Navigation and Global Positioning System

How to navigate with a Psion and GPS.

Very incomplete, as there are other products available. I have not checked all these as yet because many cover the U.K. and Europe, and are thus of no real use to me.

For sources of map material, check my GPS and Maps page, which is a more general guide to map and GPS data sources.

On this page

Various GPS navigation applications.

Air travel, flight logs, flight navigation

Yacht, marine, sea, diving and SCUBA

AA Travel Companions

European and World versions. Based on AA CityPack. Hotels, restaurants, city history, shopping, etc.

Cables and leads

For more information on Psion to Garmin and other specialist Psion cables and connectors see Chris Archer. This site about seems to have a range of one piece cables that are more convenient than the 21Store version. www.psionleads.freeserve.co.uk/

Compass

Compass for EPOC/Psion 5, 5mx, 7, Revo, Revo+ Compass is a direction finding program. You tell the program where you are, and it displays a compass showing the current positions of the sun, moon and 3 bright stars (if they are above the horizon). So simply line up the Psion with the heavenly body and the compass shows you which direction is North. You can also get Compass to show the direction of the shortest route to any other city, and even see the route on a world map! This way you can for example find the direction for prayer towards Mecca or Jerusalem. Freeware by Daniel Sissman. Shareware by Aron Landy. www.aronlandy.com or www.pocketiq.com

DIY GPS connection cables

If you are so inclined you can make your own cable for about $15. See "Larry's Garmin Connector" site at: pfranc.com/projects/g45contr/g45_idx.htm

EnRoute

Obsolete name. Now known as Route Planner. Commercial product from TomTom.

GarmEdit

Mike Coon's free program GarmEdit allowed editing of waypoints and routes for Garmin GPS models GPS-II+, GPS-III eTrex (and Summit) GPS navigators, showing the symbol set correctly but not preserve the altitude data. There is also a link (see "enhancements") to its possible use in conjunction with RealMaps. Find the program at www.mjcoon.care4free.net

GaRoute

Rudd Rademaker? Limited download version, registers to a Psion serial number as shareware. No other details known. I assume it does routes for a Garmin GPS. Integrates with RealMaps. Get co-ordinates from any map scanned or otherwise. Support for TomTom maps. Driving direction. Beep on approaching a waypoint. Sounding pretty handy. www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/orchard/5730/

GeoDis

55k shareware mapping system, various maps available for download. Formerly http://village.ch/~aeschbacher

GeoGrid

Enter latitude and longitude, and it provides a grid reference, shows the position on a Earth map. Contains about 800 cities which you can search for by name. Robbe Wunschiers. http://mitglied.lycos.de/roebbe/

GiPsi

Simple GPS manager for transfering waypoints to and from a GPS. Free. For Lowrence LSI100, not Garmin. www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/babbage/399/

GPsion5

Ian Smith. Intended to let you enter waypoints and upload them to a Magellan GPS. However, you can enter and display the waypoints in either OS grid (with or without letters) or lat/long, so set your preferences to one format, enter the waypoint, set your preferences to the other and hey presto it's converted the location for you. It will also handle either OSGB36 or WGS84 datums, so you can go from one format in one datum to a different format in the other datum if you really want. Formerly http://www.achrn.demon.co.uk/ian/GPSion5/

Mapper

Steve Litchfield's PsiMapper was one of the first shareware packages to be converted to the Psion 5. Maps of Great Britain. Look for files Map5gb*.zip Also Psi-Mapper London, Psi-Mapper Ireland. Steve also did a UK Pocket Directory together with Stefan Smith. Steve now kindly makes the entire system available as freeware, and you can download the source code (about 4000 lines) for modification. stevelitchfield.com

Philipp Maier

Philipp's homepage had material and hints on GPS and 5mx. www.philipp-maier.de

Motorbike GPS

This site gives lots of details of using a Psion 5mx and a GPS as a motorbike navigation system. Many photos showing how to. home-2.worldonline.nl/~cb002101/eggintro.htm

OSGB -LL

Convert between OSGB British map grid references and Latitude and Longitude. www.wilsonjo.demon.co.uk/psion/psion.htm

PsiGar

If you use your Garmin for nautical navigation PsiGar can be used to input waypoints from the Psion to the Garmin. Jonathan Duff? www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Dugout/7981/psiongb.html or homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.duff/

PsiTrex

Simon Long. Management of a Garmin eTrex Summit GPS from a Psion Series 5. PsiTrex allows waypoints, routes and tracklogs to be downloaded from an eTrex and stored as text files, which can be easily edited or stored before being uploaded back to the eTrex. It also includes a utility to monitor the NMEA-0183 output from any GPS and display the details on screen, including satellite data and error estimations. Formerly http://www.kudata.freeserve.co.uk

Real Maps

RealMaps 250k shareware GIS and mapping system using scanned bitmaps of maps. A wonderful product I expect to use extensively. Main problem is getting decent maps, and Kevin Millican gives hints on this. Works with GPS receiver, if required. Shareware costs ten pounds if you send a cheque. Test Report: Essential if you use a GPS outside USA and Europe. One of the few ways to add arbitrary maps to your Psion. Bought after tested: www.millican.info http://www.millican.f2s.com/realmaps/index.htm

Route Planner Millennium

By Palmtop Software Ltd (TomTom). European. Also North American version (formerly known as En Route). Road map, route planning. Comes on CD containing overlays for many countries. You can add locations. Plan optimum routes with up to four stopovers. Split view can show map and written directions. Make sure it is set for NMEA when using Garmin or similar GPS. Use Street Planner for actual city street local navigation. Bug. If installed via SIS on Psion, and you get Error-Code E32USER-CBase and Error-Number 21. Note that Routeplanner creates a file in your default document directory. You have to remove that file and then start RoutePlanner. There is also a 3rd party site overlay entry helper formerly available here http://www.pseudocode.co.uk/epoc/index.html

Patrick Fox's CoDriver

This converts Route Planner routes and prompts you in speech as you reach each waypoint by voice output. Not very loud through the Psion speaker. Not speech synthesis, more a collection of appropriate recorded directions. freespace.virgin.net/patrick.fox/codriver/

TubeRoute

OPL by Chris Handley (GPL license) v1 comes also as a TubeRoute.opo file, working with its TubeRoute_London (template for any other city rail-bus network database) cshandley.web.users.btopenworld.com/

StreetPlanner

Door to door street maps and navigation. Available for London, Great Britain, and for Europe (no USA version). Interfaces with GPS, moving map display, but can be inaccurate near tall buildings. Use Route Planner for routes across larger areas between towns. Now sold as CityMaps. Palmtop Software (now TomTom). www.palmtop.nl

TomTom no longer supply in SIS format. TomTom installation software extracts the data from .APK files on the CD-ROM to create a SIS other files in \windows\temp\name_of_map_folder. Prompts for destination on EPOC. The SIS file is installed to EPOC when you confirm and all TomTom files on the PC are deleted. Loops back to the start, to select another map. Before you confirm the destination set the read-only attribute on the SIS file (Right-click/Properties) and then Cancel the TomTom install routine, the routine aborts but can not delete the SIS.

Please download the update from: Series 5/5mx/Revo/Revo plus www.tt1.nl/customers/appgrey.sis netBook/Series 7 www.tt1.nl/customers/appcolor.sis

Aircraft, flight logs

Aviation navigation.

Aviation Navigation, Movingmap, Flight Planning and Logbook (couldn't confirm contents). Formerly http://www.edv-himmelbauer.co.at/psiav.html

Flight Manager

Comprehensive flight information on 4300 airports, 611 airlines, 41,000 flight. Subscription.

Flight Log

Flightlog for Psion and Nokia www.psion-plus.de/Psion-PlusEn/ProjectsEn/projectsen.html

Odyssey

Pilot logbook and hours analyser. Navtech Software UK Commercial. www.btinternet.com/~navtech/

Sierra 7

Flight planning, has European or US database. GPS moving maps, etc. Said to be very good, but expensive. Navtech www.btinternet.com/~navtech/

SmartLog and SmartNav

Errol Pillemer, Shareware US$35. Pilot's logbook, use in flight or afterwards. Simple navigation log handler, prepare prior to flight. Formerly http://home.global.co.za/~pillemer1/SmartEpoc.htm

VFR Nav

Martijn Smit. Flight planner Formerly http://dbanffer.www.cistron.nl/

Yachting and sea travel, Diving and SCUBA

Dolphin Maritime Software

A variety of nautical software, including Marine Navigator with GPS, Sightmaster with astronomical almanac, Coastmaster with waypoints, Voyagemaster todal calculations with ports, Shipcheck and Draftsurvey for merchant ships, Oil Survey for tankers, Stability draft and trim, Ship Pilot and Harbour information. Formerly http://www.dolphinmaritime.com/psion5.htm

Marine Navigation Aids

grafTIDE tidal variation graphs. navCOMP cruising and navigation aid for European tidal waters. Plot ground course. AstroNAVCOMP replaces tables needed for lat and log from sextant readings. Waypoints to GPS. ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/infer/

Nautical Psion Site

The Nautical Psion Web Site is dedicated to nautical sofware for Psion 3/5/Revo. You'll find applications for navigation, celestial navigation, tidal prediction, GPS, etc. With English and French pages.
- Scuba, utilities for divers : decompression calculations, diver's logbook and tide calculations for S5 and Revo. There is also a S3 version with similar features plus a link to Garmin GPS to log the co-ordinates of diving spots. All versions in English or French.
- SeaPad, a ship's logbook project managed by the staff of the site. We released an English beta version last week.
- Dicomar is a French to English dictionary of nautical terms, available for EPOC and SIBO devices (DATA format).
- SunStone by Tharn Korner, a celestial navigation system for Psion. Jean-Yves Pontailler - ESE [Ecologie, Systematique et Evolution] p.pellot.free.fr

Ocean5

Ocean 5 by Pierre Pellot said to be one of the best tide predictor programs. Works with Revo, 5 and 7. Covers some Australian ports also. Ocean is a Tide Prediction software. Ocean computes sea height and tides for a day, a week or a month with a graphic presentation. Accuracy is about 5 to 20 minutes in comparison with official tide tables. p.pellot.free.fr/

S5Dive

T Goeddenhenrich. SCUBA dive profile, logbook, dive simulator, graphics printing.

Yachtsman's navigation

Comprehensive program for Psion handhelds (5mx/7/Revo): Formerly http://www.WizworldServices.dial.pipex.com/navigate.htm