Mac-friendly GPS systems

Hi Ben, Yes, Rayming make a USB GPS (for interface with computer software). It is excellent for Marine navigation.

http://www.gpscentral.ca/products/rayming/tn200usb.htm http://www.rayming.com/Mac.asp Drivers for Mac are on the CD, and can also be downloaded from

http://www.ftdichip.com/ GinnyK

Ben, I was wondering the same thing last week. The Garmin 18 USB does *not* work on the Mac, even under Virtual PC, but you might want to ask MacGPSPro if other models might.

>Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 17:35:38 -0700 >From: "Dr. Lawrence W. James" <lwjamesmacgpspro.com> >Subject: Re: Compatibility with Garmin GPS 18USB > >Dear sir/madam: > >Can I drive a Garmin 18 USB using your software? I run >OSX 10.latest, soon to be 10.4.

Sorry, but at this point, there is no Mac USB driver for the Garmin.

If all you need is the GPS antenna to connect to OS X, see
www.rayming.com for some choices.

And a Google search for "GPS OS X USB drivers" brings up a LOT of
stuff, but not all useful I suspect.

--
Dan Hinckley, Gingins, Switzerland
home: dbhsuiattle.org
work: dahhq.iucn.org; http://iucn.org/
the Suiattle: 48º 19' N, 121º 32' W
Gingins: 46° 24.685 N, 6° 10.556 E

At 7:42 -0800 1/4/05, Ben Rubinstein wrote:
>Steven Byars wrote:
>
>DeLorme used to make a wonderful US/wide mapping program, including
>one version that came with a gps and the software for the computer
>to show you where you were and help you follow a preselected path to
>where you were going.

The Macmap group on Yahoo might be helpful for you as well.

--
Dan Hinckley, Gingins, Switzerland
home: dbhsuiattle.org
work: dahhq.iucn.org; http://iucn.org/
the Suiattle: 48º 19' N, 121º 32' W
Gingins: 46° 24.685 N, 6° 10.556 E

I recently bought the Rayming TripNav and Mac GPSPro. It is an excelent combo and I am very pleased with the performace.

Thanks to all those who replied (including Astrid off list). I wasn't very
clear - I already have a GPS unit (two identical ones in fact) for which I'd
been unable to find drivers. This is called the Globalsat BU303.

Following up the tips from Astrid and Ginny showed me that the device I have
(Globalsat BU303) *looked* identical to the Rayming TN200 device. So with
great excitement I tried both the drivers I found at www.ftdichip.com... but
neither worked.

However, this did inspire to me do some more indepth googling, which
eventually led me to via a linux site to a company called prolific
<http://tech.prolific.com.tw>. Cut a long story short, it turned out that
their PL2303 driver did the trick. I subsequently found mention of Prolific
on the Rayming site; either they used to sell the devices with the FTDI
chip, and switched to the Prolific one, or vice versa.

Lessons learned: kit gets rebadged all over the place, and if you can't find
any support under the name you know a device by, and the supplier swears
that there is no Mac support available, it may be worth seeing if it
resembles something else; and, as ever, Google is your friend. And so is
TidBITS, of course.

  Ben Rubinstein | Email: benr_mlcogapp.com
  Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
  http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866

Ben,

Just so that I understand you clearly: you found the Prolific driver worked with your Mac-based handheld GPS unit, or as a driver for mapping on your Powerbook, or both?

I haven’t been able to find a Mac-compatible hand-held GPS for hiking from any supplier (ended up buying a Garmin, but all you can with the bridging software is upload waypoints—you can’t see the Garmin maps on your Mac, or move back and forth in the intuitive way you can with Garmin on the PC).

Thanks,

Charles Conn

Charles Conn wrote:
> Just so that I understand you clearly: you found the Prolific driver worked
> with your Mac-based handheld GPS unit, or as a driver for mapping on your
> Powerbook, or both?

I don't have a handheld GPS unit; I have several of the 'GPS mouse' type
units, with a USB connection, looks like this:
    <http://www2.multithread.co.uk/images/bu303_large.jpg>

I've got them because of some custom software we're developing; the brief
was originally platform agnostic, and we nearly went for Mac Mini's; but
ended up with a custom mini PC, and these GPS units. However, I've still
been pursuing Mac options, and what I found was that the Prolific driver
installed on my Mac allowed my software to access these GPS units.

So that solved my (specialist) problem; and as far as I'm aware, would make
these units accessible to any other 'general' GPS program on the Mac (I
tried a few demos while I was trying to get the drivers working, in case the
problems I was getting were in my own software; and once I had the drivers
working, all the ones I tried read the GPS fine.)

However (to return to the thread from which I've branched off) I've not
tried any Mac mapping software. From what I can see, Route 66 ought to work
with this GPS, but I've not tried it. (BTW: there've been dark mutterings
on this thread about the quality of Route66: I think this applied to the US
edition. Does anyone have experience or comments on the European or UK
editions?)

  Ben Rubinstein | Email: benrcogapp.com
  Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
  http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866

...
>I don't have a handheld GPS unit; I have several of the 'GPS mouse' type
>units, with a USB connection, looks like this:
> <http://www2.multithread.co.uk/images/bu303_large.jpg>
>

...

>However (to return to the thread from which I've branched off) I've not
>tried any Mac mapping software. From what I can see, Route 66 ought to work
>with this GPS, but I've not tried it. (BTW: there've been dark mutterings
>on this thread about the quality of Route66: I think this applied to the US
>edition. Does anyone have experience or comments on the European or UK
>editions?)
>
I also used a GPS mouse with that chipset and Route 66 last summer
with a recreational vehicel in germany. The quality of the
navigational data was good. Only maybe once the proposed routing had
a wrong way in a conjunction. But besides that, it worked perfectly
on anything from small routes to Autobahnen. Also passing through
Koeln was easy with Route66.


Best regards,
Gernot Hecht
--
www.wollemond.de - Der unpolitische Filz ;-)

RE - use off GPS mouse (BU-303) with iBook usb and Virtual PC 2004 I have installed the Xp & other driver for this unit but can not get it to work on XP Pro? It works on Win98 Win2000. Please note I am not a great fan off Windows but have a nice GPS program Call OziExplorer (Australia) that I can use. I also use MacGpsPro Nice but the lack off Calibrate maps that auto-locates the maps off your location is a down side. Any idea on this matter? regards.Alain.