iGPS360 module running on Wi-Fi only iPad

It was a long wait, but the Spirit jailbreak finally came out.

I have used Spirit to jailbreak my newly acquired Wi-Fi only iPad. Amazingly it took only 10-20 seconds or so. Really the fastest jailbreak I have ever seen.

I did a few things that everyone should consider when jailbreaking their iDevice:

1. For all new Apple devices it is crucial you save your SHSH blobs so that you can always revert back to an older firmware version in case Apple stops signing that older firmware version and will only allow you to restore/upgrade to the latest firmware version with iTunes.

You will need to do two things in order to save your SHSH blobs to your local computer (note that this is only required for newer iDevices like the iPhone 3Gs, the iPod touch 2G and the iPad):


• Get the ECID for your iDevice. You can find instructions for how to do this here. I used USBView (see the instructions in the link) to find the iPad ECID. Write it down and save it in a text file on your computer.


• Get the Firmware Umbrella and save your SHSH blobs to your local computer. You will need the ECID for this. I used Firmware Umbrella version 2.2.2. Instructions can be found in the link above.
I saved a version of the file using both Apple's server and Cydia's server. Using Cydia's server will make sure a copy of your blobs is saved on its servers as well for double safety.


2. Make sure you back up your iDevice before doing the jailbreak. Just open iTunes and right click on your iDevice and hit Backup.


3. If you wish to stay jailbroken for future firmware release, never just upgrade your firmware through iTunes without checking with the jailbreak Dev Teams whether the new firmware can still be jailbroken or not. Also, never arbitrarily upgrade iTunes; stay on the iTunes version that you currently have until the Dev Teams say it is OK to upgrade. I am currently using iTunes 9.1.0.79, but it seems 9.1.1 is working fine too.
   

That's it with respect to the jailbreak and then now the real news:

The iGPS360 module works flawlessly with the (Wi-Fi only) iPad.

As you can see from the picture above, I have installed all the major navigation apps on the iPad (they run in 2x screen mode) as well as xGPS and GPSSerial and things work as expected!

The Orange Gadgets store will be updated shortly so that you can select the iPad as well as ordering option when you add the iGPS360 to your shopping cart :-)

Due to the high charging voltage/current requirements of the iPad (yes, this thing eats current, hence Apple's new 2.1A/5.25V/10.5W iPad wall charger), the iGPS360 module requires a special USB cable when used with the iPad. These new USB cables are already in stock and will be available through the Orange Gadgets website as well.

Now let's wait for a nice dash-board mount for the iPad ;-)

GPSSerial version 1.3.3 update

A new post today with an update on the new GPSSerial v1.3.3. The last beta version of GPSSerial v1.3.2 fixed a lot of problems but there were still a few things left to be debugged.

In particular, the following specific fixes were made:

• The TomTom application would show a grey screen once in a while when not moving. This bug is now fixed and TomTom should work flawlessly. Most major AppStore navigation applications now work with the iGPS360 module. Customers have confirmed operation with Navigon, TomTom, Sygic, Magellan, NDrive and iGo and many more.


• GPSSerial is now also compatible with the built-in Google Maps application, just start it up and wait until you have a satellite lock and the Google Maps application will point to your current position. This can be useful for people who are connected to the internet while on the road (assuming you have an iPhone) and who don't want to spend any money on a paid navigation application from the AppStore.

The new version can be found in the regular place right here and until it becomes available on Cydia (not sure when) it will need to be installed manually as explained in the link above.

Feel free to leave any feedback on the new version either in the comments for this post or visit the GPSSerial forum with feedback or if you require help.

Enjoy!

Put to the test!

A brief update for today:

The four CNC machined housings arrived this week and all of them make a nice fit as you can see in the photo (I masked off the LED opening with some tape to simulate the lens effect as those lenses were to small to be CNC'ed). I have been in touch with the housing manufacturer this week as well to iron out the last details of the drawings. They will start cutting steel upcoming week! Once that is done, I will visit them to take a look at the molds before we get our first parts.

I built three additional GPS modules this week as well and the new upload tool for A-GPS data from the manufacturer seems to work a lot better now. After having uploaded the latest A-GPS data to each of the modules, I have performed open/clear sky testing with the modules and am very happy with the results! Typical time-to-first-fix (TTFF) with A-GPS enabled is ~10sec average on a cold start. Average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) is ~42dB (note that both the TTFF and SNR numbers are open/clear sky numbers and can vary in practice depending on surroundings and GPS satellite strength). Performance is thus very good for such a small unit! After the antenna tuning process, we might gain a little more on the SNR, but we will wait for those results first before concluding anything.

I also had to place a special purchase order (PO) for the high brightness/low current bi-color LEDs this week as they only had 200 in stock (delivery is scheduled for September 15, 2008). As I thought the green/orange color combination was a little too ordinary, I have chosen a blue/red LED which looks really cool. The blue LED will be on as power-on indicator and the red LED will flash when searching for satellites (it will be off after a GPS lock is found). So while searching for satellites, the combined blue/red LED will flash purple. Power consumption of the LED will be a little less than 1mA when the module is tracking. The rest of the module consumes ~36mA while tracking for a total of 37mA for tracking.

Power consumption, size and performance have all been traded off against each other, but it looks like the final results are pretty good in my humble opinion!

The estimated-time-of-arrival (ETA) for the modules is still set for the end of September. Let's hope there will be no further delays; thanks everyone for hanging in there!