More GPS observations

[mindfrost82]

Originally Posted by VW

That is true...but that is what helps the fix to be so much faster. Then you walk outside and within a minute or so you get locked in for real since it has already put you close to where you are, or at least hats my hypothesis

I will try it when I leave work in about a hour and a half. So far this comes in really handy when I want to use Google Maps indoors right away. It is basically like using the My Location feature without actually using it lol.

[VW]

Originally Posted by mindfrost82

I will try it when I leave work in about a hour and a half. So far this comes in really handy when I want to use Google Maps indoors right away. It is basically like using the My Location feature without actually using it lol.

Its worked for me four times in a row now. I am leaving work in 20 minutes, and plan on not using gps, and driving 25 miles to my house then trying the procedure, and see how fast lock is. It really kind of makes sense though.

Additional thoughts are that this isn't going to work if you cant get an agps lock inside a building using google maps. Somehow you got to get that to work if you want the quick locks.. and I dont know if it was the alltel rom that enabled that, because initially that did not work for me. i did change the gpsmode to a 4 and also used quickgps although I am not sure what effect that has. I may or may not have changed the agps server, I cant remember because I hard reset in frustration the other day.

[raymondh]

Dude, this totally worked! I didn't make any registry changes at all. This is getting me sat lock almost instantly!

[VW]

Well it still looks like a work in progress. I drove home, fired up google maps..located myself ~1 mile from my house, fired up gpsgate, ok, fired up visualgpsce .... and it would not see satellites. Evidently the gps needed reset. I reset the unit fired up google maps, selected use gps, and it located me off the horn of africa as others had posted Then I fired up gpsgate and visualgps and got a lock rather quickly although it took about 3 minutes.

Seems like there are two issues
1) we need a warm reset mortscript that would stop/restart the gps .dlls (dont know if that is feasible.

2) we need a cold start script that stores initial lat/long in the continental us as opposed to N0.000 E0.000 (which is where that africa locate comes from, plug 0 0 into google earth)

Technically, google maps is all that is needed, but visualgps shows satellites as well as lat/long. I still think it is valid that if you fire up programs on a comm port you don't get the benefit of agps. Of course that may be shot down as well

So my initial observations were at least in part in error, but at least using this method, I can determine if I am going to get a good fix quickly or not. Ill keep playing

[mardukeme]

Originally Posted by realmeister

I read in several palces that AGPS is not enabled in these leaked files.... ????? ......

I've flashed OMJ's new ROM this morning and it's been easy cruising for me ever since. I've also made the following change in the registry and it sped up acquisition BIG time:

HKLM/Software/HTC/SUPLAGPS/GPSMode --> Change to 4 (original value of 2)

If anyone wants to see if agps works why don't you put your phone into flight mode. Which would shut off the phone radio, in turn not allowing the usage of agps, but do a soft reset first. Now see how long does it take you to get a signal. Then try the same procedure again eight hours later with the phone radio on, but first do a soft reset first. This would help determine if we are using agps or not.

[VW]

Originally Posted by mardukeme

If anyone wants to see if agps works why don't you put your phone into flight mode. Which would shut off the phone radio, in turn not allowing the usage of agps, but do a soft reset first. Now see how long does it take you to get a signal. Then try the same procedure again eight hours later with the phone radio on, but first do a soft reset first. This would help determine if we are using agps or not.

In my mind there is no doubt that we are using AGPS *if* we can get google maps to locate us while there is no way to get a true satellite lock. it clearly makes a difference in lock time.

I did find something new tonight. I did the USE GPS in google maps and the gps was obviously hung. I could not get any satellites Since I was going over to a friends house, I just kept driving, and since i wasnt plugged into dc oops....the phone went into standby, which is a no-no for gps. I killed everything and started again in google maps, and it actually reset the gps. I was able to get a true gps lock after the gps evidently died. I was also able to duplicate this twice. So if your gps isnt getting a signal, there MAY be no reason for a reset. Simply kill everything gps related, hit the power button to go into standby, hit it again and restart google maps. That MAY re-initialize the gps drivers. Its worked well for me multiple times. Keep in mind these are only observations.

[ffyter]

I was not able to change the output port to com2 using gpsgate. I tried to add the virtual com2 but when you see the active output on the main screen it is using GPSgate direct and says that I cannot open the port on com2. Any suggestions would be helpful. Also, what did you change the gps settings in the phone to? It was com4 and none 4800.

[ffyter]

I left the gps settings in the phone the same at com4 and none 4800. I was able to add the virtual com2 in gpsgate now it works! thanks

[mswlogo]

Couple pieces of advice.

Don't use COM4 for ANYTHING. Not Priming, not Google Maps, not GPSGate, it's flaky. If your app only supports com ports use GPSGate or similar.
Try the new GPS DLL's floating around. They seem to solve a few issues (Battery, Stuck GPS, Stuck Data Link).

Sometimes, depending on time of day and your environment it can take a few minutes to lock no matter what you do. Google maps will almost always say GPS Active(0) fairly quickly and have a blue dot with blue background (zoom out your near nigeria). If it does, you're golden, but you have to wait for sats. If you don't get the sats you gotta get better signal (go outside). If you don't get GPS Active (0) in say about a minute your GPS is probably hung. Reboot.

[VW]

Originally Posted by mswlogo

Couple pieces of advice.

Don't use COM4 for ANYTHING. Not Priming, not Google Maps, not GPSGate, it's flaky. If your app only supports com ports use GPSGate or similar.
Try the new GPS DLL's floating around. They seem to solve a few issues (Battery, Stuck GPS, Stuck Data Link).

Sometimes, depending on time of day and your environment it can take a few minutes to lock no matter what you do. Google maps will almost always say GPS Active(0) fairly quickly and have a blue dot with blue background (zoom out your near nigeria). If it does, you're golden, but you have to wait for sats. If you don't get the sats you gotta get better signal (go outside). If you don't get GPS Active (0) in say about a minute your GPS is probably hung. Reboot.

I have no problems at all using COM4. It works fine without GPSGate using gpstest. The only time I use gpsgate is with iguidance. I do also think it is best to use the intermediate drivers whenever possible. I think the updated DLLs are the most important thing. It appears to me that I am getting better coldstart locks too with the new .DLLs, perhaps simply because they close/exit gracefully instead of locking the gps