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Well, some time ago I bought off eBay a cool GPS puck that connects to your USB port. It is one of the last model kinds, very sensitive and cost me around $45 with delivery. In my car I have a kind of a carpet on my dash, I am able to run this puck under the mat and no one even knows it is there, reception is superb. All I do is stick out USB connector from under the mat when I put my EEE on the dash.
For this turkeyday holiday I decided to go to New Orleans and party a bit on the streets of French Quarters. Even though I-10 runs pretty much from my house to the hotel, I decided to give this EEE PC as a GPS concept a go. I installed MS Trips and Streets 2007 that I had on hands (there is 2008 out) the day before I traveled and got familiarized with the software which didn't take long.
This time I decided not to set it so it could give me turn by turn directions but simply display where I am, my plan was to drive off unexpectedly to anything worth visiting from the highway and nagging re-routing would spoil the mood.
It was fabulous. I never been to New Orleans but traveling from Houston takes no skill, just follow the highway. Yet, I was glad I took GPS. Google shows that it takes about 5.5 hours to get there. Without a GPS usually it is a guess work to know where you are and signs of local towns can be little of assistance. With the GPS it shows exactly where you are, gives you an idea how long to go still. Plus, it gives a chance to talk to your passengers beforehand where to stop and visit.
The GPS did come handy when I-10 was closed in the middle of the swamp, see first picture. The exit took me to some island that runs to some other country road that among different swamps and takes you to some other highway. We didn't get lost there even though it was a bit scary to ride on some gravel road among the swamps. The beauty of a holiday, they think no one needs the highway anymore.
With a dirty car which I had just washed before the trip I made it to the civilization and then after another 3 hours we came to New Orleans. I zoomed in on the map to see local streets to find the hotel, however the program hanged. It did become accessible in one minute but changing zoom levels did lag a lot. First I thought the program had a memory leak but in the end I realized that the traced route we already went through last 6.5 hours was "resizing" for the next zoom and it took too much memory (even though I had 2GB in my EEE PC). Well, after I removed the "trail" the program was snappy again, the hotel was then easy to find.
On the way back I was looking for a gas station on the GPS only to find it closed a long time ago, maybe during the flood... The beauty of old maps. Maybe I should try the 2008 version...
In any case, I loved to have 7" of GPS in my car with all the Canada, USA, and Mexico maps. Pictures are below:
Last edited by TexasGuy (2007-11-26 12:41:33 am)
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nice job!
really quick, i've been searching this board and I couldn't find any definite guides on hooking it up to a cig lighter, seems like you got yours working pretty well. care to share 
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yeah, that was the first thing I noticed too lol, thought that was still a bit of a mystery (not that I understand why ;s)
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I used a simple DC to AC inverter. They are like $30 or less for 150Watt and less.
Problem that a mouse pad goes haywire with a square wave. I am looking for a way to hook up to DC without any conversion other than a stepdown.
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VERY Cool. 
Thanks for sharing!
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hm. Could try a big Capacitor to smooth out that square wave.
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Awesome! If it runs streets and trips then lighter programs should be no issue at all... I want to give Iguidance a try when my eee shows up.
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Fluffywings wrote:
hm. Could try a big Capacitor to smooth out that square wave.
Sorry.. Would need a pretty good filter but easer to make it in the inverter circuit...
Im looking for a DC/DC one.... 10 to 15V to regulated 9V. Still shifting through the stuff out there.
Last edited by Nightwing (2007-11-26 3:53:06 pm)
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Hi,
Just regarding the mouse going haywire. I don't think this is your power supply. There's a known bug with many USB GPS units that often results in the system mis-identifying them as a mouse. Thus, when it's plugged in the mouse will go crazy. You may be using the GPS a lot in the car - and then blaming the inverter - when it's really just that fact that you only use the GPS in the car and not at home on AC.
I find that generally just unplugging the GPS and plugging in again cures the problem. Used to happen all the time with my Thinkpad and a Holux GPS.
To test, try plugging in your GPS once in a while at home on AC power - bet it happens every once in a while!
Dave
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treefrog wrote:
Just regarding the mouse going haywire. I don't think this is your power supply.
No, it is. This has been brought up before.
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If you can get your hands on it, give iGuidance by iNav a try...it's got quite a few useful features like voice prompting and the such that bridges the gap between PC and standalone GPS units.
I've been using it on a 7" touchscreen of mine for a couple of years prior to getting my eeePC, and I've grown to love its versatility. It's a favorite among carPC enthusiasts.
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As far as I read about iGuidance, it has the ugliest interface.
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jollyeskimo wrote:
If you can get your hands on it, give iGuidance by iNav a try...it's got quite a few useful features like voice prompting and the such that bridges the gap between PC and standalone GPS units.
I've been using it on a 7" touchscreen of mine for a couple of years prior to getting my eeePC, and I've grown to love its versatility. It's a favorite among carPC enthusiasts.
Have you tried it on a eee?
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TexasGuy wrote:
As far as I read about iGuidance, it has the ugliest interface.
Yeah it probably isn't the best looking interface, but I never really noticed until you mentioned it
outcastrc wrote:
Have you tried it on a eee?
I've had mine for less than 3 days so I haven't gotten around to it... it's on my to-do list.
I doubt it would have any problems though, as my other setup has a 7" LCD with the same resolution and similar processing power (it's a VIA mini-itx system). The program actually has two .exe's, one for regular PC's/laptops, and another one that's optimized for small screens/touchscreens/UMPCs.
Last edited by jollyeskimo (2007-11-27 2:47:18 am)
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Here is "my" navigation system:
http://shrani.si/?1n/nh/24myBAol/slika014.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbnM-0VMDIU
Will record a better vide in future, this was taken with my gsm phone 
The system is:
asus eee pc
2GB memory
BT dongle
MSI SF200 GPS modul
Garmin Nroute and Adria Route maps (european people will know better)
Now I just need a way to make it more stable. Small european cars suck 
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apt-get gpsd - do it in Linux.
i added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free
note i did break my OpenGL for a while, poor old tux ran very slowly until i apt-get install --reinstall package.deb
im working on maps for linux,,,, , will update you all soon
AKADATA¬
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im having the same problem with
the power inverter, trackpad goes haywire
i'm using a usb gps dongle and streets and trips 07
works flawlessly under battery power
and when plugged into power inverter
has the trackpad problem
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I did a trip across Canada running a Magellan eXplorist 400 GPS data-streaming to a Gateway laptop running XP and MS-Streets-n-Trips. The laptop was connected to a 300w inverter running off of my Jeep. The track-pad-mouse did not experience any issues.
I am going to setup my EEE (on Linux) to connect to my GPS and give it a try using the same inverter. I also am hunting for a power-cable to laptop DC-DC power to run directly off of my Jeep, or from my PowerCell (basically a gel-cell battery with a cigarette-lighter port all in one), or directly from my 17watt solar-panel.
If someone can point me in the right direction, it would be great!
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Using the EEE as a gps device was a definite sale for me, along with other reasons of course.
QUESTION. the OP said that he is running a version of MS streets and trips, but in the specs sheet of that program it lists minimum requirements of the screen res to be 800x600. Have you (or anyone else) run into problems while using this program at the eee native res?
I'm wondering b/c I just ordered my eee (4g, black) gps reciever, 8gb flash usb mem, 1gb of ram, and MS streets and trips 08--its a big investment for this to go wrong!!!
Thanks, and since this is my first post (as an almost eee user) I'll take this time to say HELLO!
Thanks.
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I was going to do something similar with the Eee. I got the trial version of iGuidance (which looks pretty nice on the Eee) and cut a box up so that it would fit over the front of my passenger seat (I drive a smaller car, no room on the dash for the Eee). It worked, but wasn't so stable. The inverter I got from Fry's worked, but I did notice the mouse was jumpy.
I didn't end up using the Eee too much for nav, but I did use Winamp to play music on my way to and back from Phoenix.
The whole thing got me thinking - CARPUTER! Later in the year, I think I will build one with an in dash retractable 7" touchscreen display.
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I just wish there would be a nice GPS program to use that runs on Xandros
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Echostrike wrote:
Using the EEE as a gps device was a definite sale for me, along with other reasons of course.
QUESTION. the OP said that he is running a version of MS streets and trips, but in the specs sheet of that program it lists minimum requirements of the screen res to be 800x600. Have you (or anyone else) run into problems while using this program at the eee native res?
I'm wondering b/c I just ordered my eee (4g, black) gps reciever, 8gb flash usb mem, 1gb of ram, and MS streets and trips 08--its a big investment for this to go wrong!!!
Thanks, and since this is my first post (as an almost eee user) I'll take this time to say HELLO!
Thanks.
Welcome Echostrike! I have used 07 of Streets and Trips and it works fine with the resolution. I had some GPS issues but that was related to Windows Bluetooth stack vs the Toshiba stack installed with my Cirago micro adapter. Windows stack was working then the COM ports gave out. The Toshiba one works fine.
You should be fine and very happy with your investment! Make sure the S&T gets installed to the SD card including all the maps and you should be fine.
Good luck!
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Thanks chrismoo! I cannot wait until my shipment arrives! I will post an update of how S&t 08 works once I get it all tested.
this forum has fast replies! sweeet.
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Thanks for sharing this!
I'm really excited about the possibility to also turn my eeepc into a GPS!
Few questions:
1- Which OS you ran it on? WinXp?
2- About the GPS program, nowadays there are more like 3D programs on the market; ever thought using one of those? They're basically the same, but look nicer!
3- About the carlighter plug, someone on the forum mentioned this one: http://www.radioshack.com/product/index … 679&cp
I found it couldn't be used on airplanes, so I didn't go into this thingy.
Also another issue may be, that if you're using a carlighter plug which just has a simple transformer, the output voltage fluxuates.
Cars and especially airplanes have tendency to send 'spikes' or 'peaks' of power to the carlighter plug, which could damage electronics like the eeepc.
I tend to go for the slightly more costly adaptors and transformers, which have some sort of output filter.
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Solving the mouse problem. This 12v device says it will not make the mouse go crazy since there is no square wave. NO converter is necessary so it
might just work. A little pricey...but if it solves the problem then you have a great GPS! http://www.directron.com/eeepccarkius.html
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