OLD EXTENSIONS NO LONGER WORK IN ARCPAD 10

[TOMBELL]

I recently migrated my projects from ArcPad 7.0.1 to ArcPad 10.0.4.  I am coming to regret it.

Among other problems, several of the extensions I have don't work in 10.  For example, I have an extension that captures the date and time from the GPS and updates the system clock.  This is really handy if my PDA reverts back to its build date sometime in 2008.  Instead of entering the current time and date, I can use this tool from ArcPad to reset it.

The real problem is with an extension I had developed to connect a gamma spectrometer to ArcPad that no longer works on 10.  I see that most of the extensions that ship with ArcPad 10 are built for 10 but a notable exception is the HARN tables which dates from ArcPad 7.1.  It is probably not a good sign for developers that ESRI had to rewrite all of its stock extensions for 10.

If anyone knows how ArcPad has changed with regard to handling extensions, please reply to this post.

[HannahFerrier]

Hello Tom,

I have a sneaking suspicion that your extensions are still working - you just need to stop them from being 'DELAY LOADED'.

Delay loading of extensions is used to save memory - ArcPad recognizes when you might need to use an extension and will only load it at that time instead of during start-up. Open up your Advanced Settings Page and take a look at the Extensions Tab. There are columns called 'loaded' and 'delayable'. I am thinking that your extensions say 'loaded - no' and 'delayable - yes'. This means that your extension is waiting to be loaded into memory until ArcPad thinks you need it.

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You can force an extension to load by executing the following script. Press ctrl + Enter in ArcPad to open a script window and then type in the following (where CODE is the 4 character code for your extension as listed on the Extensions Tab):

msgbox extensions("CODE").version

Select the exclamation point to execute the code and see the version number displayed in the message box. By requesting the version number, we will have forced ArcPad to load our extension, so open up your Extensions Tab again to see if the extension has loaded. If it has - there is a super-easy way to remove delay loading from your extension by editing the ExtensionPrefs.apx file.

Your ExtensionPrefs.apx (in your 'My ArcPad' Folder) has delay loading for all extensions set to TRUE. However, we can override this for any extension by adding the delayload attribute to your extension. Open ExtensionPrefs.apx in ArcPad Studio and right-click on your extension to select 'Add Attribute'. Enter 'delayload' as the name and the value as 'false'. This should load your extension into ArcPad on startup!!

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Please let me know if this works...

Hannah 🙂

[TOMBELL]

Hi Hannah,

Thanks you for taking the time to help me.

I should have said that I already toggled the delayed load to "false".  I have looked at the extensions preferences file and confirmed that it is still set to false.  The tool that is loaded with the extension is visible as well.  When I click it with the GPS running, it does not reset the system clock.  And yes, I did load the appropriate dll for my ARM processor based PDA.

My recollection is that there was a dialog box that appeared when this tool was used either warning that the GPS was not turned on or that the system clock was successfully updated.  Now no message appears on screen.  The custom extension I am interested in reviving does not post any messages either and I know it should.

I downloaded the time set extension from ESRI years ago and it performed flawlessly while installed on ArcPad 7.0.1.

http://arcscripts.esri.com/details.asp?dbid=12623

If you have time, perhaps you can download it to your mobile device and see if it will work for you.

The programmer who wrote the extension for my gamma instrument is troubleshooting it now at some cost to my firm.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Thanks
Tom

[HannahFerrier]

Tom,

I have had no trouble installing and running the 'Sync clock with GPS clock' extension on the latest version of ArcPad running on a Trimble GeoExplorer 6000.

Have you had any luck on your end??

Hannah

[TOMBELL]

Hanna,

Thanks again for helping out.

I have this extension installed on a Trimble Recon.  I don't understand why it works on your GeoExplorer but not my Recon.  Can you confirm that you get a message confirming the clock reset when you activate the tool.  I have included some screen shots.

The first one shows the time at 10:49, an hour later than the local time.  The second shot shows the tool associated with the extension.  After clicking it, no message box appears, the screen just goes back to the map and as you can see, the time is still set at 10:49 instead of the actual time which is 9:49.

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My spectrometer extention works but only after rewriting the DLL.  I'm not sure what changes were made but it still will not display it's associated text boxes when any of its tools are called.

[RussellKallstrom]

I'm sorry, I have no problem with the GPS to system clock sync extension.  I'm using a Juniper Archer running Windows Mobile 5 and ArcPad 10.0 R4.