GPS Bluetooth for OS X
par
Lionel
- 21/07/2004
1) A few words
With the holidays approaching, we got to wonder if there were an affordable Bluetooth GPS adapter that we could use with our macs on road trips. We found this kit that seemed to fit the bill quite nicely. The Navilock Bluetooth is priced at 249.90 Euros on Pearl's web site. Only hitch is that there is no mention anywhere about Mac support. Nevertheless this didn't stop us and we decided to go on a limb.
Here's what the box contains :
The GPS module is the item on the top right. It comes with a rechargeable battery with a documented hold of 8 hours (not verified). You can see the AC adapter, along with a car DC plug. To top it all, there is a magnet-type external antenna with a long cord so that you can stick that to the roof of the car.
That's the first thing to remember : GPS only works well with clear skies, which made testing the unit in Paris a bit of a challenge.
The documentation comes in pdf format on a mini CD. The GPS module features two LED's. The blue one monitors the Bluetooth status. It slowly "breathes" in case no paired adapter is found, and blinks faster when being paired. The green LED blinks once the GPS has set, and lights up continuously if it cannot find a signal (which is a bit odd and opposite to what we were expecting).
We tested the whole setup on a G4 iBook 1Ghz running 10.3.3 with built-in Bluetooth. Before we proceed into the details, thanks to the site KamiDH, on which we found a great article on the subject.
With the holidays approaching, we got to wonder if there were an affordable Bluetooth GPS adapter that we could use with our macs on road trips. We found this kit that seemed to fit the bill quite nicely. The Navilock Bluetooth is priced at 249.90 Euros on Pearl's web site. Only hitch is that there is no mention anywhere about Mac support. Nevertheless this didn't stop us and we decided to go on a limb.
Here's what the box contains :
The GPS module is the item on the top right. It comes with a rechargeable battery with a documented hold of 8 hours (not verified). You can see the AC adapter, along with a car DC plug. To top it all, there is a magnet-type external antenna with a long cord so that you can stick that to the roof of the car.
That's the first thing to remember : GPS only works well with clear skies, which made testing the unit in Paris a bit of a challenge.
The documentation comes in pdf format on a mini CD. The GPS module features two LED's. The blue one monitors the Bluetooth status. It slowly "breathes" in case no paired adapter is found, and blinks faster when being paired. The green LED blinks once the GPS has set, and lights up continuously if it cannot find a signal (which is a bit odd and opposite to what we were expecting).
We tested the whole setup on a G4 iBook 1Ghz running 10.3.3 with built-in Bluetooth. Before we proceed into the details, thanks to the site KamiDH, on which we found a great article on the subject.
