[geehils]

Got a 5" Chinese GPS which works a treat for the road. Boots up with Media Tek on the screen and the nav programme it called Navi and the programme it uses is called iGO8.exe.

Evaluating Skydemon on my PC (looks fantastic by the way) and tried getting it working on the GPS, but having gone through the process (and I've read the Alert thread carefully) at the end of it I just get a dialogue box on the GPS which says 'Please set GPS path first OK' .

This is what I have done to get to that stage, can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong.

On the PC, with the trial version of SkyDemon running:
Tools
Instal SkyDemon Mobile
Instal SkyDemon Mobile to a new device
Instal via a secure Data card
Delet SkyDemon folder so it goes straight to F:/
Tick UK charts
OK

On the SD card
Copy the Skydemon.exe file
Rename the copy 'FreedomCE.exe'

Stick SD card into Chinese GPS and turn on device
Media Tek title appears on screen
Screen turns to 4x3 icons and nav bar on LHS (Navi, Music, Desk)
Click on Navi and get the dialogue box mentioned above!

My PC sees the GPS as a drive and reads the files on the card in the unit, nothing else. Take the card out and the drive shows zero files.

I'm pretty Cr*p with computers, if one of the more PC literate forumites could tell me where I'm going wrong, it would be much appreciated - thanks.

[trukkakhan]

Hi geehils,

I put SkyDemon Mobile on my 4.3 " Chinese unit.

The version of SkyDemon I have on is one of the earlier ones .

I just put the memory card in the PC card reader slot and dragged / dropped the files over to the card from a folder on the PC that had the SkyDemon files.

I included ( on the memory card ) a line in a text file that put an icon on the screen when unit turned on (only when the SkyDemon card was put in the unit). Clicking the icon started SkyDemon.

Standby and I will dig it out and post it here.

Regards

Alex

[JonathanB]

Or take a look in the settings on the device to see what file it looks for when you run the navigation application. Either change the setting to SkyDemon.exe (if you don't run anything else) or rename the copy of SkyDemon.exe to whatever the setting is.

[trukkakhan]

geehils

If your GPS unit came with a road maps satnav on an SD card ( as mine did ) then there may be a text file that puts the satnav icon on the start up screen. I was advised to make a copy of that file( mine was called addons ) and adapt it - mine now is as follows:


[modules]
CE_EXP = "", "\\windows\\explorer.exe"
SKYDEMON = "", "\\Storage Card\\SkyDemon\\SkyDemon.exe"

The first line creates an icon which allows me to explore the device and the second creates a SkyDemon icon which starts SkyDemon

My SD memory card ( for SkyDemon ) has a text file called addons and a SkyDemon folder ( this has the data,routes,logs and three .dll files ) As mentioned before mine is an earlier evaluation version 9.13 - it does not time out though does not have the bells and whistles of newer versions. The road maps are on a separate card.


Microsoft Active Sync should be used if connecting the GPS to PC via USB cable - I just put the card in the SD slot of the PC - though a USB card holder/ adapter might do the same job.

Regards

Alex

[DavidC]

I seem to have been through this setup issue myself recently too.

You don't need to rename any files on the mobile device itself with the latest software version. It doesn't matter if you have though

Switch the unit on, from the main menu sweep round to settings, then Navipath (option box on top right). Select the sky demon.exe file or whatever you named it to. Then when you select navigation from the main startup screen you should be in business.

I've also found you don't need to remove the SD card to download data, you can use the USB cable instead.

You may want to buy a separate SDcard for sky demon although the one supplied is large enough to hold navigo and skydemon together, but perhaps not the flight logs too. You can then swap between Europran road satnav and sky demon if required.

Enjoy, it's a really great solution.
Last point - I needed to set the GPS inside Skydemon settings to com7 19200

[JonathanB]

DavidC, it really depends on what the base software on the unit is and they're all different! That said the process is fairly standard for all of them once you can find the menu option.

[nje]

Geehils, You say your PC sees your device as a drive and if the card is out it sees nothing. It might not be activsynced properly? If you go to 'settings' on your device should see 'USB' click on that, it should give you the choice of 'Mass Storage' or 'Activsync', yours may need changing from mass storage, mine did.

[wessex boy]

I bought one of these 5" devices too, but am struggling to get Memory Map running on it, I can get out to Windows CE and run the install from the PC, but when I then go to licence it, MM can't see the device?
I have also tried copying the files from my old HTC TD phone onto the SD card, but to no avail.

Basically I can get MM to run on the device, but it won't load the maps up

Ony ideas please? Should I upgrade to the new version of MM with the new licencing regime?

[geehils]

Thanks all for your input, appreciated.

Neil, bizarre as it might sound I can't find any way to get to the devices 'Settings' on the start menu to get to activsync, all the icons refer to the programmes that can be run; Navi, Music, Photo view etc. The only settings that I can get to are within the GPS programme which is called Nav N Go iGo8, 8.3.2. 83157 April 3 2009

The device isn't recognised by Windows mobile either, when connected to my PC is just comes up as a USB storage device, listing the files on the SD card - take that out and it shows nothing.

Alex, I found a text file in the igo8 folder (the route planning/GPS software on the machine), a text doc called sys. The first few lines as follows:
[interface]
skin="ui_igo8"
resolution_dir="480_272"
vga=0
maxzoom2d=6000000
minzoom2d=150
show_exit=1

[rawdisplay]
class="landscape"
screen_x=480
screen_y=272

Is this the file you are referring to?

Do I just paste the lines you suggested below, including the ", at the top?

[modules]
CE_EXP = "", "\\windows\\explorer.exe"
SKYDEMON = "", "\\Storage Card\\SkyDemon\\SkyDemon.exe"

David C, when you say you had to set the GPS inside Skydemon settings to com7 19200, could you please explain how you did this. Within the GPS settings on the device I can change the port and Baud Rate, are you suggesting that I change these to Port 7 Baud Rate 19200 (which the device will accept)?

Sorry about all this, when it comes to 'Teckky' stuff, treat me like an 8 year old, I'm unpatroniseable - I can follow instructions, but don't have any real understanding of how these things work

Regards

Jonathan

[trukkakhan]

geehils

copy/ paste all three lines starting with [ modules] and all the "" etc on to the memory card then put it in the machine and turn it on. See if any icons appear. We assume the unit is running a version of windows mobile - ver 1.5 at least I believe.

alex

[Neil MacG]

A couple of things that may help (or not)

Most of these chinese GPS/SATNAV devices are running Windows CE V5 or 6. This is not the same as Windows Mobile and is quite a bit more restrictive compared to WM. (Not sure if ActiveSync runs against Windows CE)

If your PC is Windows 7 then it wont run ActiveSync (as I've found to my own cost). It runs a different utility (Windows Mobile ?) and whether it sees it as a device it can sync with depends on if there are any Win7 drivers for that device. Mine isn't even seen as a storage device.

Neil

[Paul_Sengupta]

Wessex Chap - there's an old version of Memory Map you can load straight onto a CE device. The downside though is that you can only run the old format maps, not the new digital rights ones I believe. It might be worth a try. I have one new map/new version of MM but I don't know if I could make it work on my Navigo so I haven't tried loading it. Rumour was that the new version of MM won't work on generic CE devices, but...someone PMed me to say they knew a way to make it work.

Have a read through this thread and see if there are any pointers:

http://forums.flyer.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=49610

And perhaps here:

http://navigo.wikispaces.com/

The old version looks like 5.2.7.

[Paul_Sengupta]

Could have been 5.1.3...

http://www.memory-map.co.uk/downloads/mmv5/mmv5_os_513.exe

[wessex boy]

Thanks Paul will take a look, am running 5.3.2 at the moment, so will try the older version on the CE device

[geehils]

Hi All

Brilliant help, thank you all,

I contacted SkyDemon and they tell me, “Regrettably, we actually have very little in-house expertise when it comes to getting SkyDemon running on the myriad WinCE GPS units out there. Thankfully, we have an online discussion forum full of people who know a lot about doing it, specifically with SkyDemon, so that should be a great resource for you (at least I hope so). It's at the URL below”.

http://www.skydemon.aero/forums/Forum5-1.aspx

The forum looks interesting, but the comments went way above my head, like reading ‘Klingon’.

However, piecing together bits from the comments on this thread, I’ve managed to get SkyDemon running on my device, with the exception of the maps!

I discovered the following; some of this repeats what others have said, so I am repeating it hoping that it is of help to others in my situation coming fresh to this thread.

It’s a bit long, apologies………..

This is the sequence I used (I’ve included the bit about finding out about the details of my device as there seem to be quite a few options. If yours is like mine, this works. If it is different it might not).

1. From the boot up page of the device, dragging any of the icons downwards, revealed more (Might seem silly, but I discovered this completely my accident and wasn’t aware that it could do this).
2. I clicked the Win CE icon which told me that the version was Windows CE v5.00 (Build 14.00 on May 11 2010)
3. I then clicked system info, which told me:
a. ROM versionV.13M.000000.100828.128M
b. APP Version V1.0-20-SD-ABF-en-10.09.13
c. System ID 0018E420 – 10000000, 00000000 - 000015D8
1. I then clicked Navi and from the navigation menu clicked ‘Settings’ went to the second page and clicked ‘About’ it told me the software was Nav N Go iGo8, 8.3.2. 83157, April 3 2009
2. I went back to the main menu and changed the USB setting to MS Activsync and connected the device to my PC (which runs Vista) so that the two computers recognised each other.
3. I then put a blank SD Card in the device
4. I then downloaded, from the trial version of their SkyDemon from my PC:
Tools
Install SkyDemon Mobile
Install SkyDemon Mobile to a new device
Install via a mobile device centre
Ticked the charts I wanted downloaded (in my case just the UK charts)
Software downloads
5. Disconnected device from PC, went back to the device menu and clicked ‘Navi Path’, clicked on icon to the right of the path, clicked on SDMMC, selected Skydemon
6. Went back to the main menu and clicked on ‘Navi’ and the programme runs, but………………………………it tells me no maps have been downloaded.

So, that’s my final question (hopefully).

Having downloaded the programme ticking the map box in the process, how do I get my portable device to recognise them and associate them with the programme?

Thanks again.

Regards

Jonathan