28/04/09

 Original by Darren Griffin

Introduction

GlobalSat are a new name in the European GPS arena but they have an established product line including RS-232, PS/2, USB and Bluetooth receivers, OEM modules, antennas and AVL systems.

There is very little to say about its design, it’s a small rectangular plastic box, it’s slightly wider than a CF memory card, 8cm long and 12mm thick. It’s less bulky than some and aside from a small ridged ‘rainbow’ motif has no other external markings.

As options GlobalSat offer a PCMCIA adapter and an external magnetic antenna (the BC-307 has an external antenna socket) for those situations where reception is poor.

Very little really! Aside from the CF GPS all you’ll find inside is a 7cm CD. On the CD is a manual in Adobe PDF format, a small Pocket PC applet to test connectivity and compact flash to PCMCIA drivers for use in Win98, Win2K and WinXP PC’s. No other software is supplied and none is needed. New users may be a little thrown by this but setup is straightforward and there is very little to go wrong.

In Use First off I plugged it into my Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC’s CF slot, loaded the supplied drivers and fired up InfoMap’s excellent Navigator App. On the side of the receiver is a small LED, the supplied manual suggests that a flashing LED means it’s searching for a signal, a constantly lit LED means position fixed and OFF means….well you can work that one out for yourself! However all I got was OFF and when correctly connected ON regardless of whether a position fix had been acquired. A minor point but a novice may be confused by this.

From a cold start TTFF was approx 60 secs. Using Memory-Map’s PC App I recorded 5-7 sats with a clear view of the sky so to make things a little harder I tested the unit indoors. Sitting about 6ft from the garden window reception dropped to 4 sats but maintained a lock, by way of comparison I have never succeeded in getting a fix in this location using my Emtac GPS Jacket or Navman 3000.

In-car with my wife holding the Tablet on her lap reception was a consistent 4-6 sats, plugging in the external antenna which had been affixed to the roof instantly boosted reception to 8+ with 10 seen on couple of occasions, a first for any GPS I have used! I should add that the external antenna comes with approximately 6m of cable which allows plenty of scope for a tidy install. I placed mine at the rear of my car roof and there was enough cable to run it under the rear window seal, into the boot and along the door sills to the front passenger seat with about 1m to spare!

 TTFF on warm starts was never more than 20 seconds and this made it a dream to use as I could place the Tablet into suspend knowing that I could acquire a fix quickly when I needed it. Also when traveling through tunnels or underpasses where satellite lock was lost it would re-acquire within seconds of emerging. Installing the BC-307 in my CF Jacket I ran up the TomTom GPS Driver, set it to NMEA 4800 and chose the correct port. With a good field of view I received a solid 6 Sat fix in approx 20 seconds.

Technical Specifications

Interface Compact Flash type I

Output Messages NMEA0183 protocol, and supports command: GGA, GSA, GSV, RMC, GLL, VTG

Datum WGS84

Hot Start 8 sec.average

Cold Start 48 sec.average

Summary I was very impressed, until now I had never liked the idea of CF receivers but I am a convert. The BC-307 was simple to install, locked on quickly and re-acquired even faster. It’s built to withstand knocks and like the ad says "it does what it says on the tin".

UK Retail price for the BC-307 is £145+VAT but you should be able to purchase it for less than this. One thing to be aware of when ordering is to check to see if the antenna comes with the Compact Flash Card or not. The official response from GlobalSat is "Some distributors have provided the external antenna in the package of BC-307, some distributors do not".

However, the UK distributor does say that all BC-307's they order to the UK will come with the antenna included. So whether you're in the UK, Europe, North America, or in some other corner of the world, before you purchase, phone the retailer up and check to see if the antenna is included!

My 2 cents

This is the device I’ve bought to go along my PDA.

I’ve a iPAQ 2215, chosen because it was 2 slots. An CF card slot, I use mainly to hard devices: a camera,  a GPS and a wireless. And a SD slot only used to memory use.

 I’ve no complains about it’s behavior, it’s fast, precise and does not invent to much in absence of signals, i.e. inside tunnels, city canyons or under trees. Does not draw to much from the iPAQ battery, my idea is that it half’s the useful life of a complete charge, what, considering the 7 to 7,5 normal iPAQ battery cycle is more than practicable to a normal use.

My only complain, in fact old complain was a kind of hardware weakness. The connection of the outpart with the “CF” card was only by to lateral small and weak peaces of plastic. Some one or two millimeters of plastic, both sides, are not enough to hold firmly and lastingly both parts together in a efficient way. So mine just brook in a hunt party a few days after arriving. It was easy to open, to fill the gap and the space inside with Araldite 2 component glue and close it firmly a couple of hours. It has just over two years of, and some times heavy, use without any more broken plastics or parts.

It’s my back up for the Libby Project, every time I forgot to fill the Solar GPS, the Libretto pretends to be funny, or I just do not have time or trends to spend more than a few minutes with it’s BT tricks. It costs me some 40€, cams with an extended antenna and a CF/PCMCIA adaptor so it was a beautiful bough. Very pleased with it.