Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I have been fighting with the gps lag for a while, and I have found a registry tweak that helps a little. The WinMo Intermediate GPS driver only polls the gps every so often and then it buffers some of the data. I've found some settings that seem to have made the lag a little less noticeable. Granted its not a 100% fix, but it does seem to help with the polling.

The registry edits are below, but I have also made a .cab file that contains these tweaks for easy installation. You can also remove the .cab install if you want to go back to stock.


Edit registry with the following entries: Under: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\GPS Intermediate Driver\
- Drivers\GpsOneDevice\PollInterval -> 100 (default is 1000)
- Drivers\InputBufferSize -> 512 (default is 4096)
- Drivers\OutputBufferSize -> 512 (default is 4096)
- Drivers\SleepOnNoData -> 100 (default is 1000)
- Multiplexer\MaxBufferSize -> 512 (by default not present, you have to create it)

OR, if your not to keen on making the registry edits yourself, feel free to download and use the cab I created and attached in this post. All it does is create/change the entries as outlined above.

I also take no credit for coming up with the fix, I found the post over at XDA, and thanks goes out to omega01 for suggesting the registry settings. I simply just cabbed them up and made it into a nice installable/removable fix. This should work with both the Touch Pro and the Touch Pro 2.

Feedback is appreciated, and if it works great for you as it did me, just hit the "Thanks" button.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Thankyou i will try it out first thing tomorrow when i drive to work. Will report back on findings



Today is too late i am watching footbal and it a great game Saints V pats

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I've tried these tweaks on a VzW version and they weren't any help. IIRC, changing the poll interval really took a hit on my battery life.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

so you saying battery life drain faster ???

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Turning up the polling interval on any device or sensor on these phones will suck the battery quicker for sure. But, I guess it is a trade-off. And, I typically have mine plugged in when I am using it as a GPS.

I haven't had the chance to try the edits out yet, but I will tomorrow and post y results.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I havent been able to use my GPS much today, so I cant say how it did on battery life. I will try to get out and about tomorrow to test the battery life with a GPS app running. Thanks again for the feedback... keep it coming :)

Hey GreeNova, I noticed in your sig about the online CAB creator... if you need someone to host it, let me know my friend! I run a small hosting company, and I would host it for ya! ( I wasnt able to get the address in your sig to resolve ).

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

ok i have tried your cab and here my findings

i have 2 second lag before now i have 1.8 second lag so there is no difference with naked eye. you can still see the lag . i think it takes 1 -2 seconds for gps to update that why we are seeing the lag...

battery i used it for 1 hour straight driving to work and i used 20% of my battery that is a lot considering it used to use 3% of battery prior to the cab.

Thanks for trying but i am going back to stock setting so i delete the cab soft reset i hope it goes back to original setting

t

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Hey, thanks for the offer, but the site is not mine. I just went to the link and it worked. Maybe there was a slight hiccup on the server when you tried it - http://triton.homeip.net/RegistryChanger/

I just added the link to my sig since I found the site useful and I haven't see any post about the site.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Cool. Its back up now! That is a handy site :)

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I checked the setting on my old Verizon 6800 (HTC Tytan) and noticed the Poll Interval was set to "1". So I changed settings on Verizon Touch Pro2 to be the same and now see just a lag of 1 to 2 secs and a whole lot better than before and almost the same as the built in GPS in the car.

Edit registry with the following entries: Under: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\GPS Intermediate Driver\
- Drivers\GpsOneDevice\PollInterval -> 100 (default is 1000)

** I changed mine to "1" after trying with "100" (100 helped but not significantly) **

I have not tried out to see what it does for the battery but I always plug it in while using GPS.

..Ramesh

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

By the way, I use Garmin Mobile XT not Tom Tom (I could not get Tom Tom working on XV 6800).

The cool thing was that I took the SD out of XV6800 and put it in TP2 and it asked if I wanted to install Garmin and I said yes, and viola it worked out of the box!

Now, if I can get the FM Radio working....

..Ramesh

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Awesome! Thanks for the input. I will give it a try on mine as well with the higher polling number. Hows the battery life when using the GPS with that number?

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I will try it in few hours when I go to pick up my daughter from school and report back.

..Ramesh

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Ok here is the scoop guys.

For Grins I tried this poll interval change with iGuidance (via GPSGate).

No change what so ever.

Then I changed iGuidance to NOT use GPSGate (bad idea by the way) and use Windows Mobile Virtual GPS COM Port (i.e. that port you set in "External GPS").

Then iGuidance went nuts and I could only see the clock on the GPS Page to check out update rate and it's resolution was 1 second. But it was "updating" way faster than 2 seconds like it normally does. Just because it updates it does not mean it has new data.

So for folks that are seeing a difference by changing this, it means you have your GPS Setup wrong and you WILL see lag becuase the Windows Mobile Virtual GPS COM port (usually COM4 by default) has been broken for years and still is (it lags like crazy). Boosting the pollinterval may make a bad setup less worse.

What you are boosting is how often the WM Virtual GPS COM port driver calls the Windows Mobile GPS API.

The better solution is to use the Windows Mobile GPS API directly and get the broken Windows Mobile GPS Virtual COM port out of the loop.

You do this by following what I said in the "How to setup your GPS thread" see my signature for how to do this.

If you have your heart set on playing with this pollinterval then use the COM port you have set in "External GPS" (usually COM4 by default on these phones but that might not be the same on all ROMs). And if you want to try a sain PollInterval I would try 500ms. That way you are assured of not missing a change that happens on 1 sec intervals and not wasting too much CPU and Battery for stuff that CAN'T change 10 times a second.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Dude.... you still dont get it.
I have said this time and time again.... none of my GPS apps use the virtual com port...You fix did not work for me at all. GPSGate is not needed.

I can with most certainty confirm I am using the the WinMo gps API, and not its virtual com driver. When my polling settings were default, I had lag. With them set at the higher values, I dont have lag (as bad). My cab worked great for me.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I tried setting it to 10 secs (10000) and it had absolutely no effect on iGuidance or Google Maps (which uses WinMo GPA API).

I stand corrected. It seems to effect absolutely nothing. I have it set to 10 seconds and both Virtual COM port and WM GPS API behave exactly the same. I thought when I saw iGuidance updating faster than 1 second it was due to pollinterval. But I set it to 10 seconds and it behaves the same.

If you think a parameter does something. Then proove it by setting it to extremes and noting the behavior change.

If setting it smaller goes faster set it big (really big) and see if it goes slower. It doesn't.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

You are just outright wrong on this one my friend. The "virtual port" you are referring to is under the registry entry:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\GPS Intermediate Driver\Multiplexer

You need to read up on the WinMo intermediate driver and how it works. First its 2 fold. It firstly creates a simple interface for developers to talk to the GPS chipset through windows. Sure, you can talk to the GPS chipset directly with its hardware port or address, but that ties it up to only one application. Thats why everyone uses the Windows API.
Secondly, it creates the multiplexer that simply forwards the NMEA data to a virtual com port...in most instances its com4.

When we change the polling interval under the key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\GPS Intermediate Driver\GPSOneDevice we are actually changing how many times the WinMo gps API actually queries the GPS chip. In that same key, you can see where the port is set to GPS0, which if I am not mistaken is the actual hardware address port for the GPS chip.

What you are referring to is another part....in the mulitplexer. WinMo 5 was the first to have this multiplexer so that more than one app could access the gps data at the same time. It isnt very good, but for legacy apps that needed to access the gps through a direct COM, it worked. I dont know of any developer worth his salt would code an app to talk to the gps this way now.

GPSGate talks to the WinMo gps API the same way 99% of all other apps nowadays does.... so its a waste of a program.

You need to jump on over to MSDN and readup on how it works. Better yet, grab the SDK and play with it.

Now, I will say this, I can see where increasing the polling rate could decrease battery life, as we are essentially increasing how many times windows calls the gps hardware in a given time frame (in the case of my cab, its 10 times per second).

With this, I am done arguing with you. It would be nice if someone more fluent in C++ or C# than us would chime in. The SDKs for both Winmo 5 and Winmo 6 are free. If I am wrong on this one, I am not ashamed to admit it, but I will need someone to show me where I am wrong.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

The regisrty setting is dormant IMHO (like 100's of others in WM). It's effecting nothing.

If setting polling rate to 10 seconds testing GoogleMaps (on Windows Managed), iGuadance on GPSGate or iGuidance on COM4 (Virtual COM Port) all still update around 1 a second I'm convinced it does nothing.

I live and breath C# every day.

It seems consistent with what most have found that it made no freaken difference.

It seems consistent also with your poll that a majority of people have no issue at all with the GPS in the first place.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

All you have to do is google search "Touch Pro gps lag".... TONS of stuff on it. Heck, there is tons of stuff over at XDA Developers about it. The TP2 and TP1 share the same hardware....just go into the TP1 forums and you will see tons of lag threads if you search.

Theres definately something to it.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

There may be something about ALL Qualcomm based GPS units that they are not as fast as $2000.00 car units or $700 Garmin units. But those may have other means of getting "smoother" updates.

There are many ways of doing better than 1 update a second.

You can do interpolation (which is what all the chatter is about on XDA).
You can use gyro and compass to esimate between updates.
There are systems that do 1000hz for military.
You can also pan the screen smoother from one update to the next to make it feel continuous (I believe this is what high end Nuvi's and car systems do).

But for the average Joe 1-2 seconds per update works really well for walking or driving. I've been using them since the HTC 6600. The Touch Pro2 is the best GPS Unit I have had.

If you are doing a LOT worse than that and you have set up everything correctly I don't know what else to say.

I'll try to video it walking and driving but my camera that does video is at my lake house.

What we really should test with is an application that has time stamps and positions so we can compare notes. We may be seeing the same performance and some are satisfied and some are not. Or there may be sometime very different.

I know we are both trying to help.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

I just realized something what ROM are folks running (mine is in my signature).

I think WM 6.1 and 6.5.3 may behave different.

I also discovered something very odd tonight.

I wanted to try running iGuidance with it running faster than the normal once every 2 seconds to see if it ran any faster in actual updated data.

So I switched to COM4 again (WM GPS Virtual COM Port).
It was updating once every 2 seconds again. What the heck, it ran faster earlier today.

So I tried PollInterval at 100ms

Still it updates once every 2 seconds. It was updating every 1 second or faster earlier when I experimented on COM4. Why is it back to 2 seconds again?

Then I started GPSGate and went back to iGuidance and it started updating at 1 second or faster. iGuidance is NOT using GPSGate.

I then stopped GPSGate and it goes back to once every 2 seconds. Then I started GoogleMaps and it did the same thing (i.e. iGuidance started updating faster).

I also tried 10000, 1000, 100 Pollinterval and it made no difference in this behavior.

I think COM4 (WM GPS Virtual COM Port) may actually be fixed under WM 6.5.3 (it seems to run as well as with GPSGate) and even faster (as strange as that sounds) that if you start a second GPS Application which is very odd.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

at pollinterval = 1:

Battery at start: 63%, 3.849V, 2.42mA

30 minutes using GPS:
Battery = 55%, 3.784v, 207mA.

LAG = 2.5sec - 3 seconds lag with Garmin Mobile XT at about 30 miles hour.

Back to pollinterval =100.
- Need to test and see.

..Ramesh
Verizon Touch Pro2
-touch pro cleanup
-Garmin mobile XT

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

Im running the stock Sprint TP2 rom with a few very minor reg tweaks.

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

that exactly what i have sprint stock rom with goodlife tweak and pimp package.

i tried all the polling setting same result with naked eye did notice a quicker update with 100 but battery went down 20% in 1 hour than using 1000 battery went down 3%

so big difference in battery for me for .02 second quicker is not worth it

now if i can get it to work like igo8 with no lag what so ever then i am a happy camper

Re: Touch Pro and Touch Pro 2 GPS polling tweaks
 

With Poll Interval at 100, my Garmin was more 4-5 seconds behind in updating this morning. With Poll Interval at 1, it was 2 seconds behind. With the original settting of 1000 it was way behind.

As I keep it plugged in when using GPS except last 2 days to see the how fast it was draining, I don't mind keeping at 1 for now. Hoping Garmin will update their sw to better support TP2.

..Ramesh