New toy: Anycom Bluetooth GPS Receiver GP700
by Volker Weber
UPS brought a new toy today. I received the press release many weeks ago, but the product became available just now. First impression: Nice and stylish, very lightweight. Comes with its own chargers both for a car and your mains outlet. Minus: Does not use a USB connector although it wants 5V. Anycom claims up to 14 hours of operation and 300 hours of standby. There is a physical on/off switch which powers down the device.
The spec sheet claims the device can do a cold start in less than 60 seconds, a warm start in under 38 and a hot start in less than 10. An addendum to the manual however warns that the initial acquisition may take up to two hours:
The first time a GPS receiver is used, it needs to perform a basic search that may take up to two hours. ... The basic search only needs to be performed when you change your location quickly by a very large distance (like flying to another country). In normal use the time to fix (TTF) the postition will be very short (3-15 seconds).
This is not a exaggeration since my device has been sitting there for 90 minutes now without an initial fix.
Update: It would not get a fix at all. I recharged it. Switched it off and back on again. It had the first fix within less than 5 minutes. I will watch this space over the next days and see how quickly it starts up under various conditions.
Comments
Hier noch die Preise (~70€)
http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/a214097.html
Is it just me or does Anycom genreally redirect deep links to the main page?
2 hours to get a lock on the satellites? My Garmin V needs 15-30 secs. After been 2 weeks off. And it powers up after cold start in 10 secs. Leave the house, turn it on, pull on jacket, gloves, helmet, start engine, ready to go...
My Holux GPSlim 236 took a about a minute to get a new fix when we arrived in Spain this week. Claims about 10 hrs of operation on one charge, which is enough for me. Two hours sounds abysmal to get an initial lock?
If i move my Garmin Vista from UK to Australia, it takes about 20 minutes to get a fix. It has to do a lot of work to work out where satellites are and correlate it with the internal almanac. Just moving around in Europe is quite quick to first fix. Presumably this Anycom hasnt had a fix since it left China, or wherever it is made?
Some vendors give their units a clue where it is being sold, to increase speed to first fix. The built in almanac on this unit may be very out of date or doesnt exist at all.
Hi there.. Do you know if this nice device works @ linux?
If it works, and you have no bad opinion about this device after a few months using, I consider to buy it! ;)
