Tony Blews

How do you turn a £20 quid satnav, bought from the local Steptoe and Son, into a pocket media player? Well, I’ll show you.

The aforementioned ViaMichelin X-950 runs Windows CE 4.2 Core as its base OS, with the GPS and mapping software running on top of that.

What we need is to stop it running the the mapping software automatically, but leave it on there with an option to run it.

To do this you’ll need the driver disk that can with the unit. ActiveSync alone won’t suffice here, and anyway it has to be ActiveSync 3.8 as later versions won’t work correctly (especially with WinXP SP3).

So install the software, fire up ActiveSync and connect the unit with a USB cable.

Next you’ll need to download the file at http://www.gpspassion.com/download/custVM_GpsPasSion_buddy.zip and extract it somewhere (to your desktop will do).

Run the custVM_GpsPasSion_buddy.exe program and follow the onscreen prompts. Answer Next/Yes/OK until its done.

Now unplug the satnav from the USB and reset it using the button on the back.

Click the OK box on the screen twice to install both software items, and then wait for the thing to reset itself. It should now look like this:

Next you’ll want to download http://hautil.free.fr/bm/ScreenRotate.zip, and copy the files in it to \Program Files\ScreenRotate. Running that program will, surprisingly, rotate the screen through 90 degrees.

Using Windows Explorer, find the file \Program Files\ScreenRotate\ScreenRotate.exe and create a Destktop short cut (File -> Send to -> Desktop as Shortcut).

Next you’ll need to run \My Documents\CustoVM\RegEdit.exe and change some settings.

Change the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ System \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \ Power \ Timeouts \ BattSuspendTimeOut to be 2700 (which is 45 minutes).

By now you’ll be wondering where the WinCE control bar is, and how to input data. Well if you tap the very bottom edge of the screen near the plastic, the control bar will appear, and from here you can enable the on screen keyboard.

So far you should have a machine that boots into Win CE and has a video player (CORE) installed, and the mapping system still available (as an icon on the desktop called MapSonic.

You’ll be wanting an image viewer too, so download the file http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA003011/gqe/gq151hpce.zip and extract it somewhere on your PC. The copy the files from the ARM directory to \Program Files\GQ and create a desktop shortcut.

And there you have it. Copy some sound files, JPGs and videos onto the thing and away you go.

You want a demo? Oh go on.

(The song “Happy Birthday Tony” is (c) Crackerwax 2008)

This info was gleaned from http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=57135 but that is in French, and this isn’t.

Just found a GPS track of my trip last month from The Shrewsbury Arms in Stafford to The Stanley Arms in Chester. If you zoom in, you’ll see that it is quite accurate, even showing the bit where I missed an exit and went round a round-a-bout. If i’d set the logging to use small time intervals then the “road holding” would have been better.

Here is the map:

View Larger Map

Download the file

Just some photos from my wander along the Shropshire Union Canal in Chester, from a few weeks ago.

And as a bonus, here is a map of the route where I wandered…

View Larger Map

As part of my continuing interest in canals, i’ve started pretty much finish marking every single last canal (current, derelict and in-filled) and navigable river in England.

http://www.coobeastie.co.uk/gecm/

However, if I even look like i’m considering mapping all the UK’s abandonned and derelict railway lines, please shoot me.

For some time now I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a GPS logger, for no other reason than that I like gadgets. However, as I’m tight fisted, paying £50 for one from Maplin is out of the question.

So, how cheaply can I bodge one together?

Well, using a my long suffering Skypephone and a Bluenext BN-906GR (£25.44 incl VAT and P&P from BlueUnplugged.com), I think I’ve cracked it.

Software wise, I’m running TrekBuddy on the phone, which needs some fiddling with to get working. I’m using v0.9.83 (download link), and this is what I did:

Firstly, download TrekBuddy from that link above, and copy it across to your phone. You might as well do this by plugging the phone in via the USB connector and using it as a mass storage device, as you’re now going to have to create some directories.

On the phone, create the directory TrekBuddy, and in that directory create some more called:maps, resources, sounds, tracks-gpx, tracks-nmea, ui-profiles and wpts.

Now, go and get a map. I’ve been using GM2TB to get google maps. If you go for a map of the whole country then you’ll not be able to see your location very well, so I’ve just grabbed a map of the Stafford area. I’f I go somewhere else, I’ll make a map of that area first.

Anyway, get your map from GM2TB, and save the .tar file in your TrekBuddy/maps directory.

Now install the trekbuddy.jar file, and run the application. It won’t work properly.

Enter Settings, then Basic. Change the name of the default map to file:///Memory%20card/TrekBuddy/maps/stafford.tar (assuming, of course that your map file was called stafford.tar), and change the Data Dir to file:///Memory%20card/TrekBuddy/

Now save the settings, exit the application.

Pair your GPS reciever with your phone as per the makers instructions.

Now start TrekBuddy again and go through the menus to start a tracklog. All should be good.

To view you track in Google Earth, you’ll need to copy the .gpx files on to your PC (either by using the phone as a USB memory device or by Bluetooth), and convert them using something like Routeconverter.

Then hey presto, you can see where you’ve roughly been. I say roughly because despite a claimed accuracy of 2.5m, a test track of me walking home from work shows me walking down the middle of the River Sow for 100 yards.