Windows Phone Thoughts: Pharos Traveler 525 GPS Part 2 - Ostia 7.5 Navigation Software

Where Am I? Getting a Fix on Your Location
Once you start the Ostia software, the first order of business is to load in the maps you'll be using, and Ostia’s opening screen prompts you for this.


Figure 2: Ostia’s Opening Screen.

Ostia then presents a list of maps available, which it finds in the My Documents folders on main unit or the memory cards currently inserted. Typical sizes for the maps are in the 12 to 20mb region, depending upon the area covered and the amount of detail recorded. Points of interest and other key features are stored in a separate file, but are named similarly and are loaded at the same time. Pharos provides a 512mb SD memory card with the appropriate maps already pre-loaded for the client’s area. In the US, this means you get one of the five regions of the US, including 50 major cities. You can also download maps for other areas from the Pharos website.


Figure 3: List of maps available.

Up to 10 maps to be loaded simultaneously, and the Ostia software will seamlessly integrate the data between them. Thus, when moving between major centres, the software will track your progress down the highway and then move into the detailed map of the city as you move into the coverage area.

Once the maps are selected, Ostia turns on the GPS unit and attempts to get a lock on the current position for display on the appropriate map. Generally, this took between 30 and 90 seconds when out and about, or in the car. Sometimes, getting a ‘lock’ for the GPS could take five to 10 minutes in certain locations and was not possible at all inside most office buildings. According to Pharos support, what’s required is line-of-sight availability of a portion of the horizon, in order to get enough satellites fixed in the receiver. The unit includes a 12-channel receiver of which six must be locked in order to provide an accurate GPS fix.


Figure 4: Ostia provides a visual display of the satellites being accessed and the status of each. The bars show the signal strength, and the bars turn blue and the circles turn green when they have a lock on the signal.


Figure 5: Once enough satellites have been acquired, you can get accurate location information. The distance shown is how far you’ve traveled along the route from your starting point (origin).

Once the unit had a lock, however, it did a good job of tracking with my movement, even when moving at speeds between 100 and 120 kmph sitting on the console between the front seats of the car. It was also even to track me inside fairly dense woods in the mountains surrounding the ski village I was visiting on vacation. By the way, I should mention that the maps provided by Pharos are definitely for us ‘landlubbers’ since once you get out into the water, there is little or no detail provided. If you need nautical charts with depths, hazards, buoys, etc., you should check out other sources.

It’s not necessary to have the GPS unit activated to work with the Ostia software – establishing destinations, searching around the map, etc. To turn off the GPS, you tap on the GPS happy face icon in the lower left of the screen. From here, you can also initialize the GPS receiver, which will remove all previous stored satellite information.


Figure 6: Turning off/initializing the GPS unit within Ostia.