work ok with just positive pulses. And the voltage was well-regulated, staying right at 6V regardless of the eMap battery voltage even when that dropped to 1.7 VDC.

 

So I'm surprised to hear that more recent (and expensive) models may not comply as well as the eMap.

 

BTW, it seems like it would be hard for an NMEA output to rely on powering from the far end since there's no guarantee that you'll even have an incoming data stream - the GPS output could well be going to a marine auto-pilot, chartplotter, VHF/DSC, EPIRB, etc. with no return signal from those devices.

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Strange - one of my posts to this thread has disapeared.

 

The problem is not NMEA to the PDA, it is the PDA sending data, such as waypoints to the GPSr. Magellans seem to work in some cases that Garmins do not. It may be that I was not righ to suggest that this was due to Garmins not supporting RS232 properly. It may be that the Garmin does fine, but that other handheld devices are less strict in their application of RS232 and therefore can communicate with devices that do not push 3v down the wire.

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Strange - one of my posts to this thread has disapeared.

 

The problem is not NMEA to the PDA, it is the PDA sending data, such as waypoints to the GPSr. Magellans seem to work in some cases that Garmins do not. It may be that I was not righ to suggest that this was due to Garmins not supporting RS232 properly. It may be that the Garmin does fine, but that other handheld devices are less strict in their application of RS232 and therefore can communicate with devices that do not push 3v down the wire.

i am beginning to understand what the problem is, but i have no idea how to fix it. i guess the first step would be to figure out which wires go to which pins on the visor. i know that pin 4 is ground, but am unsure of the other 2. and then after that how do i solve the voltage problem, is this actually possible

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The voltage can be boosted by building a cable that includes a 9v battery as a booster. There are webpages with diagrams, photos etc.

 

Search Google groups - this has been discussed loads of times.

But how do i know where the pins connct on the visor. i cant find a diagram of a cable anywhere, just advertisements. i know there are 8 pins on the visor, number 4 being ground but i dont know where to connect serial data IN and serial data OUT.

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