TomTom Maps Binatone F430

Sorry, I meant Tomtom. I have now finished primo.

The ov2 (and bmp files if available) need to be in the root of the map folder, they won't work anywhere else.

And you can have two different map folders but you will need to switch between then in Tomtom settings as required

Thank you, I have done that.

I assume that there is no way of testing the maps before using them in Europe?

You can browse them, basically if you can select and browse them they work otherwise you get an error if they don't

Excellent, thank you. I don't have the device at the moment, but will test the maps as soon as possible.

I had to order a mains charger as the battery just keeps dying after about 20 min use. Before the battery died I had managed to put on the Navcore, UK/Republic of Ireland map, and the GPS found my location, so I assume everything is working.

Thank you for your help and advice.

Fatboyfun wrote:My Binatone takes several hours to charge and doesn't last very long on batteries, I tend to have mine powered all the time.

Information about the memory error: Windows CE has a memory division, This is the difference between RAM and temporary storage, This by default is set halfway, So on a 64MB device you get 32MB RAM and 32MB temporary storage, Temporary storage isn't really necessary on a GPS device with a flash drive/SD card, Luckily the division can be adjusted either by using the WinCE Control Panel or by using a small utility.

Fix: 4111
Rename the existing MobileNavigator folder to something else and download and extract the attached archive to the card, (You are temporarily replacing the Primo application to an application that sets the memory division)
Put card into device and reboot, start the navigation as normal, A message will appear on screen when the process is complete, It only takes a second.
Remove card and delete the tool and rename the Primo folder back to MobileNavigator.

The change is permanent (But can be undone) so only needs to be done once!

The division is now set to 512KB temporary storage with the rest as RAM

Try Primo again.

Thanks for this. If I want to return it, what should I set the value to? 32768 ??

I am going to give it a go later. I've not tried iGo, or TomTom, or any of these. I've gone for my favourite of favourites, Garmin XT. I wasn't sure if it would work, but I took a pop at a hacked up version for Win CE 6. Boom baby, working like a pro. Haven't tried it outside yet but currently its stuck on acquiring satellites, will give it a proper test tomorrow. Work is a good 30 mile trip

There's no need to reset the memory division, unless for some reason you want less ram, but if you need to it's easier to access the wince control panel and move the slider rather than guess what the value is as different devices have different amounts of free ram available.

Let me know if Garmin works, the earlier versions wouldn't see the GPS hardware, I may create a ready to go package for my tutorial if it's reliable enough.

Fatboyfun wrote:There's no need to reset the memory division, unless for some reason you want less ram, but if you need to it's easier to access the wince control panel and move the slider rather than guess what the value is as different devices have different amounts of free ram available.

Let me know if Garmin works, the earlier versions wouldn't see the GPS hardware, I may create a ready to go package for my tutorial if it's reliable enough.

Hello,
Thanks for your response. It was more because I've actually borrowed this off my girlfriend but the original software is so outdated (and a tad annoying to use at times) I wanted to try Garmin, TomTom, etc. I've never tried iGo but perhaps I will. How do I access the control panel out of curiosity?

Great news about the Garmin. Worked first time. Incredibly easy actually. No messing about with baud rates or anything, it detected the correct GPS automatically and worked first time. It jumped to COM7 when running the auto-detect which was a great start. Yesterday in my house it was stuck on 'acquiring satellites' but I think I know why... basically, a clean install of Garmin sets the current location to North America. Being in the UK, it was way off and a house is never a great place to try acquire GPS satellites so it was probably working with a limited signal and we all know about cold, warm, hot starts etc. I switched on my BinaGarm (lol) in the car today, it sat 'acquiring satellites' for approximately 1 minute before shooting up from 1 red bar to 5 green bars. Since then, it has locked in under 5 seconds consistently, even from a cold boot (fully powered off). It calculated my route to work (33 miles) super quick. Although I had to change all the settings at a set of traffic lights, the defaults are for idiots or people looking to get lost (no turn preview etc).

One thing that needs to be noted is that Garmin XT dumps all its settings on a successful termination of the application. So, don't do what I did which was change the settings then turn off via the power switch, NOTHING will be saved. You need to change all your settings, go back to the Garmin main menu, close the application (bottom right), wait for about 5 seconds and at which point they'll have saved. From then on, you can obviously switch off your device using the power button (as all your settings will be loaded when the application start) but obviously if you do decide to change any settings in the future, they won't be saved unless you do the same thing again. That said, I can see this being more useful than not... it means Garmin won't automatically load the destination of the previous trip when you first start the application, something which my Axim PDA seems irritatingly good at. It also allows you to set a nice global configuration and then modify them ad hoc if required for a single trip.
Also, don't remove your microSd straight after you close Garmin because of the reason listed above... I got a shed load of errors, no permanent damage but I don't think it's the smartest trick in the book.

I'll get a video up later if I can.

If anyone needs help activating Garmin pm me.

The easiest way to get to the control panel is to create a shell.ini that points to \windows\control.exe

Garmin was never designed for wince devices, only windows mobile phones, obviously you don't just turn off phones so the lack of saving isn't a problem, also if you change something and it crashes, it's like automatically reverting to the previous settings.

Anyway I'll have a play with it and some other ideas this has given me...

Fatboyfun wrote:The easiest way to get to the control panel is to create a shell.ini that points to \windows\control.exe

Garmin was never designed for wince devices, only windows mobile phones, obviously you don't just turn off phones so the lack of saving isn't a problem, also if you change something and it crashes, it's like automatically reverting to the previous settings.

Anyway I'll have a play with it and some other ideas this has given me...

Well the thing is, like you said, Garmin was designed for Smartphones and PPC's. Windows Mobile (despite what everyone says) is surprisingly good for certain things and one is the way in which it shuts down. To prevent write fails and dirty fragmentation, it doesn't just hard shutdown (except in power failure), holding the off button actually causes it to go through a nice little termination phase where applications would be closed correctly using the natural method when closing. So, I use my Dell as a sat nav, not a PPC or Smartphone. I regularly switch it on, use it, and then hold the button in to switch it off... however it doesn't just die, it actually closes everything down and then switches off. Might seem kind of strange for just a PDA but note I've NEVER had to reflash the software since the day I got it (2006) unlike my Android phone, my old Nokia and my friends iPhone (all of which allow you to hard shutdown willy nilly)

Like you said, Garmin wasn't designed for WinCE and the version I have on my Axim didn't work whatsoever, this is a specially hacked version for CE 6. If you haven't already got it I can send it you. The only crash I've observed so far is if you set a destination on 'Where to', then click back from the map to the menu and press 'Where to' again it sometimes closes. It doesn't actually provide an error or anything and it doesn't release focus so you have to hard power off. That said, how often are you going to do that?

Regardless, I'd say this is an excellent choice if you particularly like Garmin. It's worked great with the maps from my Axim too which is really cool!

Here's a couple of photos, scales nicely don't you think? Inside again so don't mind the searching for satellites thing. If I go into GPS settings, it has the satellites saved so I assume that's why it's so fast!
433943404341

Yeah I wouldn't mind a copy of Garmin, you can send it to me via private message if you prefer, or post here, up to you.

Don't worry about the maps, I got those already.

Interestingly Tomtom navigator caches disk writes so suffers from the same problem with lost settings as Garmin does, although it does periodically write unsaved settings to disk

Sure, will pm it you asap.

I was thinking, it would be possible to create like an All-in-One launcher for the Binatone, which has shortcuts for Garmin, iGo etc. I've not done any WinCE programming (and seeing as it doesn't seem to be very possible on Win7 64bit i'm screwed) but I heard that VB6 is supported (wow, talk about retro). Using VB, it would be so easy to create a simple dialog box with the choice of Garmin, iGo and then call the shell to launch them. I've not done any VB in ages (do mainly Java and C++) but seeing as it's like kiddy code it probably wouldn't take 30 seconds lol!! It would be great to be able to launch different ones based on our requirements.

I'm guessing you're about to tell me someone has already done it lol!

You don't need to go that far, there is an application called systeminformation 1.6 which is a menu builder environment for windows ce, the software and documentation is German, but in it's basic form it's just a case of where you want to put the buttons and what they launch.

Download one of these below and go through the code and modify it to suit your needs, on binatone's however you need to use a mortscript to kill jbshello.exe otherwise the default shell sits on top.

http://www.navitotal.com/showthread.php?4489-Frontends-for-480x272-and-800x480-devices

When you get up to speed with systeminformation and mortscript you can create stuff like this...

http://www.navitotal.com/showthread.php?7814-Easy-Shell-for-Binatone-(and-other-MobileNavigator)-devices

Fatboyfun wrote:You don't need to go that far, there is an application called systeminformation 1.6 which is a menu builder environment for windows ce, the software and documentation is German, but in it's basic form it's just a case of where you want to put the buttons and what they launch.

Download one of these below and go through the code and modify it to suit your needs, on binatone's however you need to use a mortscript to kill jbshello.exe otherwise the default shell sits on top.

http://www.navitotal.com/showthread.php?4489-Frontends-for-480x272-and-800x480-devices

When you get up to speed with systeminformation and mortscript you can create stuff like this...

http://www.navitotal.com/showthread.php?7814-Easy-Shell-for-Binatone-(and-other-MobileNavigator)-devices

Cool. I'll check it out. Is there no way you can execute the menu from the main shell? Click on navigation and then select kind of thing?

Tried iGo primo tonight. Worked great after your memory fix. tomtom 7.9 launches but doesn't seem to find any maps. spent ages trying to no avail.

Not tried any others. The fix on iGo was almost instant. Whats the difference between primo and non primo?

Guide to Binatone devices

Don't know if you saw the above guide so i linked to it.

With Tomtom you need to pick a compatible map, use the guide in post #1 of the all new maps thread in the Tomtom section, see what map feature set is compatible with the far right column, (PDA & PNA WM, WINCE) If you choose the wrong map, It won't be found!

Tomtom map labels are in this format: AAA.BBBB, Where AAA is the edition, 890 is current, 895 will be the next edition and BBBB is the feature set, A higher number here does not indicate a newer version. So for the UK for example you would select 890.4234 as it's the only one that's compatible AND has the meta code posted.

Having said that Tomtom does not work properly with WinCE 6 devices so if that's what your device is, I wouldn't bother with it.

iGO Primo 2.0 once setup and working properly with all the enhancements and TTS is in my opinion the best software by miles.

You can run anything from the navigation button on the default shell, but with systeminformation menus you must kill the default shell before you can see the new menu, You can now safely disable the shell so it goes straight into whatever app is installed on the SD card. Read my guide for more info.