NaviGadget

what direction are you facing? HI-406BT-C knows.

Mar 13, 2006 bluetooth, gps navigation

Here is a nice little review of HI-406BT-C which can be purchased from GPSnow.com for about $150.

One of the problems with GPS is that the receiver doesn’t know which direction you are facing, like a compass, it only calculates which direction you are traveling. To prove that, take out your PPC and your GPS and while watching it, back up (walking will do) and watch the direction you are traveling be displayed as behind you. Normally that may be all you need, but if you are standing still, it would be nice to know which direction you are facing, particularly when geocaching. Some of the standalone GPS units from Garmin and Magellan incorporate an electronic compass, similar to what is installed in some new cars. Now Haicom have taken a shot at incorporating a compass into a GPS receiver. It works, sort of, but from my simple testing I think it may need some more development.

The small CD has utility software and drivers for laptops. The wall unit and cigarette lighter both take the same USB cable and the small belt pouch can hold the unit for you as you walk, although in that orientation the compass won’t work and you won’t be able to see it. You can also charge from any USB port. There are two switches on the GPS, one on the left and one on the right. You can just see them in the picture. One turns on and off the GPS itself, the other turns on and off the compass function. You can also just see in the lower left corner and upper right corner the compass LEDs. The LEDs are shown more clearly in the images on the booklet and the boxtop. Red is north and Green is south. The little bulge at the top edge of the GPS receiver itself is the mini-USB port. There is also a connector for an external antenna and two LEDs to indicate fix and BT connection status.

Installation was easy. After charging the battery, I paired the unit to my Dell Axim X50v with WM2003 and it was immediately available on COM7. Within a few minutes I had my first fix. As a GPS, it has the SirfSTAR III chipset, comes with WAAS/EGNOS enabled and works exactly as you would expect it to. Here are the specs from buyGPSnow.com:

* 20 Channels “All-In-View” Tracking
* Position accuracy of 10 meters 2D RMS
* Cold/Warm/Hot Start Time: 42/38/1 Seconds (Signal Strength > 30 dB-HZ)
* Reacquisition Time: 0.1 seconds
* Supports Standard NMEA-0183 at 38400 bps baud rate (Defined by customer 4800 up to 57600)
* Support Power Saving Mode
* Compatible with Bluetooth devices with Serial Port Profile (SPP)
* Build-in digital compass with 12 LED indications
* Superior Sensitivity for Urban Canyon and Foliage Environment
* Ultra small, sleek, and lightweight design easily fits in your hand
* Li-polymer battery lasts for more than 8 hours of use in connection (about 4 hours if the compass is in operation at the same time)

The unit is a good, solid option for GPS, and in fact can be found in both compass and non-compass modes, according to Haicom. The compass function worked raggedly for me. When I first took the unit out of the box and charged it up, it seemed to work pretty well. The LEDs move in 30 degree increments, but when you are between them, two will light up, so you get about 15 degree sensitivity. The LEDs are bright and clearly visible in the black top in day and night operation.
When I first powered up the compass, as I said, it seemed to be reasonably accurate. I then took it out for a drive and that is when the problems started to show up. The first problem is not with the unit itself. The unit needs to be flat for the compass to work. If you hold it on end, the compass doesn’t move. So to use it, you have to hold the unit flat, as I said, just like a real magnetic compass. In my car, that means that it had to sit on either the dashboard, or on the seat beside me. Putting it on the seat, it worked fine as a BT GPS, but to see the compass I had to turn my head and look down at it. Not good. On my dash it was too close to my eye level and the low angle make it difficult to see the LEDs, particularly when they are on the sides, not on the edges nearest and furthest away from you. I thought I would get clever and let it reflect off the glass of the windshield, and that worked reasonably at night, but my mind got all confused because front and back are reversed, but left and right are not. (If you don’t understand that, get a square of paper and write N, E, W and S on the four sides and then put on your dash and look at the image in the glass. If you put the N edge toward the glass, as the furthest away, it will appear the the bottom of the reflected image. But the W will still be on the left. It confused me, so I finally gave up trying…