What can I do with iPod bluetooth?

[BBauer]

I have a iPod Touch 4g. I was curious if there is anything useful I can do with it on the road. I can't jail break it or anything like that since technically until I graduate my school owns it.

Anyway, I will be getting data to my laptop (which has bluetooth) through a Verizon usb modem. I will be running GRlevel 3 on my laptop but was curious if location services on the iPod will be functional by connecting over bluetooth to my laptop. While at home over the wireless router I am able to plot my location on radarscope on the iPod. I'm not really sure how it does it, somehow it knows approximately where I am tapping into the mediacom cable internet system. Just curious if it anything similar could be possible through mobile broadband. Can you even get an internet connection over bluetooth, my laptop serving as the "hotspot"?

 

[James Langford]

IMO, you can't send any gps data from your ipod through bluetooth. Your ipod can determine your approximate location from your internet location, similar to how Google maps works. If you setup a wifi sharing hotspot through your laptop, and connect your ipod to it, radarscope might get some location information, but it probably won't be acurate. If you want location information going into GR, you're best off getting a usb gps puck. They aren't very expensive, and work very well.

Bluetooth is great for certain things, but somewhat limited. If you have a handsfree kit in your car, you can connect your phone to it wirelessly through BT. If you have wireless headphones, you can stream fairly high quality music via BT. I actually have a BT car stereo, and can stream to it from my Ipod. You can also transfer files via BT between compatible devices, but that can be a bit difficult to get working.

 

[Matt Tottle]

IMO, you can't send any gps data from your ipod through bluetooth. Your ipod can determine your approximate location from your internet location, similar to how Google maps works. If you setup a wifi sharing hotspot through your laptop, and connect your ipod to it, radarscope might get some location information, but it probably won't be acurate. If you want location information going into GR, you're best off getting a usb gps puck. They aren't very expensive, and work very well.

Bluetooth is great for certain things, but somewhat limited. If you have a handsfree kit in your car, you can connect your phone to it wirelessly through BT. If you have wireless headphones, you can stream fairly high quality music via BT. I actually have a BT car stereo, and can stream to it from my Ipod. You can also transfer files via BT between compatible devices, but that can be a bit difficult to get working.

..And slow! Due to driver limitations, you'll be working at around 115kbps (14KB/s) which is about twice the speed of a dialup modem. I can also verify that you can not access the GPS via USB or Bluetooth (but maybe someone will write an app for that at some point?). But I do have a pair of BT headphones (Motorola HT-620) and they work very nicely. They even have pause/play/ff/rew buttons that can control the ipod. I also have a Bluetooth transceiver (Motorola D-800) hooked up to my home theater. This neat little device can feed audio in either direction, so you can use it to feed a pair of BT headphones FROM the stereo, or it can be used to feed Ipod, cell phone, or laptop music TO the stereo. I picked them up as a set about 6 years ago, and those specific ones aren't available anymore, but I know they have similar ones.

One warning on the home theater transceiver though.. The bluetooth encoding and transmission introduces a delay. So you can't use them for watching TV or playing Guitar Hero at 3am because nothing will sync up (Guitar Hero can sort of compensate, but it gets funky with the sheer amount of delay). So you would use it strictly for music.

 

[BBauer]

Thanks guys, I do have a GPS puck which I will be running Streets and Trips and GRlevel 3 with through GPSgate. But I have the express version of GPSgate which only allows two programs to use the puck. I was hoping to somehow be able to get my location on the iPod so I could also be on Spotter Network, but if the location would be inaccurate it sort of defeats the purpose. Maybe for now I'll just run GRlevel 3 and Streets and Trips then worry about Spotter Network later on once I get the hang of chasing and positioning myself relative to storms. I guess I'll just need to buy the full version at that point.

 

[James Langford]

I found the free (donation ware) xport app to work very well for GPS splitting:

http://www.curioustech.net/xport.html

You can configure quite a few virtual ports that all can share data from one gps. Give it a shot.

 

[Matt Tottle]

It doesn't really make sense to connect two separate GPS receivers to your computer.. There's a couple different ways you could go with this..

- Use the iPhone SN app (RadarScope). You would then set up your laptop for an ad-hoc wifi connection between it and the ipod, and allow the ipod to share your datacard. Your S&T and GR3 would share the puck, while the ipod would use its own GPS to run RadarScope and send your position over the wifi link.

- Use the laptop for SN and GR, sharing the puck between those two, and use the ipod's built in GPS program for your navigation. Again, you would want to do the ad-hoc wifi link so the ipod can get routes (although it doesn't need internet to display its current GPS position).

- Install street-level GIS files into GR3, which would mostly eliminate your need for S&T

 

[BBauer]

I have looked into Xport but I am running 64 bit Windows 7. It only works reliably with 32 bit platforms. The iPod does not have GPS so that eliminates two of your options. I do like the GIS idea though. Where can I find those files? Do many people use that as a primary navigation source? Is it practical? Thanks for all the help, I like the idea of not having to toggle back and forth between GRL3 and S&T. I'm on a tight budget that is why I'm trying to save a few bucks by not buying the full version of GPSgate at this point.

 

[Matt Tottle]

Ahh I didn't realize the touch used that WPS crap, I thought it had the GPS chip in it like the iphone does. Oh well. The street files are at grlevelxstuff.com, under "Shape files". There is one for each state (most of them), and each one is divided into sections. You just save them to your GRLevel3 directory and load the files for where you are going to be using the GIS menu. It does include basically every little dirt road, however they are not labeled. But unless you need directions to an exact address, this is just fine for making sure you don't get trapped in a dead end. You should also turn off GR3's "Base Roads" when zoomed in because they are slightly out of alignment with the GIS files. Not by much, but enough to clutter up the display.

I also sent you a PM.

 

[BBauer]

Ahh I didn't realize the touch used that WPS crap, I thought it had the GPS chip in it like the iphone does. Oh well. The street files are at grlevelxstuff.com, under "Shape files". There is one for each state (most of them), and each one is divided into sections. You just save them to your GRLevel3 directory and load the files for where you are going to be using the GIS menu. It does include basically every little dirt road, however they are not labeled. But unless you need directions to an exact address, this is just fine for making sure you don't get trapped in a dead end. You should also turn off GR3's "Base Roads" when zoomed in because they are slightly out of alignment with the GIS files. Not by much, but enough to clutter up the display.

I also sent you a PM.

Thanks for the tips using the GIS files. I'll try to get them loaded up sometime soon and see how I like it. With all the additions you can make to GRlevel 3 it becomes a pretty mean chasing machine ha ha. Thanks again for all the help guys!