The ArcPad Team Blog

Unofficial stuff from the team behind the World's leading mobile GIS platform

Monday, July 13, 2009

ArcPad 8.0 SP1 - USB GPS Support

With the release of ArcPad 8.0 Service Pack 1, comes additional support for USB GPS Devices.

In response to users requests, ArcPad 8.0(SP1) now has improved detection of both Bluetooth Serial Port or generic USB GPS Serial Port devices using the NMEA, TSIP or SiRF protocols. This represents a significant advancement in GPS support for ArcPad Users.

SP1 now allows users to plug in USB GPS devices and, using the find GPS tool in the GPS Preferences drop down, search, locate and list these additional devices. After plugging a USB GPS device into a USB port on your PC, start ArcPad, go to GPS Preferences and verify your USB GPS appears in the drop down list.

For devices with a COMxxx name, it will appear at the top of the protocol list with "COMxxx: (Device's Friendly Name)". For devices without a COMxxx name, it will appear at the bottom of the protocol list with "(Device's Friendly Name)".Once the name has been selected, either the device's COM port number or the device's friendly name will be saved to ArcPadPrefs.apx file inside the My ArcPad folder in My Documents.

Whilst this is a major step forward, it's still a work in progress. ArcPad doesn't yet support the Garmin binary GPS format with work still progressing in this area.