Transplant CF GPS
by TransplantComputing
 - October 2002 -
 

Intro and where to buy

The Transplant CF GPS is one of the more circulated CF GPS receivers as it is also used by Travroute for their CoPilot bundle
It is built on on a  EMTAC D157N base.
A big thank you to Steve who provided me with this evaluation sample, thanks !
It is available now at a price of $199.99, which is quite competitive considering it comes with an external antenna. You can get the WAAS version for $230 too.

Specs:

From Transplant's site: specs 


Size and Appearance: 

This CF GPS is a Compact Flash Type 2 receiver. According to TransplantComputing this extra thickness allowed them to improve the RF shielding of the GPS. Unless you have a discontinued Jornada PocketPC this shouldn't be a problem.

This CF GPS is thicker than others but for a good reason. This was done so as to put the antenna at a 60 degree angle with the PDA. That means that reception should be equally good when holding the PDA or when the PDA stands in a car holder. In comparison the Navman Sleeve GPS has an upright antenna that works well in a car but less so when you hold the PDA horizontally.
 

Battery Life and Power Supply:  

See the "Battery Life" page for details

Like all current CF GPS solutions (except for the NeoGPS) it doesn't have its own power supply and will use the one of the PocketPC it is connected to. See the "Battery Life" page for what consequences this has. My tests found that the Transplant CF GPS  required slightly less power than the other "bulky" CF GPS receivers, and while it can be a bit problematic with the old generation of PPC's like the iPaq 36xx, it's much more manageable with the current iPaq 39xx generation. Still you will notice the additional power drain if your PocketPC is running off its batteries.

Operation:

I found the Transplant CF GPS to be very easy to operate. It does not require any specific drivers on your PocketPC (at least if you're running PPC2002) so all you need to do is drop it in the CF II slot of your PDA or of the expansion sleeve of your PDA. It can also be used with a laptop if need be, using standard Windows  drivers.

Settings:

Like all the GPS receivers using the SiRF chip, it can easily be set to any combination of baud rates and protocol. All you need is Leadtek's excellent CE Monitor linked at the top of the "software" webpage

1) Baudrate:
Factory default is set at 4,800bps but can be easily modified to 9,600/19,200/38,200/57,600bps with CE Monitor
This will guarantee compatibility with all open navigation programs (i.e. all navigation programs except Travroute's CoPilot for which you will need the CoPilot version of the Transplant CF GPS)

2) Output Protocol or language:
You can easily switch back and forth between NMEA and SiRF with CE Monitor.
Switching to SiRF is a must for all Destinator aficionados...

3) WAAS
Although it's bit of a buzzword these days for GPS receivers, WAAS  isn't really needed for road navigation, where the software generally uses a "snap to road" trick instead.
For off-road use though it can be useful for people who need a very accurate position.
The good news is that Transplant has made that option available on the Transplant CF GPS at no extra charge on the non-WAAS model (the WAAS model is permanently set to WAAS) with a small utility, although it's only available for the Palm platform at this time. In comparison Teletype will let you do that on their CF GPS receiver but only if you buy their utility for $160...

 

Satellite Reception and Time to acquire a fix

See this page for detailed timings and comparisons

The Transplant  CF GPS got a fix fairly quickly most of the time as shown in the table linked above.
Once it had a fix, even though I moved it around quite a bit in my car and even put my PPC on the passenger seat a few times, it never lost the fix.
For my testing I didn't feel the need to use the included external antenna, unlike for the Billionton CF GPS where it solved some problems due to difficult satellite  environments. Still, like for other CF receivers, it benefits from the use of an antenna to speed up acquisition time for difficult satellite configurations in Cold/Warm starts.

Compatibility with mapping/routing software:

In my limited testing, I've found the Transplant CF GPS to operate perfectly with all the programs I tried.
- Destinator (make sure you use switch to SiRF mode)
- Pharos Ostia - NMEA/4,800bps
- Teletype - compatible prior to version  092002
- Mapopolis -NMEA
- TomTom Route Planner USA - NMEA
- TomTom GPS plug-in (used by CityMaps, TomTom Online and TomTom Navigator). Using the NMEA mode because for some reason in SiRF mode TomTom (still not fixed in 1.41 but Navigator still works ok) wasn't reading the position properly. Unlike the current version of Destinator however, TomTom GPS works fine in NMEA mode.
- There are others out there, but they should all work provided you can select COM ports easily  except those that are locked to a receiver like Travroute's CoPilot or Distefora's mobile navigator.

Conclusion: