Limited number of iGPS360 modules left

With the upcoming Holiday Season, the year 2009 is coming to an end.

Orange Gadgets will be closed between Christmas and New Year's Day and the last day for shipping packages this year will be on Wednesday December 23, 2009.

I will be taking a break from December 24, 2009 through January 1, 2009. During that period, you will still be able to place an order online, but packages won't be shipped till the new year. Although I will be around, email will most likely not be answered during that period either, unless I have time to spare ;-)

If you are still looking for a present for friends or family, the iGPS360 makes a great gift. Of the second production run that is coming to an end now, there are less than 75 units left as of today. If you are planning on getting a unit before the end of the year, you will have to be quick...

I would like to thank the community and all Orange Gadgets customers for all their support during the past year+ since the establishment of Orange Gadgets. Thank you for all your business, support and feedback.

It has been a great and fulfilling experience for myself and I am looking forward to what the New Year will bring for all of us!

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

PmgR

Navigon, TomTom, the iGPS360 and... debugging GPSSerial

Link for iPhone and iPod Touch users here

This is a post that describes how GPSSerial was debugged to fix the heading bug that appeared in Navigon and TomTom.

As you can imagine, it is very time-consuming to get on the road and do real-life GPS testing every time the code for GPSSerial is updated. As such I decided to record the output of the iGPS360 module to a file while driving my car on a route that was known to have heading problems in Navigon.

What you see in the above video is an in-door setup where the iPod Touch is connected through an interface board to my desktop computer. The desktop computer in turn plays back the on-the-road recorded GPS trace through the interface board. This setup is a huge time-saver when it comes to testing bug-fixes in the GPSSerial source code.

In the course of the debugging process, I also updated the iPhone Toolchain on the desktop PC (running cygwin) to firmware version 3.1.x as I first thought that the bug was related to the Toolchain version. This was quite an experience in itself: not without problem; although the instructions at Saurik's page are very good, they are not complete, and neither up-to-date (yet) for the 3.1.x firmware.

After having spent a lot of time on testing and debugging the code, all the work has finally paid off: the latest GPSSerial version is finally working correctly with Navigon. The incorrect-heading bug is now fixed and the red GPS bar does no longer appear when you are not moving.

You can download and install the latest GPSSerial version by following the instructions on the Orange Gadgets site here.

The new version should hopefully be available through Cydia soon as well.

Try it out and feel free to leave your feedback in the comments.

Enjoy! PmgR

iGPS360 Tip and Trick

If your iPhone or iPod Touch is no longer new and fresh out of the box, you might have noticed that the fit for accessories that you plug into dock connector becomes a bit loose over time (this is also the case for the iGPS360 module).

Today's post is a tip and trick to tighten up your iGPS360 module (and whatever other accessories or 30-pin USB cables you have). This seems to work very well.

Get a razor blade edge/corner or any other pointed thin and sharp blade edge, like one of those small utility knives or a Stanley blade.

On the dock connector on the module (or any other accessory), you can see a metal cover (see the photo above). The cover has eight slits in it (four on the top and four on bottom; not counting the two outer ones on the bottom). These eight slits create four metal tabs in the metal.

Over time when you plug the iGPS360 module (or any other accessory accessory) a lot in and out of your iPhone or iPod Touch, these tabs get pushed in and the female dock connector on your iPhone/iPod Touch also becomes a bit looser. As such the press fit of the module into the iPhone/iPod becomes looser.

In order to tighten the connection up again, stick the knife edge/point carefully a little bit under each of those four tabs and lift them up a tiny bit, see the above photo. Don't do it to much otherwise it is going to be really hard to get the module/acessory back into your iPhone/iPod. And just as a general warning, be careful no to break those tabs.

This trick will make the connection (very) tight again. Just make sure not to over-do it or break those tabs. You only need to move them back up a tiny bit. Don't make it too tight either. If it seems too tight, very carefully slide the accessory back into your iPhone/iPod very slowly, wiggling it slowly left and right until it is fully seated.

I have performed this trick on one of my older iGPS360 modules and my oldest 2G iPhone (which was a bit loose) and I have a nice and tight fit again now.

If this works for you, post your results :-)

GPS module working with iPod Touch 2G

With this post I am planning on regularly making posts on the blog again :-)

After a rough start of the year, today it is time for some great news!

Just last Saturday, January 31st, I got an email from Matt, an Australian customer who ordered the iGPS360 module a little before Christmas.

Matt has an iPod Touch 2G and ordered the iGPS360 module in anticipation of a jailbreak for the iPod Touch 2G, which was not available at the time he ordered.

Matt send me the above picture, showing the xGPS software running on his iPod Touch 2G. You can see the iGPS360 module in the upper right corner.

Matt used Redsn0w from the iPhone Dev Team to jailbreak his iPod Touch 2G. It is certainly not as easy a jailbreak as for the old iPod Touch and iPhone, but it certainly works as Matt's photo shows. For more information on how to jailbreak your iPod Touch 2G, please visit www.redsn0w.com.

The jailbreak is a tethered jailbreak, which means that you will need the assistance of a computer if you want/need to reboot your iPod Touch 2G for some reason.

Matt had upgraded the firmware on his iPod Touch 2G to firmware 2.2.1 before using the jailbreak. This thus also confirms that the iGPS360 module works on the new 2.2.1 firmware.

Matt has also posted his success of the jailbreak on iPodTouchFans, so if you are interested in seeing how many people are jailbreaking their iPod Touch 2G with Redsn0w and their success rate, take a look at that forum.

Matt, thanks for your feedback and great photo contribution!

The backlog has cleared!

We are happy to announce that we have cleared the backlog for paid orders. What you see in the photo are the shipping records of the first four weeks of shipping. We have shipped 352 orders now (close to 400 modules).

Today, I have taken a day off from shipping packages... a nice break. Not really a day off though, as I had to meet with the PCB board manufacturer to streamline the future production process a little better so as to free up some of my time. All remaining PCB boards of the first production run have been assembled and are ready to be tested and put into their housings.

For all of the units that have been shipped so far, I have personally put the PCB board inside of the module's housing. For the remaining units, I am transferring this task to the PCB manufacturer who is going to do this so-called full "box-build". They will first be assembling a test-run of 20 modules and if approved after inspection, they will have the green light to do the full "box-build" for all remaining GPS modules of the first production run. In that way I will have some more time available to do other things.

Testing and quality control of all "box-build" modules will still be performed by myself for the remainder of the first productions run. These tasks will eventually also be transferred to the manufacturer for subsequent production runs. So tell your iPhone/iPod friends that you know a good Christmas gift :-)

Talking about the Holiday Season, the end of coming week will be Thanksgiving here in the US (aka Turkey Day) and I have decided to take two days of rest on Thursday and Friday (so if I don't immediately respond to your emails or questions, you know why :-)

And lastly, I am still trying to get in touch with a few customers who have not responded to my emails. If your order or customer number is below, please contact us as soon as possible at orders@orangegadgets.com to resolve issues with the shipping address and to avoid further delay:

1. Order id: 413, Customer id: 305
   
2. Order id: 865, Customer id: 609
   

For all technical support for the module, please email support@orangegadgets.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

I have finally had some time to write up the answers to a few frequently asked questions (FAQ) on how to get up and running as quickly as possible with your new iGPS360 module.

The FAQ is posted on the main Orange Gadgets website and you can access the FAQ by clicking on "FAQ" in the top menu bar or by clicking here.

Another question that has come up repeatedly is the security certificate warning that appears in certain cases up when you try to access the Orange Gadgets Online Store. Regarding the certificate error, you can "add an exception" or click "accept" or something similar with respect to the certificate security notice. The certificate is from Globat.com who is our web-provider so it is perfectly fine to add the exception (your security is not compromised). Besides that, payment for your order is processed on PayPal's website (not Orange Gadgets) so ordering is very safe. We are currently in the process of getting our own certificate such that the warning will disappear in the near future.

Regarding filling paid orders, here is the latest update.

We have currently shipped 277 orders (over 300 modules). We have completely processed and shipped all orders placed up through 10/30/2008 with the exception of the orders listed at the end of this post and 5 orders placed on 10/30/2008 that still need to be shipped.

Upcoming week will be our fourth week of shipping and we expect to have fully cleared the backlog by the end of this week. Thanks for being patience and sticking with us through these busy past weeks.

I also wanted to make Italian customers aware of the fact that the Italian post office seems to be randomly charging customers additional fees. Some Italian customers have reported a 15 dollar fee, two customers reported a 20 Euro fee and one customer a 22 Euro fee.

The category the GPS module is classified under is HS tariff number 852691 which is duty free (at least here in the US), but since it is a international tariff number code I would expect it to be duty free in every country that uses HS tariff codes.

I suggest that Italian customers inform themselves of the customs regulations for Italy and in particular with respect to the above HS tariff number and border fees. You should be able to find this information online or by calling your local customs office. The fees the Italian post office is charging are excessive. In case the additional fees are legal, note that according to the Terms of Service of Orange Gadgets website, the customer is responsible for paying any import duties and taxes on his order.

Lastly, we are trying to get in touch with a few customers who have not responded to our emails. If your order or customer number is below, please contact us as soon as possible at orders@orangegadgets.com to resolve issues with the shipping address/method and to avoid further delay:

1. Order id: 413, Customer id: 305
   
2. Order id: 626, Customer id: 438
   

For all technical support for the the module, please email support@orangegadgets.com

Diligently making progress...

This is the latest update on clearing the backlog for placed and paid orders. We are happy to announce that we are swiftly catching up on the backlog.

As of today, we have shipped 195 orders (over 200 modules have been shipped).

We have completely processed all orders that were placed on:

• Orders for 10/16/2008: all orders shipped.
  
• Orders for 10/17/2008: all orders shipped.
  
• Orders for 10/18/2008: all orders shipped.
  

If you have placed an order on any of the above dates and not received a shipping notice by email (check your spam-box as well), please contact us as soon as possible (please include your Order id and Customer id).

The following orders are in the process of being handled next and we expect them to be shipped by the end of this week (so please keep an eye on your mailbox in case we have questions on your order):

• Orders for 10/19/2008: 15 orders still to be filled.
  
• Orders for 10/20/2008: 17 orders still to be filled.
  
• Orders for 10/21/2008: 7 orders still to be filled.
  
• Orders for 10/22/2008: 9 orders still to be filled.
  
• Orders for 10/23/2008: 9 orders still to be filled.
  
• Orders for 10/24/2008: 5 orders still to be filled.
  
• Orders for 10/25/2008: 5 orders still to be filled.
  

We expect to have filled ALL paid orders up till 11/09/2008 by the end of next week.

If you placed an order, please make sure to also check your spam-box/bulk mailbox as sometimes our emails (sent from orders@orangegadgets.com) end up there for no good reason. It is best if you can white-list any emails you get from the above address.

We are also still trying to get in touch with a few customers who have not responded to our emails. If your order or customer number is below, please contact us as soon as possible at orders@orangegadgets.com to resolve issues with the shipping address/method and to avoid further delay:

1. Order id: 395, Customer id: 294
   

For all technical support for the the module, please email support@orangegadgets.com

Software compatibility with RoadMap

Link for iPhone and iTouch users here.


Before we discuss the video, let me first mention that we hit 2000 votes yesterday!

This is again great news and I will update you on the manufacturing progress in a separate post (I have been very busy taking care of all the logistics behind the scenes and acquiring quotes for the manufacturing now that NDAs have been signed).

The video above shows a demonstration of the open source software RoadMap. This open source software was ported to the iPhone by Morten Bek. Of course it is a work in progress and not everything is perfect yet and neither are all features ported, but at least it shows the concept and future potential: 3D real time location mapping (with local maps on your iPhone/iTouch; no need to connect to the internet) and hopefully in the (near) future full voice-assisted navigation support.

I was very impressed by what Morten has accomplished so far!

It seems there are two branches of the RoadMap software. The one that Morten is working on and the one that Ehud Shabtai is working on. The second branch is a little further ahead maybe in terms of features, see this video, but unfortunately the language and Wiki for that branch is in Hebrew and it only comes with the map of Israel. Hopefully the two branches will be able to join efforts and converge into one great iPhone/iTouch application.

For Morten's branch, I downloaded all the maps for California from here and I can now locate myself on my iPhone without the need for the Maps.app or internet connection.

The video shows the main aspects of the RoadMap application:

• Arrow icon at left top: this switches between a fixed map view or a rotating map view. In the last case, your driving direction is always pointed upward and the map will rotate along with you.


• Satellite icon: its color varies, green for GPS lock and red for no GPS signal. Pressing the icon will move the center of the map to your current GPS location.


• Satellite screen: provides a view of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) for each satellite, longitude, latitude, elevation, speed, etc. This screen is accessible through the left button on the menu bar in the bottom (hard to see in the video)


• 2D/3D icon: pressing this icon will switch between a 2D view of the map and a more navigation like 3D view of the map (see end of video)


• Zoom in/out icons: pressing these buttons will change the scale of the map accordingly.


• There are some more buttons in the bottom bar, but not all of them are working. With one of them, you can email your currently logged GPS route to your friends.
  

Unfortunately, my video recording ended abruptly as the camera ran out of memory, so the 3D view of the map (which I think is really neat) is not that long. But I hope you get an idea of what it looks like.

Warning.....

That time has come again..... Apple's 2.0 firmware upgrade will be out shortly, so I would like to issue a warning....

To make it clear to everyone, if you intend on using the GPS module on your iPhone or iTouch, make sure NOT TO UPGRADE your iPhone and iTouch firmware for the time being. The same goes for iTunes. Leave it alone till it is confirmed that it is safe to upgrade.

In order to communicate with the GPS module, a jailbroken iPhone or iTouch is required. Upgrading to Apple's official 2.0 firmware will put your iPhone/iTouch back into a sealed environment again until the iPhone Dev Teams comes up with another jailbreak.

So if you would like to keep your options open, play it safe. Leave your current firmware alone and wait till the unlock development teams give you the green light.