Our small motor boat is fitted with a DSC VHF radio which accommodates
a GPS positioning input using NMEA. I'd like to employ a removable
GPS unit, mounted in a cradle next to the radio. So far, so easy. For
my work, and during leisure time, I want to use a PDA running Email
with Word/Excel etc, and a PDA combined with GPS would enable me to
carry only one device around with me out of the boat. Two PDA
manufacturers make a device - HP 6910/6915, and Fujitsu Siemens Loox.

PDAs are 'USB' oriented - and the manufacturers do not appear to have
NMEA compatible cables for connection to a DSC radio.

Has anyone used a PDA with GPS as an NMEA source for a DSC radio?
What kind of cabling and connections were employed to the radio?

(Googling didn't reveal a FAQ/howto of any sort on this, nor any
similar Usenet query, though I am sure this question must have been
asked before. Apologies if it has been and I couldn't find it.)

______________
best wishes,
Ron

Ronnie,
Fee advice is often not worth the cost.
But -
I will throw my 2c in anyway.
What you are planning is complex enough to lack reliablity. This is not
something that should go with the red button.
Yes, it sounds like a good use of existing equipment (assuming the plan
below does not include acquiring anything), but actually getting it to
all work once and then stay working on the water is a different issue
altogether.

I am a great proponent of DSC radios with MMSI set and active GPS link.

My advice - campaign E-bay for a Cheap Old Garmin, Magellan or Lowrance
that has a data/power cable included or is easily acquired. Put it on
the boat, hook it up and make sure it is turned on like the radio when
you are getting underway.

Keep the PDA for doing other things.

This is what I do.

Matt Colie - Yachtsman's Technical Support www.yachtek.com

Ronnie wrote:
Our small motor boat is fitted with a DSC VHF radio which accommodates
a GPS positioning input using NMEA. I'd like to employ a removable
GPS unit, mounted in a cradle next to the radio. So far, so easy. For
my work, and during leisure time, I want to use a PDA running Email
with Word/Excel etc, and a PDA combined with GPS would enable me to
carry only one device around with me out of the boat. Two PDA
manufacturers make a device - HP 6910/6915, and Fujitsu Siemens Loox.

PDAs are 'USB' oriented - and the manufacturers do not appear to have
NMEA compatible cables for connection to a DSC radio.

Has anyone used a PDA with GPS as an NMEA source for a DSC radio?
What kind of cabling and connections were employed to the radio?

(Googling didn't reveal a FAQ/howto of any sort on this, nor any
similar Usenet query, though I am sure this question must have been
asked before. Apologies if it has been and I couldn't find it.)

______________
best wishes,
Ron

I recently got my hands on a HW-6915. They come with the TomTom street
navigator as standard, with one free map. The GPS is reasonably
accessible, and as the gadget runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and Java it ought
to be programmable enough to do most things.

I tried out the GPS capability in London, in a moving car. It takes a
while to acquire an initial fix, but once locked it worked quite well
for an "urban canyon" environment. Well enough to show the change from
an un-numbered slip road to the highway as we went across the white
line.

That obviously sounds ideal. There is a MiniSD expansion slot, and as
cards are available up to 2GB capacity in this format you could load
those nice freeee raster charts the USG gives away on them. (Using
something like a
href="http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/PocketPC/pocketnav.htm"this/a)
The screen is of excellent quality, but you will have to think
carefully about where you put it to read it reliably despite the sun,
as with any LCD device.

BUT. Another GPS function out of the box is to assign a geographical
position to photos taken with the integrated camera. I tried this out.
The photo software (HP Photosmart) includes the option to look up these
coordinates on Mapquest. I tried this out, too. Nasty surprise -
position showed something like 5 miles east of true! I'm not sure
whether this was the GPS (I don't think so as it was tracking the map
accurately), HP Photosmart or Mapquest's fault.

Another issue is battery life. Operating the GPS receiver continuously
seriously drains the battery. This could be a serious problem, although
if you're out of cellular (triband GSM/GPRS/EDGE) coverage you can save
power by shutting off the cellular radio. Alternatively you could run
it in its charger cradle, tho' it wants AC power. (HP may sell a 12VDC
charger, but I dunno) It's tempting, remembering the chap on another
thread who's using a wireless LAN to interconnect his laptop, GPS,
echosounder, autohelm, wife, etc to think that you could link it to
other devices using its own WLAN radio - but using this and the GPS at
the same time would be genuinely battery critical.

The cabling provided with it ends in a USB plug, but note that the
socket on the device is not a standard USB port - nor is it a standard
mini-USB port - it is something peculiar, so you will need to use the
cradle if you want to connect any other gadgets to it like that. As you
can pull power into it from the USB port on your PC (or whatever) there
is really no reason not to do it that way.

It's a cracking product, far better designed than any other
PDA/smartster I've encountered. But watch the battery life, careful
with that Mapquest, and think carefully about how to use it practically
in your cockpit - its list price is £400, and it would be very easy to
drop overboard.

On 31 Aug 2006 05:42:32 -0700, wrote:

I recently got my hands on a HW-6915.

[snip a user summary]

Thanks for the very useful experience review

Alternatively you could run
it in its charger cradle, tho' it wants AC power. (HP may sell a 12VDC
charger, but I dunno)
I was planning on using HP or 3rd party 'carkit' sort of thing.

It's tempting, remembering the chap on another
thread who's using a wireless LAN to interconnect his laptop, GPS,
echosounder, autohelm, wife, etc to think that you could link it to
other devices using its own WLAN radio

I hadn't found that thread - I'll read it now

The cabling provided with it ends in a USB plug, but note that the
socket on the device is not a standard USB port - nor is it a standard
mini-USB port - it is something peculiar, so you will need to use the
cradle if you want to connect any other gadgets to it like that.

This is the bit I'm really unsure about - how to convert that to NMEA.

Also, can you see whether the unit has an option to route the GPS info
to two destinations at once - (a) the map/chart, and (b) the DSC radio
over a serial port?

______________
best wishes,
Ron

The thread referred to is this one: a
href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.boats.electronics/browse_thread/thread/9c705bef396272af/4caa570ed8897566?lnk=gst&q=Ethernet&rnum=5#4caa570 ed8897566"thread/a.

As far as I know, the unit's Bluetooth radio will function as a serial
port - although whether you can address the GPS receiver over it is
anyone's guess.

wrote:
The thread referred to is this one: a
href="http://groups.google.com/group/rec.boats.electronics/browse_thread/thread/9c705bef396272af/4caa570ed8897566?lnk=gst&q=Ethernet&rnum=5#4caa570 ed8897566"thread/a.

As far as I know, the unit's Bluetooth radio will function as a serial
port - although whether you can address the GPS receiver over it is
anyone's guess.

This is certainly possible. I use an iPaq 6510. For this particular
unit, the GPS port is hardwired to COM7. I use Franson GPSGate to
redirect the GPS sentences from COM7 to the bluetooth enabledCOM5.