Marco Polo GPS Receiver

Speaking from experience, an accurate map is an excellent reference to take along with you on a motorcycle tour of Europe. This is especially true if you're accompanied by two colleagues, and your combined sense of direction is that of a pack of dizzy bumblebees. But the problem with a map is that it still doesn't tell you where your are ­ at least most maps don't.

Fortunately, the map I took along was a GPS device name Marco Polo. GPS stands for "Global Positioning System." This is a network of satellites placed in orbit around the earth by the U.S (see sidebar). GPS receivers like Marco Polo can be used to pick up signals from these satellites and tell you exactly where you are anywhere on the planet. The information provided includes latitude, longitude, altitude, and direction and speed if you are moving.

Marco Polo: a PC Card GPS receiver

Marco Polo is a PC Card version of the receiver that works with Windows CE devices, and includes software that displays a map on your H/PC's screen to show you where you are. We received a review kit from Peak in the UK. The hardware comes in two parts: a standard PC Type II (PCMCIA) card, and the antenna. The antenna is black and approximately the size and shape of a PC mouse. It's connected to the card by a 4 meter length of cable, which thankfully can be coiled up when not required.

Once inserted into a CE device, the GPS hardware appears as a new serial port. Once accessed at 4800bps it starts spewing out text strings in a standard format (NMEA) which list the GPS satellites in range, and finally the exact location (within 50 meters) of the receiver. The process takes a few moments to get going, and it doesn't work very well indoors. However, once outside the system can update your position every few seconds, and even calculate speed, heading and your height above sea level. Peak also sell versions of the Marco Polo card in CompactFlash and standard serial port format.

Map software shows you where you are

Peak supplied the TeleType GPS system software with the GPS card. Sadly, I found the software to be a bit disappointing. The European maps supplied were very basic and lacked road names, city names, country outlines (see Screen 1). Although there is the option to import your own scanned maps, this isn't really an acceptable solution.

Screen 1: TeleType GPS software is rather basic, but with a some scanned images and work on the users part, could also be a useful tool (shown on full-screen H/PC Pro).