Streets & Trips 2009 GPS Locator lags behind

Hi,

Just bought Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS locator 2009 and have a couple of problems someone may be able to help with. Hopefully!!

Posted this over at the MSFT newsgroup but maybe someone here can help.

While testing it out driving to work, noticed it is a bit slow on moving. For example, I'm already past a cross-street and the display still shows I'm approaching it. Not useful. Is there any tweaking to make the MSFT GPS Locator more responsive and more accurate? Have it plugged directly into the usb port on my laptop that sits on the passenger seat of my Jeep Wrangler. At home it shows me like 3 houses away from my actual address on the map? Is that map problems or the GPS locator?

Alemaker

Hi Alemaker,

Welcome to Laptop GPS World.

When you stop your car, is the GPS icon on the map still moving for a few seconds till it reaches your exact location, or the icon stops when you stop driving?

Don't know, will check tomorrow morning.

As I am new to GPS stuff, what would be your opinion of a good solution. I do drive a lot and don't necessarily need to stick with S&T 2009 but would like to since I already bought the software, maybe a different GPS module?

Alemaker

Alemaker, the location of the GPS receiver is critical. I'd suggest using a USB extension cable that will allow you to keep the GPS receiver on the dashboard, close to window. That way the weak signals of GPS satellites from various directions in the sky have a better chance of reaching your GPS receiver.

Marvin,

Thanks for the tip, will try that tomorrow with the included usb cord with suction cup. Just seems that it acts just like the GPS on my ATT Tilt phone with Live Search.Both are a bit off from my actual location, like when I'm at or through a street intersection and it still shows me approaching. Don't know how to describe it other than lagging behind my actual position by a few seconds. Is this commonplace? I thought maybe my Tilt was that way because of the underpowered CPU in the phone but it is doing the same on my 2.6 Ghz dual core laptop and different software.

If you have other suggestions as to a better responding solution, I'd appreciate it. Don't need to stay with S&T but want something that shows location more accurately and responds quickly.

Another concern is the actual map in S&T 2009. While I sit here and type with the GPS Locator running, S&T shows my location with full strength and 8 satellites but the actual point shown on the map is like 3 houses away from my address as shown on the map.

Alemaker

(will try the USB cord tomorrow)

I agree with Marvin's assessment. Poor satellite signal reception could explain both issues (home and car). Using the Streets&Trips GPS receiver I can get a signal inside the house but the accuracy factor is much lower than outside where the locator can see the satellites better. It's not easy in Streets&Trips to determine what sort of signal and accuracy you have, like it is in some other navigation programs so you sort of have to take this on faith and test to see if Marvin's suggestion makes it work better. The locator that came with my S&T 2008 came with a USB extender that just barely allows me to set the receiver up on the dash. When I do this with Garmin Mobile PC or Garmin nroute running so I can see which satellites it is receiving, what the signal strength is and what the accuracy factor is, it makes quite a difference when I move the receiver up on the dash. The farther forward on the dash you can get it, the more accurate the positional lock will be.

...ken...

Thanks Ken,

Will definetely try that in the morning. I really like the ability to see the map on my laptop and being a newb to all this, was wondering if I spent my money wisely. Will definetly check it out tommorrow.

Thanks again to Marvin and Ken

Sorry, I missed the question about the maps in S&T. They are about as good as you can get for North America; better - eg. more up to date and complete - in highly populated urban parts of the country and less so in more rural and lower populated regions. Microsoft and Garmin both use map data from Navteq. I have S&T 2008 and Garmin's City Navigator v8 and 2009. The Garmin v8 is a year older than the S&T2008 map data and 2009 is a year newer. There is virtually no difference among the three of them in the rural regions. In the large urban centres you see the additions you would expect to see, year over year, from new construction in those areas.

The only caution is that the map data is typically at least two years old by the time Navteq assembles the data and the major vendors like Microsoft and Garmin are able to package it, test it and roll it out as a complete product. So my Garmin City Navigator 2009, which is about the most up to date product on the market, has, at best, 1st quarter 2007 data in it.

Related to your issue of poor location display of the vehicle icon on the map versus where you really are, there are only two things that will cause that. One is poor accuracy of the GPS signals so that the nav program is having difficulty placing the indicator in an accurate position on the display.

The other is poor calibration of the map data itself. I have not experienced any calibration issues with Navteq's map data and I have been using the Garmin maps based on Navteq data since 2003. If I have a good enough signal for accurate calculation of my location on the face of the planet, it will be displayed equally accurately on the map with either Streets&Trips or the Garmin products I own.

To support that you need only look at the pickle Google Maps has created for themselves by dropping Navteq for North American data and going with TeleAtlas. TeleAtlas has always had questionable data for North America and you can see it in all of its glory on Google Maps now. Their forums are overloaded with complaints.

I'll shut up now that I've probably made your eyes glaze over with more details than you ever wanted to know.

...ken...

Well,

Just went outside the house and fired up S&T and got a lock, and sure enough it works WAY BETTER. Weird though, it still showed me 4 yards away from the street address. I walked to the front door from where I was standing in front of the garage and BINGO-0 yards to destination

Sorry for the newb questions as you both resolved my concerns. Will use the usb cord tommorrow for driving

Thanks again for all your help Marvin and Ken

Alemaker, thank you for the testing it and the quick feedback!

Glad it works, and very impressive accuracy. Don't expect that sort of accuracy all the time. My various Garmin software gives me the accuracy factor and it's rarely better than 3 or 4 meters. That's plenty good enough. Even with my poor eyesight, if I can't find a house from 15 feet away I really should be sleeping it off somewhere safe.

...ken...

I feel much better now about my purchase as I was about to put it up for sale on eBay.

You guys helped out a frustrated Laptop GPS newb and I appreciate it.

One last question if I may?

Is there any way to get an aerial view with topography and roads in Microsoft Streets and Trips like you see on Google Maps or Live Search Mobile?

What you could do is right-click on names of towns for example, and then on the menu that opens up select "Show in Live Search maps"

ahh, that is a nice feature but was wondering if it there is an option to show that type of map as I am driving?

No, but it would be nice. Feel free to add it as a suggestion to our Wish List forum.

The only way I can think of would be with Google Earth, either Plus or Pro version. Both versions work with a GPS receiver but it's a really lousy navigation program.

You need to get the mapping info into the cache before you go driving if you're going to be using it offline.

...ken...

I just took my maiden ST09 trip from San Rafael, CA to Alameda, CA
Everything looked great on the GPS system and navigation.
GPS puck was on dash of my subey facing right up at the sky.
Signal appeared to be strong on the GPS configuarator with several sats locking in.

Then I noticed weirdness.
The notifications for exits/turns where there were quick turns in series were coming up RIGHT AT THE EXIT, not before.

I actually noticed this when I crossed a bridge across to Alameda.
I had fully crossed the bridge to the other side when the map showed me STARTING to cross the bridge.
We're talking a 10-20 second lag time here!
Sure enough, I had to make an immediate right after the bridge and the navigator only told me of this after I had already passed the street!

So my question comes back to lag time.
Is there some way to test / troubleshoot this?
Is this based on GPS reception or something else?

I'm running this on
WinXP SP3
Asus Eee 1000
Globalsat BU-353

Thanks!

Sounds like the computer is having trouble keeping up. Check to make sure you have nothiing unnecessary running in the background.

Terry

Well, I did some more tests.

Have 2GB ram
No other apps running
Turned on task manager but we're talking 30-40% cpu max

It's really weird but my position when navigating surface streets is always lagging a bit. It's frustrating because on close turn by turns it won't tell me the next turn til I'm already there or just passing it.

How many satellites is S&T reporting (bottom left hand corner)? It sure sounds like you have enough CPU power.

Terry

Attached Images

ST-Sats.jpg (58.0 KB)

I've never had the problem but I would think that programs running in the background could also slow the reponse of the mapping program.

I'm seeing the following consistently while driving:
5-8 satellites
250-300K of RAM used out of 2GB
30% cpu utilization and no more - Intel Atom processor, new
No other applications running

I am testing the exact lag and it's about 10 seconds
For example, whenever I make a turn on a street, S&T09 shows me still heading for the intersection.
I count out once I start the turn to see when it catches up to the intersection and it's usually 10 seconds later.

I've tried uninstalling & reinstalling S&T09 but it's doing the exact same thing.

Could it be the flow of data from the GPS / usb puck?

Thanks

If you're operating off the CD, it a lot slower than putting the map files on the hard drive. Most CDs are relatively slow mechanical devices. Once

Oops. Once you pull the files off the CD. It stops. It takes a few seconds to get it back up to speed.

I dont have a CD, this is a netbook, very small.
Just running it right off the hard drive.
The only 'non-standard' thing I do is run the system without virtual memory, as I have 2GB of ram.
I did try to set up virtual mem, reboot, ran ST09, but with same results, so I went back to no virtual mem.

I have the Pharos500 Blue tooth module, which gives you freedom of placing the GPS anywhere on the dash board.

I have an almost identical setup. I am using a g33 bluetooth gps and am experiencing the same 10 second delay (8 satellites). In fact, when I come to a stop light, it takes about that amount of time to show me stopped, and as I sit at the light, I can sit and watch the gps speed slow down to 0. I will say, that once it catches up, it does give me a really accurate location, just seems to run about 10 seconds behind.

I'm seeing in another post where the problem could be that it is a 5 hz receiver, but I don't really know how that impacts, and can't find anything that really explains it. Is that a rating of the refresh speed or the bandwidth?

The data rate would be 4800 bps if it works with S&T. 5 Hz is the number of times the GPS sends data to the program. However, S&T only works at a 1 Hz refresh rate.

If the software that comes with the GlobalTop G33 is capable of modifying the refresh rate to 1 Hz, your problems will go away.

Apparently, this is the program you need to modify the refresh rate.

Terry

Attached Files

Tool_iGPS-M Pro_Rev1.0.3.zip (482.1 KB)

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Here is the link to a forum that I found that included an application that let me reset my receiver from 5hz to 1hz.

GlobalTop G33 - buyGPSnow.com Community <edit>Expired link removed</edit>

Thanks again! I haven't had the chance to go out and try it yet, but hopefully this does the trick.

Jumping back into the thread-just bought the GlobalSat BU353 USB GPS Receiver to use with a brand new copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2009, haven't received it yet from Amazon. Anyone have experience with this unit and S&T 09? Will it lag, and do I need the refresh utility mentioned in the above posts? Laptop is a Dell XPS M1330 with a Core2Duo @2.5Ghz and 4 GB of RAM.


Alemaker

The GlobalSat BU-353 is a standard USB GPS device with a 4800 bps/ 1 hz data output. It comes with a USB/ serial driver which provides a COM port connection compatible with Street & Trips. No other software is necessary.

Terry

I have the BU353 and it works perfectly with Streets&Trips with no help from anything else.

...ken...

Just to update, using the link that I posted earlier, I was able to set my GPS to 1 hz, which resolved my lag problem. There is actually still a tiny lag, but if I use the front edge of the circle around my indicator as my current location, it works perfectly.

If you would like to add a program that would show your signal strength, you could add XPort and Compass. XPort drives multiple feeds for multiple GPS programs from your one GPS receiver. It is a nice and useful program in itself. Compass is a full features compass program, which includes amoung other things, a signal strength bar graph, signal lock indicator and satelite map display. Both are free. Look on this site for the XPort link. Once there, look for the Compass link. They are my lastest "thang" and I am finding them useful and fun.