Andy Coates Blog

If you are a regular visitor here you may know that i have just bought myself a shiny new MDA Vario ii from my post about making your blog mobile friendly. Since then I have been getting used to my new phone / Pocket PC and just this week bought a GPS bluetooth receiver so I could use my phone with Google maps as a SatNav device. This is a great feature as I have unlimited Internet on my phone so all I need to do is open Google maps (which is free and comes preinstalled!) and it streams the maps as and when you need them. All i needed to do was to pair my Bluetooth GPS receiver with my MDA Vario and my location would be tracked giving me SatNav!

Bluetooth GPS Problems - Not as easy as I thought!

Upon receiving the bluetooth receiver it was really easy to pair it with my phone but Google Maps was not picking up the bluetooth signal. After much trying and retrying the connection i eventually gave in and looked at the instructions for my Vario, it said to go to settings>connections and click on the GPS icon to set up my GPS connection. The only problem was that there was no GPS icon or option available anywhere on the phone. After much searching on the Internet I eventually found a fix through a combination of many different sites. Because it took me so long to find a solution I thought I would put it all together here in one place so if you have the same problem with your windows mobile enabled device, here is how to fix that bluetooth GPS connection problem.

Retrieve your GPS icon

The GPS program that come with windows mobile takes care if all the incoming GPS information making it easier for other programs on your device to use it. The problem is, on some installations the program is hidden, so even though it is already on your device you cant actually access it! I'm assuming this is a naughty trick so that you take your device to the shop and they will try and sell you some GPS software or is that just me being cynical!

Just to show what the icon looks like, before and after!

To be able to access the GPS functions on your device all you need to do is "unhide" it and to do this you need to make a quick change in your registry. To edit your registry you need a little piece of software called PHM registry editor made by Philippe Majerus. With newer phones the installation does not work so what you need to do is copy the .cab file to a file on your phone and click on the .cab file. This will install the Registry editor software on your phone. You can download the particular cab file here (Right click and save as)

Once you have installed this on your phone you will now have a new program on your phone called PHM Regedit, open this program and you are now ready to make a quick change in your registry! Locate to this folder:

HKey_LOCAL_MACHINE> comm>GPS Settings

In the lower window you should see an icon with the text "hide" after it, delete this and recreate these 2 registry entries.

1. Add DWORD Group and set Value to 2
2. Add DWORD Hide and set Value to 0

Now soft reset your phone by pushing the button with your stylus in the hole next to the infrared port on the bottom of your phone. Upon restart if you go to settings>connections> you will now have the GPS icon and you will now be able to successfully pair your device with your bluetooth GPS receiver.

For a rundown of the com settings please visit Keni Barwick's site for a great tutorial.

 

If you enjoyed this post please feel free to buy me a gingerbread late! mmmm!