Harry's GPS Suite Forum

Hi Harry,

I thought i would inform you of an interesting observation i have made recently doing track days on my motorcycle and testing the 2 different GPS Accessories.

Firstly, let me state that on the circuits that i usually do track days on it is illegal for us to use video recording or lap timing equipment.
It is fairly strictly enforced as it is a condition of the venue hirers contract with the venue operators and people are often asked to remove lap timing devices from their bikes.
Obviously this makes it very difficult for us to compare and improve on our results but people come up with various workarounds if you will.

One of these is to go out on the circuit with the iPhone in a pocket in your leathers. While this is obviously not an ideal situation for maximising the GPS signal strength of your device it has thrown up some interesting results.

I first purchased a Bad Elf unit when they were promising to send us through the API for the 10Hz update rate.
Personally i think the people at Bad Elf did a number on the HLT community and just went for a cash grab while they could while waving an empty promise under our noses.

I took my Bad Elf unit out for a track day in early December and tested it with both HLT Pro and the Pirelli Diablo Super Biker App.

I then recently purchased the Emprum Ultimate GPS after seeing good positive signs from the HLT Pro community and promising communication from Emprum, not too mention the all important 5hz update rate.

I tested this unit in early January with both HLT and the Pirelli Diablo Super Biker App again.

On both occasions i was wearing the same leathers and placed the iPhone in an inside pocket of my leathers when i went out on track.

In the December testing i was quite surprised to find that the Bad Elf device coped quite well, giving good fixes and presenting a very accurate depiction of the track and the times i was riding.
In the January testing with my new 5hz Emprum device i was quite surprised again to find that during the course of some 50 or so laps on the day, the device often failed to work, sometimes not triggering the start of a session, and often times creating way off fixes and lap times all over the place, highly inconsistent with my actual riding.

I believe that i had set the device up correctly, having cold started it at the circuit in the morning and so on. I also tried running HLT Pro with NMEA support both on and off.

At this stage after reviewing the data from both days i can only put it down to the fact that maybe the Bad Elf unit has a more powerful receiver and is able to cope better with being hidden away inside my jacket pocket.
In the meantime i am hoping to set my bike up now with the phone under the seat and an extension cable poking out for the device to sit facing skyward, undetected somewhere on the tail unit.

More than anything, i am interested in your thoughts on this, keep up the good work with your great Apps...

Thanks,

Jamie

Hi Jamie,

Here is some feedback on the use of the UltiMate GPS inside of your pocket.

1. The antenna of the UltiMate GPS is located on the back of the accessory, right below the Emprum logo. So make sure that you face the back of the UltiMate GPS accessory away from your body. The screen of your iPhone will be facing your body. This is opposite of where the antenna is on the Bad-Elf unit. If you have a pocket on your arm, you could put the unit there.

2. Make sure to never cold start the accessory. If you do that, you are basically erasing all GPS satellite and ephemeris data. It can require up to 12min of a continuous connection before all this data is replenished. The hot/warm/cold start buttons should really only be used if the accessory can't get a lock for a long time (sometimes GPS engine correlators can lock up and then the only way to fix that is to hot, warm or cold start the accessory). A hot start (or unplugging and replugging the accessory) will usually be sufficient in this case and this is the preferred way as it won't discard the ephemeris data.

3. Make sure you charge your accessory overnight before your next field test. If the on-board battery is not (fully) charged, it will be equivalent to a cold start. After having charged the unit overnight, double check in the morning in the UltiMate GPS app that the battery indicator is at 100%. Even if the battery indicator is at 100% the night before, just leave it on the charger overnight just to make sure that the battery is completely full before your next race.

4. We are currently adding Assisted GPS data upload into the UltiMate GPS App which should be available sometime later this month (February 2012). This will give you added performance and quicker locks as the satellite data will be downloaded directly to the UltiMate GPS accessory and won't need to be received from satellites in orbit. The AGPS data will be valid for a period of two weeks so this data download only needs to be downloaded to the accessory once every two weeks if you wish to take advantage of the added performance (note that the AGPS data is optional and the accessory will also work without it).

5. In case you haven't, check out the manuals at our website at https://www.emprum.com/manuals.php as they describe in more detail about the different kind of GPS starts and also on battery maintenance.

Looking forward to seeing your next field track results!

Roger from Emprum

Emprum wrote: 4. We are currently adding Assisted GPS data upload into the UltiMate GPS App which should be available sometime later this month (February 2012). This will give you added performance and quicker locks as the satellite data will be downloaded directly to the UltiMate GPS accessory and won't need to be received from satellites in orbit. The AGPS data will be valid for a period of two weeks so this data download only needs to be downloaded to the accessory once every two weeks if you wish to take advantage of the added performance (note that the AGPS data is optional and the accessory will also work without it).

A quick update with respect to the new AGPS functionality for Emprum's UltiMate GPS: the updated UltiMate GPS App (v3.0) was pushed out to the App Store on Feb. 5, 2012. It will probably take a week to go through Apple's review process so hopefully the update will be available some time next week.

Roger from Emprum

Hi Roger,

Thanks for your swift reply and your informative post.

I'm heading out to the track in the next few weeks and will update you regarding the results. I'm looking forward to trying a few tweaks to get things working perfectly.

You are great ambassador for your product. Exactly what the users of Harry's product need.

Thanks again,

Jamie

Hi Jamie,

Thank you for your kind feedback.

As a small business, customer service is very important as we are dependent on word-of-mouth advertising. In the end we hope our current customers will tell other people about their positive experience and in that way we can get new customers

Harry and LT is another great example of this principle!

Roger from Emprum

Just a quick note to let you know that the new UltiMate GPS App V3.0.0 with AGPS data upload is now available from the App Store as of Feb. 10, 2012. Looks like Apple got that reviewed in just 5 days!

Roger from Emprum

As a new user of both the Emprum and HLT, I just wanted to say thank you to both of you for your amazing customer service and great products. I'm very impressed!