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

Officially confirmed: iGPS360 works with firmware 3.1.2

This is a brief post to update everyone on the iGPS360 module and firmware 3.1.2.

As had already been reported by quite a few users, the iGPS360 works fine with the new 3.1.2 Apple firmware (thank you everyone, for bringing this confirming news early for everyone).

I have finally had some time myself to play around with an an iPhone 3G running firmware 3.1.2 (jailbroken by blackra1n and unlocked by blacksn0w) and I can confirm that the iGPS360 module works fine on the new firmware.

Maybe someone can also confirm that the module works on an iPod Touch 3G (I don't have one of those).

The FAQ and product description on the Orange Gadgets website has now also been updated with this information.

If you feel anything else needs to be updated or added to the website, please let me know.

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 :-)

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

First 120 modules have shipped

This is a brief update to let you know we are working hard on clearing the backlog on all placed orders.

As of Tuesday November 5, 2008, we have shipped ~120 modules (a total of 114 orders) out of the 320 modules that have been paid for.

Based on the number of modules shipped since last week, we can say that on average we are able to handle/ship about 20 modules per day. As such it will take another 2-3 weeks till we catch up on all orders that have been placed till now. For more specific details, please read on:

All people that had signed up on the pre-order list before the online store opened (it opened on October 16, 2008) and who have paid for their order before our first ship date (which was October 27, 2008) have had their order processed and shipped.

We have completely processed all orders that were placed on October 16, 2008.

• Orders for 10/16/2008: 12 orders placed, 12 orders shipped.

The following orders are our next priority:

• Orders for 10/17/2008: 50 orders placed, 31 orders shipped, 19 orders still to be filled.


• Orders for 10/18/2008: 67 orders placed, 20 orders shipped, 2 orders canceled, 45 orders still to be filled.


• Orders for 10/19/2008: 51 orders placed, 21 orders shipped, 1 order canceled, 29 orders still to be filled.


• Orders for 10/20/2008: 31 orders placed, 12 orders shipped, 1 order canceled, 18 orders still to be filled.


• Orders for 10/21/2008: 19 orders placed, 12 orders shipped, 7 orders still to be filled.

To fill all orders that were placed on the above dates, will take a little over a week.

If you placed an order on October 16, 2008 and have not received a notice that your order has shipped, please email us at orders@orangegadgets.com.

For all other orders, please remain patient. Once we finish the next couple of dates, we will make another entry on the blog to keep you updated.

Also, if you have run out of patience and would like a refund, please contact us directly at orders@orangegadgets.com. It is quickest to resolve this directly with us as we can refund your money the same day instead of going through PayPal.

We are also trying to get in touch with a few customers who have not responded to our emails (make sure to white-list the orangegadgets.com domain). If your order or customer number is below, please contact us as soon as possible at orders@orangegadgets.com to resolve some issues with shipping:

1. Order id: 395, Customer id: 294
   
2. Order id: 245, Customer id: 191
   

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

Still counting...

We are still counting down...

Another week of hard work has passed and of course as usual there is the good news and the less good news. Let's get the less good news over first.

Last week I received a third sample set of the housing, expecting that this would be the last sample set before running the real production housings. Unfortunately, the housing was still not exactly as expected and more touch-up work needed to be done. The manufacturer promised to get new samples to me by past Thursday, but this did not happen. He told me on Friday noon that the mold was ready for sampling again, so I hope to get the fourth sample set on Monday. I will be on the phone with him first thing Monday morning for a status report. This will impact the ETA of October 15.

Now for the good news. On all other fronts things have been progressing very well!

I have received the first production sample boards back and all are fully functional! Production of the remaining boards is currently in full flow.

Regarding the online shopping cart, integration with the PayPal website took much more time than expected, but this morning I finally made a breakthrough and from the testing I have done so far, it looks like the shopping cart is now properly being transferred to PayPal.

Everyone who signed up on the pre-order list should be receiving an email later this week with an order-link to the online store. If you haven't signed up yet, now is the time to do it!

This week I have also been working on automated testing of the modules (every module is quality controlled before it is shipped). I have been working on hardware related to the testing as well as software. The photo above shows a test-board for simultaneous testing of 8 modules (if module through-put is not fast enough the test capacity of the board can be expanded). Besides electrical testing and visual inspection already done at the board fabrication and assembly house, complete functionality of the GPS module will be tested as well. This includes USB and dock connector interconnect functionality, back-up battery check, visual LED inspection, GPS check (TTFF and SNR) and A-GPS functionality.

In the meantime, let's keep our fingers crossed for the next sample set of the housing!

Countdown

It's been a while and you probably have been wondering what is going on. Well, here is the latest update:

• PCB panels/boards
  Last week I received the first PCB panel with 100 boards on it (see photo above). As some small changes were made compared to the previous revision, I wanted to make sure that the panels are fully functional before committing them to production. I separated two boards from the 100pcs panel and built a module with one of the GPS engines that I still had available. Everything turned out to be working great.
  


• GPS engines
  The GPS engines also arrived last week and in order to make sure everything is OK with them as well, I assembled the second PCB board (from above) with the new production GPS engine. And guess what, everything is working as it is supposed to work.


• Antennas
  The antennas shipped a bit earlier as expected and arrived just today. I will do an inspection of them and then they will be delivered to production.


• Housing
  Last Friday, I also got the second set of samples of the housing. The logos are nicely touched up now and have a smoother finish than the rest of the housing, so they look really nice. Some other small things were not taken care of properly however and the mold will need another round of touch-ups. I am currently waiting for this new set of samples (expected tomorrow) before I can give the final approval to run production quantities.


• Online store/shopping cart
  I have almost completed the online shopping cart, but still have some issues with properly integrating PayPal into the checkout procedure. I hope to fix those in the upcoming few days. Once that is done, the shopping cart will go online. For all of you who are curious, I will keep you guessing at what other items will be in the store besides the GPS module...


• Shipping and handling
  I have also been getting ready to prepare for shipping of the modules to you. It's amazing how much overhead is involved in all this, from searching for envelops, labels, postage equipment, printing supplies to actually ordering all of them, both for domestic US shipping and international shipping. I hope I have got everything covered now.
  

The first fully assembled production parts are expected to become available next week. After that, each module will be fully tested before it is shipped out. The estimated date for shipping of the first modules will be around October 15.

As soon as modules come out of production and are tested, they will be shipped subsequently. Note that testing and shipping is going to take up most of my time starting next week, thus please understand that there can be some lag between the time you place your order and the time the module is actually shipped (as tested modules become available bit by bit from production). Once your order ships, you will receive a confirmation email.

Paid orders will be handled in sequence of how they are stored in the database. As of today, there will be enough units available in this first production run for everyone who has currently signed up on the pre-order list.

Housing mold and first production parts

On Wednesday I went to inspect the first production parts of the housing. I got a chance to take a few pictures of the production mold (see photo above). It's quite interesting to see how injection molded parts are made. The top and bottom of the picture show the housing bottom and top imprints on one side of the mold and the center circle is the feeding tube for the ABS plastic.

The manufacturer made about 25 sample parts for me to inspect and it looks like the housings came out very well. A few minor touch-ups on the mold itself are needed to perfect things a bit, but overall the parts already look very good (see picture below; you can click on it to zoom in a bit; due to the lighting condition of the photo, the zoom-in looks a little grainy). The eventual parts will be a matt over-all finish with a shiny imprint of the logos, just like the back of your iPhone.



I took five iGPS360 module boards with me to make sure all of them would fit the housings. Guess what.... all of them fit in perfectly so luckily no changes are required for PCB placement. I guess the time on housing design was well spent!

What else has been going on?

I have been working on getting the online shopping cart ready so you will be able to place your order pretty soon. You will be able to make payment through PayPal either with a PayPal account, or if you don't have a PayPal account, the PayPal site will give you the option to directly pay with your credit/debit card.

Regarding the iGPS360 module itself, the GPS engines are shipping next week and the tuned antennas the week thereafter. The PCB boards are expected back September 23 after which I will do verification testing before committing them to the reflow process which is scheduled for September 25. The assembled boards are expected back on October 8 so no change in ETA :)

Another puzzle...

Things have been a little slow this week. The GPS modules are still at the antenna house for antenna tuning and the expected date of arrival of the test results is scheduled for September 8th. As it looks now, things are going to be delayed a bit because of this :(

On the upside of this, I have had some time to relax a bit (definitely needed) and play around some more with the 2.0 Toolchain. I managed to compile a GUI app for the iPhone with the 2.0 Toolchain. I can tell you, it is quite a time-sink not having a Mac OS X platform with the proper tools to write iPhone apps. I am seriously considering getting an Intel Mac to do all the software development. Anyone out there have a spare one sitting around... :-o

Anyway, as we will pretty much be waiting this week for the test results, I decided to give you another puzzle to kill some time.... what could it be that is in the photo?

Confirmed: serial port working on firmware 2.0.1

Link for iPhone and iTouch users here


Last week I sent four GPS modules to the GPS vendor to do some final testing and antenna tuning. So while waiting till we hear back from them, I have had some free time to spend on software.

The first thing I have done is made myself familiar with the WinPwn 2.0.0.4 tool out there and it seems to work pretty well. I have used it to:

• Upgrade a 1.1.3 iPhone to 1.1.4
• Upgrade a 1.0.2 iPhone to 2.0.1
• Pwn a 1.1.4 iPod Touch, staying at 1.1.4

It's a little tricky as the process of things you need to do to upgrade to 1.1.4 and to 2.0.1 is different. Also, for upgrading to 1.1.4, you don't need to put your iPhone/iPod into DFU mode when restoring your custom firmware. It actually has to be regular restore mode; you will end up with an error if you try to use DFU mode. For upgrading to 2.0.1, DFU mode has to be used however when restoring the custom firmware. For upgrading to 2.0/2.0.1, I have found the manual here quite useful.

I have also used the command line version of QuickWpn and this seems to work as well (it is for jailbbreaking only). This tool is good to use on an iPod Touch as it is very fast and doesn't require a custom firmware (you can't unlock your iPhone with it though, only jailbreak).

So after I installed 2.0.1, it was time to install the 2.0 Toolchain on my desktop running cygwin. Saurik has put out a very good manual for doing this. But be aware, it is not a simple procedure. You have to understand what you are doing and even then it might take you a couple of tries to get everything right. For the required iPhone/iPod filesystem, it is best to get this from the iPhone/iPod itself (make a tar-ball as this keeps the symbolic links). All the Mac OS X 10.5 SDK stuff comes from the MacOSX10.5.pkg file in the iPhone OS 2.0 SDK dmg here, and you will need a bunch of other Apple sources that come from the Mac OS X 10.5.3 Darwin sources here. You can also do some more reading on The iPhone Wiki for Toolchain 2.0.

I will probably write up the procedure up on a Wiki sometime later as I took notes of everything I did. It took me three days to complete the process and I have learned quite a lot from it.

Another option is to install the 2.0 Toolchain directly on your iPhone. This can be done from the 2.0 Toolchain BigBoss entry on Cydia (this also installs the 'make' utility). Also make sure to read the instructions there. These same instructions apply to the desktop Toolchain as well, except you will have to adapt the path names to your local environment.

Also, once your application is on the iPhone/iPod Touch, it needs to be code-signed, otherwise it won't run. Don't try to first run your compiled application before code-signing it. If you do, code-signing won't work either. You can find more information on code-signing here.

I thus ported my GPS command line utility that I used on 1.1.x before to 2.0.1 and tried it out on the 2.0.1 firmware. The video shows the result: there are no issues with accessing the NMEA data that the GPS module sends to the iPhone.

So this confirms that the GPS module will work on the new 2.0/2.0.1 firmware.

Just beware that there is no 2.0/2.0.1 version of the previously discussed GPS software packages (xGPS, RoadMap) currently available, but hopefully these will be available soon.

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.

Simplified housing design

This week has been a very busy week. What you see above is a simplified housing design for which it will be cheaper to make an injection mold than for the first design. This is important as we are talking about relatively small number of volumes for injection molding (a couple of thousand) and the mold-making cost will need to be kept as low as possible so as not to drive up the price of the module. An alternative to traditional injection molding is rapid injection molding. I will need to look at both options to find out which one gives the cheapest price per unit.

For this latest housing design, the USB connector has been moved to the bottom side of the module. I have updated the PCB layout accordingly. The size of the housing is 26mm x 22.2mm x 9mm.

I have started working pretty much full-time on this project since July 1st. I have drafted up a project schedule for getting the module into production. Quite a few things need to be synchronized in terms of time-line. Here is what currently has been accomplished or is still in the works:

• NDA's have been put in place with various contract manufacturers (CM) for both the PCB assembly and the housing.
  
• The PCB has been designed and is waiting for feedback from the CM in order to determine manufacturability (1-2 weeks; we will be going into the second week). The PCB design might have to be tweaked after we get feedback from the CM. This process is called design for manufacturability (DFM).
  
• After the DFM is completed, a few final prototypes need to be built and sent to the CM (2 weeks).
  
• A few prototype housings also need to be built/machined and sent to the CM (3-4 weeks).
  
• GPS antennas need to be built (1 week setup + 3 week lead-time).
  
• GPS chip needs to be manufactured (4 weeks).
  
• Bill of materials (BOM) needs to be sourced. Some parts have a lead-time (up to 3 weeks).
• Housings need to be produced by injection molding at CM (no time-line available yet from the CM for this).
  
• After all this is completed, usually an engineering pilot build is done for design verification and after that a production pilot build.
• Test procedures need to be implemented and test fixtures designed and put in place (4 weeks). This includes both testing of the PCB as well as a final test of the performance of each GPS module.

As you can see, quite a lot of things need to be managed and synchronized. But in order to bring you the best working GPS product out there for your iPhone and iTouch, no corners can be cut.

I will keep you posted as things progress :).

First design of the housing

Top view:

Bottom view:

I have completed a first draft design of the housing. Here are a few comment on the housing:

1. Take a close look at the Apple design of your dock connector. I have managed to take that connector apart without destroying it. It's a pretty sleek design, consisting only of two parts: a sleeve that goes around the connector and a cap that slides over the connector and inside of the sleeve. I have made the housing for the GPS module in a similar rounded/flat shape as the Apple sleeve. Apple's sleeve is 26.1mm x 9mm x 5.6mm (width x length x thickness). The GPS module housing is 25.4mm x 22.2mm x 8mm. So it is a little thicker as the dock connector and about 2.5 times as long.


2. You can see the micro USB connector on the left side of the module (top view).This plug can either accept micro USB-A or micro USB-B cables. I have found a trust-worthy supplier for the micro USB-B cable and the cable will be included with the GPS module to make life easy :).


3. On the top view you see a small green light. This is the LED indicator that displays the status of the GPS module: flashing orange means the module is searching for a satellite lock. Once a lock is found, the indicator will light steady green. My plan is to make this indicator aperture similar to Apple's MagSafe power adapter that is used on the MacBook.

In the meantime, I am playing with some more ideas to make the housing design even simpler...

Board and chipset update

This is a brief note to give you an update on the board assembly that I started last week.

It turned out that the problem of the GPS chip not sending data was not in the GPS chip itself but caused by my own mistake (:-o). I was trying to get the module together quickly to test the new board, and in the hurry, I didn't solder one of the components onto the board, which left part of the GPS chip disconnected. After a very helpful phone conversation with the chip vendor, we traced the problem down in 5 minutes.

I guess sometimes it is indeed good to take a brief break from everything and let things come to peace; after I soldered the missing component onto the board, everything worked flawlessly :)

And I have another update for you: the next chip-sets that I ordered will be A-GPS enabled!

GPS and A-GPS

As a few questions were posted earlier regarding A-GPS (assisted GPS). I will try to outline the differences between regular GPS and A-GPS.

A GPS module is dependent on the GPS satellite signals to find a fix. The weaker this signal, the longer it will take to get a fix. If too weak, no fix will be found at all.

• When a GPS module is first turned on, it will usually have no satellite position data (ephemeris). This is what is called a cold start of the module (assuming the module does have a valid almanac stored). It is then necessary to place the module in open sky to have it acquire satellite data. This can take anywhere from a minute to several minutes, sometimes even longer, depending on the satellite signal strength, surroundings and the sensitivity of the GPS module. This sensitivity of the GPS module typically ranges from -140dBm to -146dBm for a cold start (the more negative the number, the more sensitive the module is).
  
• Once a GPS lock has been obtained, the GPS module will store this recent satellite data (ephemeris, almanac and time) in its memory and the module is said to be in tracking mode. When in tracking mode, the sensitivity increases as the module now has satellite data available. Typical tracking sensitivities are from -155dBm to -160dBm.
• If power is cycled off on the GPS module, then fairly immediately back on, the ephemeris data is still "fresh" (but the time might not be), and a GPS lock will be very quick since the GPS module does not have to collect new ephemeris data. This is called a warm start and the time to fix is typically less than half a minute.
• If the GPS module also still has an accurate time, the fix will be even faster (usually on the order of a second) and this is called a hot start.
  

In general, if ephemeris data is not available or outdated, obtaining a GPS lock can take some time. This is where A-GPS can help.

An A-GPS receiver can help getting ephemeris, almanac and time data from an assistance server. The assisting data can either be downloaded every time the GPS module is turned on (e.g. through the GSM network or WiFi) or in advance (e.g. once every 14 days at home from the internet). In the first case, ephemeris data, almanac and time are downloaded. In the latter case, differential almanac correction data is downloaded.

In order to be able to use A-GPS, we need three things:

1. A chip that is A-GPS compatible, i.e. the chipset allows for download of assisting data to the GPS module,
2. An assistance server from where the assisting data can be downloaded. Assistance servers are usually provided by GPS chipset manufacturers and need to be mirrored for client usage. (Apple is probably mirroring Broadcom's servers for use on the 3G iPhone).
   
3. A way to upload the A-GPS data to the GPS chipset. This can usually be done through a software download daemon which both acquires the data from the assistance server and sends it to the GPS chip at certain time intervals.

So A-GPS can make your GPS module find a faster lock, typically increasing the cold start sensitivity to about the level of a hot start.

It needs to be mentioned however that if a satellite signal is simply too weak (e.g. <-160dBm in parking structures or big concrete buildings), you won't see any improvement at all in the performance of your GPS module, even if you have an A-GPS enabled chipset as the GPS receiver won't be able to receive any signal even though you tell it were the satellites are.

Regarding the GPS chipset that I am using, the chipset can be enabled for A-GPS use and assistant data could be downloaded to the module through the serial port if the data can be obtained from an assistance server.

The Return of the Boards (part 3)

As you can see in the photo, the two boards that were sent out a while back have returned!

Also, before we discuss the boards, we hit 1500 votes this week as well (and that despite all the distracting iPhone 3G buzz) !

Regarding the boards, I started assembling one board last Thursday night but ran into problems testing the board. It took me two nights to debug the problem. The boards seem to be oke; the GPS chip I am using is the same as the one on the prototype II boards and it functions there without problems. I suspect the problem is in the GPS chip itself: although all output voltages seem oke, no data is transmitted. I had a spare unit which I tested off the board and this one has the same problem. I will have to contact the manufacturer to see what the problem is and to get functional replacement units.

Well, I guess things can't always go smoothly. I am sure we will recover quickly from this after I get new functional chips. I'll keep you updated once I find out more from the manufacturer. This shows that you always need to double check your suppliers, especially when you are using their latest technology. It also shows that it is a must that every single unit that gets shipped is quality controlled. In fact, I will guarantee that every GPS module that I will ship, will have been inspected and is 100% functional. Or as we say in dutch "De klant is Koning" (literally translated as "The customer is King" :).

In the meantime I have also been working on housing related things this week: I have pretty much completed the 3D modeling of the most important parts on the board (which will be needed to make sure that the housing doesn't interfere anywhere on the inside with the board/components). Also, I have already outlined the housing itself. Detailing of the inside will be next.