On Mon, 6 Sep 2010 19:37:45 +0000 (UTC), JohnF
wrote:

What's a good and not-too-expensive hardware/software combination
to use with a (bluetooth enabled) net/notebook running winxp for
a chartplotter application? Electronics on recent charter didn't
work right, and I'd like to put something together on my netbook
that's a little better than my handheld gps. I was looking at
gps receiver
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=270630743828
software
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=280312392457
Is that a good choice? And will that gps receiver play nicely
with maptech navigator lite, that came with my chartkit?
(And is there anything for linux? -- that's what I prefer running,
but dual boot my netbook with winxp for occasions where windows is
the only game in town.) Thanks,


I have a - no idea of the name of the thing, probably Chinese anyway
- Bluetooth GPS receiver. Came with a mini-disk with drivers which
installed a "Bluetooth serial port" and IIRC allowed one to change the
port number as required. Connected it up, configured the port and the
two chart plotter applications I have worked with no problems. As far
as I know the chart-plotter software all simply accesses one or
another of the serial ports to receive a data stream and doesn't care
what generates that data.

The problem I had was that the GPS had to be located above deck and
the battery in the Bluetooth GPS would run down in a few hours so I
adapted it to run on 12 VDC. But that was the only problem.



Cheers,

Bruce
(bruceinbangkokatgmaildotcom)