Bluenext - BN903S 65 Channels GPS Dongle

I bought this last summer while back in the UK and expected it to be plug and play which, as many others have said in their reviews, it is far from! Returning home to the Philippines (the relevance of this fact will become clear later) it sat idle in my office drawer until September when I rediscovered it and decided to have another shot at installing it. The problems that I encountered were.

1. The driver is for Windows 98/2000/etc and I'm running Windows 7 on my laptop
2. The instructions are both crap and in Chinese
3. The mapping software I used (Microsoft Autoroute 2010) accepts only GPS devices with a baud rate of 4800 (this device uses a baud rate of 9600 even though it says that it will work on 4800)
4. The mapping software is expensive
5. The mapping software is only good for Europe (or the US if you buy Microsoft's Streets and Trips)

After much head scratching and a little help from my friend I have been able to solve each of these problems.

1. Go to the BlueNext website and download the driver for Windows 7 ([...]l)
2. I couldn't find any instructions in English, so I just looked at the pictures and followed as best I could. Plug in the dongle and run the little rom.agps.exe utility (you'll need an internet connection to do this). This might sound naïve, but I tried to get it to work in my office (duh) it needs to "see" the satellites, so take it outside and leave it for a few minutes until the green LED starts to flash - if it stays on, then it hasn't found any satellites, once it starts to flash, then it has - BE PATIENT.
3. The baud rate issue was a tricky one. The output from the dongle is at 9600 on Com port 5. I used a little freebee called GPSGate (download it here [...]). What this does is to take the 9600 signal from COM 5 and translate it to 4800 on a different COM port (I chose COM 1), then I told the mapping software NOT to get the GPS data through COM 5, but instead to use COM 1.
4. Although I have Microsoft Autoroute for Europe, it was useless as I live in the Philippines (Ah now I see why that fact was important). So I downloaded some free (yes free!) navigational software called NavigatorFree from MapFactor (get it here http://navigatorfree.mapfactor.com/en/download/). Navigator has everything that you need, 3D navigation, voice commands, programmable routes, the lot.
5. NavigatorFree doesn't come with any maps though, so I downloaded them from the OpenStreetMap.org people. You don't need to go to their website as they can be downloaded through Navigatorfree. Don't do what I did and download all maps for all countries as it took about 20 minutes to start the software after I did. Be selective and only download the maps for the countries that you need and the bootup time is cut to seconds.

And there you have it and pretty awesome little gps dongle for less than 20 quid.

I am using the dongle with a Samsung Netbook with Windows 7 Starter. It works perfectly with the Memory-Map marine charts software. I had difficulty installing the driver as the Instruction Guide contains little helpful information. The driver is contained in a mini-CD that is enclosed with the dongle, but this too lacks adequate documentation. Once installed, however, the device works well. I have also installed the dongle on a desktop PC that runs Windows XP. It works OK on that too, and also links without problem to the Admiralty/RYA electronic chart plotter software which is installed on that machine. Overall, the dongle is good value for the money.

I'm using this on Linux with gpsd. No trouble being detected as /dev/ttyUSB0 (or /dev/gps0 if you have extra udev rules) if you don't have any other usb serial device plugged in. I also have the Globalsat ND-100 and ND-100s adapters - which happen to be more expensive and have the (supposedly) high quality Sirf III chipset. I would say that the BlueNext BN903S is more stable and predictable in operation. Many times I have to unplug and replug the Globalsat dongles to reset them and get them to acquire a satellite lock. The BlueNext dongle is far less problematic so far - it starts up and acquires satellites every time without fiddling. From my experience so far I highly recommend it. Can't make many comments regarding using it on Windows though - as I don't.