ArcGIS Mobile 10 + External GPS Receiver

[AkhilParujanwala]

Hi, I am trying to use two trimble products for GPS connection with ArcGIS Mobile 10. The Trimble Yuma has its own built-in GPS which works fine, but I want better accuracy.

The Trimble ProXH is an external GPS receiver and antenna that has Bluetooth. I am able to connect the ProXH to the Yuma via Bluetooth. When I set everything up for the ProXH, to use NMEA and Com6 to communicate, I do the same for the ArcGIS Mobile 10 Windows WPF making sure the Com is set to 6, but it doesn't read from the ProXH is defaults and reads from Yuma's internal GPS.

Has anyone successfully used an external GPS receiver with ArcGIS Mobile yet? Please enlighten me.


Thanks,

Akhil P.

[LarryWilliams]

Did you ever get this working?

[AkhilParujanwala]

Yes, I did get this working earlier last week.

Long story short, here's a rough outline of things:

1) ArcGIS Mobile 10 can only read NMEA strings from a GPS device.
NOTE: ArcPad and TerraSync can read TSIP strings from a GPS device.

2) The Trimble ProXH natively outputs TSIP strings, meaning you need to change it to NMEA, using GPS controller (free i think).

3) You will need 2 Bluetooth connection to the ProXH, first one being just a connection between Yuma and ProXH and the second connection via GPS Controller.

4) GPS Controller must be configured properly to read the information from the ProXH and output NMEA strings (all of the strings to be exact).

5) Using Tera Term you can connect to the COM port in which the strings are being sent to and test whether you are getting the correct strings.

6) Test in ArcGIS Mobile and attempt to turn of any internal GPS device on the Yuma itself. You will be able to see if you are connect to the Yuma's internal GPS or external GPS if cover the ProXH.

From my preliminary tests, we have found little to no difference in accuracy. We are waiting for better weather to conduct GPS testing (unfortunately is snowing) with known benchmarks (survey markers to determine if the external ProXH GPS is better or not.

[HugoMaurício]

Hi to all,

I am developing a custom ArcGIS application with the ArcGIS for Windows Mobile SDK for desktop.

I am also trying to connect to a Trimble GPS External receiver, in my case a Trimble R4, to a Trimble Yuma 2, but with little or no luck.

I tried connecting the Trimble GPS Controller to a COM Port (bluetooth) on the R4 but without success. Has anyone tried this?

Then I found out that I can use Trimble Configurator to configure the R4 to output NMEA message through a serial port (RS232). But Trimble Yuma 2 does not have a serial port connection. And I don't think it will be acceptable to carry both Trimble Yuma and R4 attached with a serial cable. Is there any way to forward NMEA messages to a bluetooth connection in the Trimble R4?

Thanks in advanced.

Hugo Maurício