Spotter Network and Delorme

[Gerard Jebaily]

Has anybody had any success at using a Delorme GPS with Spotter Network? SN asks for a com port which i tried coms 1-7 and i don't know if and how to get SN and the GPS to communicate. SN's forum didnt have any information on GPS issues.

[Scott Weberpal]

You should be able to find out the COM port by looking in your device manager on the computer.

[Hank Baker]

I use Delorme with SN, I heard some folks had trouble with GPS gate but downloaded the free Delorme serial emulator and that got it working for them. I use the Delorme serial emulator and don't have any issues.

[Bob Schafer]

I first tried downloading the Delorme splitter and using it with my Garmin and Vista. It said it was for Delorme GPS units, but I thought "Hell, it'll probably work with any GPS unit, and it's free".

Bad idea. Blue screen of death/restore your new computer to a previous time/date for the first time when you never had a lick of trouble with it before bad idea. You have been warned!! :D

I have also learned to not boot my computer with the Garmin connected and powered. I have to use a serial/USB adapter, too, so maybe that's the issue there, but either way, I have to wait to plug the GPS in after the computer is already booted, even though it's to a USB port.

[Jayson Prentice]

I just tested all of my stuff out yesterday, used the Delorme Serial Emulator with their GPS and Street Atlas. Had the street atlas, GR3 and spotter network all running and in perfect order...

Once you get the serial emulator working then you can tell it which port to send data through and you should have no trouble finding the right one.

[David Drummond]

I am using the Delorme Emulator with the Delorme little yellow puck GPS. You have to look at the ports that are made available by the emulator by right clicking on it in the activity bar down in the right corner of windows. You can set different ports. It's working great with several pieces of software on Vista for me EXCEPT Spotter Network.

It takes me several tries to get spotter network to connect to one of the GPS ports it creates. When it doesn't, VISTA BOSDs out and reboots itself. Even when I do get one that works, and the end of the day when I click to disconnect itself from the GPS it also BOSDs and reboots.

I have reported this to Tyler as a bug on his forum.


Now before when I had Windows XP, it worked perfectly every time!

[Gerard Jebaily]

I did what you said and DLed delorme serial emulator. It works GREAT! Thanks so much guys!

[Jayson Prentice]

David, I never ran into your problem when trying it out yesterday. I did notice however that the emulator didn't like to auto-connect so it only worked when I started up the emulator after the GPS got a connection.

The spotternetwork did work without a problem, no errors on my end. You aren't running the 64-bit version of Vista are you David?

[David Drummond]

no just the 32. Never had any issues with the emulator. All the other programs talk to it ok, It's just the SN client doing that. AT first I thought it was a port conflict, but no manner of rearranging stopped it.

[Jayson Prentice]

That's fairly weird on why just SN would do that and no other programs working with the emulator would. If I run into that problem I'll let you know, but for now I don't think I have anything of use for you to help ya out... Sorry

[David Drummond]

yeah it is weird. At first I thought it was just a vista glitch, but I can recreate the problem the same way every time, and it's the only program causing a BOSD right now

[Mike Hollingshead]

Hmmm, I'm just trying to set this up and GR3 won't see it. Tried the emulator out to 2 and Street Atlas sees it fine and works. Then shut off Street Atlas since I knew that route worked. Then put GR3 to port 2, and says the same thing as the other tries "waiting for data".

[Jeff Snyder]

David,

Just a couple of things to check:

1. Make sure the DeLorme serial emulator is set to NMEA for the port you're using with SN
2. Ensure that the Baud Rate in SN is set to 9600 (the default for DeLorme serial emulator, I believe)

I run GR3, SN, and StreetAtlas via the serial emulator with no problems on my laptop (Vista 32bit).

[David Drummond]

Yeah, been down all those checks. Even uninstalled/reinstalled both the SN and the emulator.

I found a work around anyway. My Sprint card has a built in GPS receiver (darn good one I might add, even gets the signals inside the house). I set SN to use that GPS instead and it works fine every time. Go figure...

[CraigFisher]

Mike, I have the same problem. Street Atlas works great! Gr isn't picking it up, have tried like you did with asigning GR to port 2 - still a no-go. If you get something figured out, ket me know.

[Ryan McGinnis]

I've discovered a solution to getting Delorme's serial emulator to work with Vista.

Basically, the first thing you do download Delormes serial port emulator from http://www.delorme.com/support/supporttemplate.aspx?id=319. Many of you have already done this. However, if your system is like mine and many others out there, the serial emulator is not a big friend of Vista, and doesn't seem to work. (Mine runs fine, but other applications don't actually get to see the data that it supposedly is emulating.)

What you have to do is go into the start menu, go down to the search box at the bottom, and type in "Delorme". Don't hit enter, just wait for the stuff to pop up at the top of the start window. Up there, you will see a program called "SerEmul". Right click it, and go to properties. Click the Compatibility tab. Check the box that says "run this program as an administrator", then click OK. Restart. Upon restart, Vista will tell in the lower right taskbar when you when you login that it blocked the program from running (probably a virus prevention measure). What you want to do is click the box where it tells you that, then tell it to run the program. After this, you close the Delorme Serial Emulator that resides in your taskbar and then run it again (basically, the Serial Emulator must be restarted). That's it, you're done -- it should work now. Every time you reboot you'll need to go to the taskbar and unblock the program and then restart the serial emulator, but it's not the end of the world. So far I've had no problems, though the docs that come with the program itself says that it doesn't like coming out of sleep mode. I've got it running Delorme, SN, and GR3 all at once.

The alternate, easier solution is to disable Windows User Accounts Control. But this leaves your system much more open for viruses/trojans. Personally, I prefer the short dance of commands at startup to leaving my whole computer open.

It's a shame Delorme's emulator is so poorly coded. I've sent them an email explaining the problem; hopefully they'll get around to issuing a patch one of these days.

[Mike Peregrine]

I'm going to have to go through and check all my settings per some of the posts in this thread. I could NOT get SN to work with my GPS this weekend, except for every fourth or fifth attempt.

On Saturday I decided that I'd had enough ... and since we were just sitting in one spot enjoying the poofy little marshmallow clouds in Nebraska, I decided to enter my position manually. About an hour later I checked my position online and evidently I mis-entered my longitude because it had my signal parked somewhere near the Great Wall of China ... LOL. I have no idea how long it showed me on holiday in Asia -

[Chris Strahan]

I am using the Delorme Emulator with the Delorme little yellow puck GPS. You have to look at the ports that are made available by the emulator by right clicking on it in the activity bar down in the right corner of windows. You can set different ports. It's working great with several pieces of software on Vista for me EXCEPT Spotter Network.

It takes me several tries to get spotter network to connect to one of the GPS ports it creates. When it doesn't, VISTA BOSDs out and reboots itself. Even when I do get one that works, and the end of the day when I click to disconnect itself from the GPS it also BOSDs and reboots.

I have reported this to Tyler as a bug on his forum.


Now before when I had Windows XP, it worked perfectly every time!

David
if you shut the gps off in the application first (i.e streets and trips or whatever application) then you can avoid the BSOD.

[David Drummond]

That post was almost 2 months ago, its been resolved a long time ago.

[Chris Strahan]

That post was almost 2 months ago, its been resolved a long time ago.

you went back to XP? :D