Delorme LT-40 and Aircards

[Kris Hair]

Anyone ever have any issues with the Delorme serial emulator interfereing with your aircard?

Mine worked great for a really long time yesterday, then things just went from bad to worse as the day went on. Every time I would plug in the GPS, the aircard would freeze.

Anyone ever have this happen?

And if so, how do you fix it?

 

[Steve Miller]

YES!
I'm happy to hear someone else has an issue. I use a 595u Sierra card with the Sprint Data prog. With the emulator running and nothing plugged in, I'm good to go. As soon as I plug the USB GPS (same as yours) into the laptop, the data connection stops. Interestingly, the data program indicates I'm still connected, it just won't send/recieve data.
I'm at a loss.

 

[Kris Hair]

I have the exact same aircard!! only on AT&T

Wonder what the remedy is? Leave it on the side of the highway and try something else?

Since it's confirmed, I'm going to do some shopping tomorrow and try something else.

I'll let you know the results.

 

[Gordon Spencer]

Just a thought guys . Sounds like a conflict on the laptop. What about plugging evdo card into a router like a cradlepoint travel router . The you use Wifi on the laptop and there should not be a conflict . Best place to get Cradlepoint routers is www.wirelessnwifi.com

YES!
I'm happy to hear someone else has an issue. I use a 595u Sierra card with the Sprint Data prog. With the emulator running and nothing plugged in, I'm good to go. As soon as I plug the USB GPS (same as yours) into the laptop, the data connection stops. Interestingly, the data program indicates I'm still connected, it just won't send/recieve data.
I'm at a loss.

 

[Dick McGowan]

I'd try plugging your air card and GPS in first, get an internet connection and a GPS lock (leaving the emulator off). Then change your com port numbers around and then start the emulator (that auto-start thing screws me up). If it does it again, switch your com port numbers around until it (hopefully) stops doing that. I'm guessing one of the com ports you have selected on the emulator is designed for the USB port your aircard is in. It will disconnect me sometimes from my tethered Alltel connection, when I use a certain com port for GR3...and it does it instantaneously.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

I am not sure if this will work for everyone else, but when I went to the Delorme, I had the same problem. (Same Data Card)
Finally what solved my problem was very simple. I just left everything plugged in when I turned the computer on and off. I have not hardly had any of the problems since, unless I accidentally unplug one.
It has been over a year, so I hope I am remembering correctly.
By the way, I am running XP and Not Vista if that makes any difference.

 

[Dick McGowan]

By the way, I am running XP and Not Vista if that makes any difference.

I've noticed on Vista, for some reason, that even if it says you are connected and are splitting your GPS to different applications via the emulator, that it won't continuously update (like on Spotter Network, it won't auto-refresh on it's own and same for GR3) without having the user account control function disabled. You can do that by going to your start menu and searching for user accounts, then select the turn on/off mode, reboot and you're good to go.

 

[Steve Miller]

I have thought about changing to Microsoft Streets and Maps. Delorme is a fairly unfriendly program in my opinion. I've always thought that.
GPSGate is another option but specific GPS units must be used on it. That is probably the best option for the splitting we need done...

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I've noticed on Vista, for some reason, that even if it says you are connected and are splitting your GPS to different applications via the emulator, that it won't continuously update (like on Spotter Network, it won't auto-refresh on it's own and same for GR3) without having the user account control function disabled. You can do that by going to your start menu and searching for user accounts, then select the turn on/off mode, reboot and you're good to go.

DeLorme Serial Emulator has been a pain in the butt this season so far for me. I'm still using an old USB Earthmate, but there's been many times this season during which the Serial Emulator will show a good GPS lock but won't actually output the signal to any of the virtual COM ports. I've tried all sorts of ordering (both in terms of the order in which I physically plug in my devices and the order in which I launch and 'turn on' applications), but I can't find an order that always works perfectly and consistently. I don't remember having so many problems in previous years, so I don't know what the problem is this year. I ended up purhasing GPSGate while on the road to the target area yesterday, but I still had to use Serial Emulator to feed the Earthmate GPS signal to GPSGate.

FWIW, I've also had problems with Street Atlas 2009 stopping the GPS track. On all chases this year, the GPS would be working fine with SA2009, but it would randomly stop updating. I would be forced to "stop" the GPS on SA, save the log file, and "start" it again. Unfortunately, there were times during which I wasn't paying attn to SA while it wasn't updating the GPS location, so I have, on a couple of chases, 3-4 different GPS logs with big gaps between them for a single chase day. I assume it's related to Serial Emulator since I know SpotterNet and another GPS app I use occassionally stop "seeing" the GPS too. All the while, the lat/lon would always be updating in Serial Emulator, so it's almost as if S.E. would just stop splitting the signal at times. Regardless, SerEmul has been a major source of frustration this year for me.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I finally got around to getting the LT-40 and Thurs was my first chase with it (I used to use my Garmin 376 but got annoyed b/c the xm ant in and computer connection are the same port on the garmin). Anyway, it worked fine for quite a while but as mentioned it would just stop working. The only way I could get it working again was to restart and the process would start over. Is there no way to get GPS Gate to recognize the LT-40 without using the Delorme Emulator?

 

[Dick McGowan]

DeLorme Serial Emulator has been a pain in the butt this season so far for me. I'm still using an old USB Earthmate, but there's been many times this season during which the Serial Emulator will show a good GPS lock but won't actually output the signal to any of the virtual COM ports. I've tried all sorts of ordering (both in terms of the order in which I physically plug in my devices and the order in which I launch and 'turn on' applications), but I can't find an order that always works perfectly and consistently. I don't remember having so many problems in previous years, so I don't know what the problem is this year. I ended up purhasing GPSGate while on the road to the target area yesterday, but I still had to use Serial Emulator to feed the Earthmate GPS signal to GPSGate.

FWIW, I've also had problems with Street Atlas 2009 stopping the GPS track. On all chases this year, the GPS would be working fine with SA2009, but it would randomly stop updating. I would be forced to "stop" the GPS on SA, save the log file, and "start" it again. Unfortunately, there were times during which I wasn't paying attn to SA while it wasn't updating the GPS location, so I have, on a couple of chases, 3-4 different GPS logs with big gaps between them for a single chase day. I assume it's related to Serial Emulator since I know SpotterNet and another GPS app I use occassionally stop "seeing" the GPS too. All the while, the lat/lon would always be updating in Serial Emulator, so it's almost as if S.E. would just stop splitting the signal at times. Regardless, SerEmul has been a major source of frustration this year for me.

Yeah, I've had that same problem where it just stops updating on Street Atlas, but not with the new 2009. My copy of 2009 just locks my computer up for some reason, so I went back to my old 2006 copy, which I think is a more user-friendly, even though it's old. Even though it says the emulator is compatible with Vista, it seems to screw up a lot more than it did when I had XP. Try disabling Windows Defender and User Account and see if that has something to do with it. It's obviously connected and working, but somehow the data won't continually refresh because, IMO, Vista is blocking it from doing so. I tried the GPS gate free trial and couldn't get it to recognize the LT-40. Are you using the old LT-20 Earthmate one? The LT-40 seems to work a lot better and a lot quicker than the older LT-20.

IIRC, switching around the COM ports (or which USB port you plugged into) fixed the problem of not updating on Street Atlas for me. If I were you, I'd try to disable User Accont control and Windows Defender (assuming you haven't already) then try plugging into a different USB port and playing around with different COM ports till everything works properly. I use 2, 5, 6 and use 5 for GR3, 6 for SN, and 2 for the iMAP tracker. It probably will be different than yours, I had to play around with it till I had everything figured out, which is time consuming and frustrating.

 

[Mark Blue]

Is there no way to get GPS Gate to recognize the LT-40 without using the Delorme Emulator?

I've actually learned a couple of things along the way this year with all of the research I've done related to the troubles folks have been having with GPS. Per Johan (site admin) on the Franson website (GPSGate software), the LT-20 has to have the Delorme Serial Emulator (DSE) installed in order for the NMEA stream/signal to be recognized by GPSGate http://franson.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7763. If you have Bluetooth as an option on your laptop, I'd punt the DSE as that is the biggest POS application I've ever had the displeasure of using. With Bluetooth you can get the Delorme BT-20 and take the DSE out of the picture and just use GPSGate to split your signal. I'm using this configuration and haven't had any troubles whatsoever.