The Hyperlogos

I purchased this unit from geeks.com, who had it on sale. While continually sold as a "generic" module, it's actually made by GoPass (a taiwanese hardware manufacturer.) GoPass also makes a handful of other neat GPS items, including some cheaper/lower-quality GPS units, and some GPS tracking units for cars that have GSM/SMS/GPRS functionality so you can ask them where they are.

This is, bar none, the best value in a Bluetooth GPS. It has support for WAAS and EGNOS, it has twenty channels, and it has an external antenna jack. The unit is tiny, smaller than my motorola flip phone, and it has a Li-Ion battery that the manufacturer claims gives ten hours of runtime. It is based on the SiRF Star III chipset, a very tiny single-chip GPS solution. The CPU does little work, and thus can focus on bluetooth operation. The device uses a Bluetooth Serial Port (COM Port) and supports encryption. You just connect to it with passcode 1234 and it does the rest, supporting speeds up to 38,400 bps. It was originally sold as the GPT-600, but now it appears the same device is being sold as the GPT-800; the product page now says -800 but you can download the "documentation" (one image, attached below mostly for my convenience) and the filename still says 600.

Besides (again) being tiny, the device also looks fairly hip and has a sort of graphite coloration that is in demand right now - in fact, the finish is almost identical to my Compaq nw9440 laptop, which is HPQ's latest and greatest until the Core 2 Duo-based systems ship, probably by the end of the year.

One last note: The antenna jack is mMCX (micro MCX?) which is AFAIK the smallest GPS antenna jack around. You can get pigtail adapters to plug other types of antenna in but they cost at least $10, usually with another $10 shipping, and you should be able to get a decent antenna (just search for "mMCX GPS antenna") for $30 or less; given the costs involved it probably makes more sense just to buy an antenna to go with. Pigtails introduce noise and decrease attenuation.

This device does have some failings worth mentioning. The use of a custom Li-Ion battery pack means that replacements, when needed, will have to come from the manufacturer. There are standardized packs that can be used instead. The unit is very small, and that is in general a positive thing, but it may be a bit small for its power consumption as it heats up significantly while in use. The case is black, and that looks cool, but it might cause the unit to heat up excessively on your dashboard, which is where you're going to have to put it if you want reception in your car without an external antenna. And finally, the unit is large enough to carry a MCX antenna jack, but they went with the mMCX type instead (to unnecessarily save space) which means that you need a slightly more expensive antenna, or a pigtail, in order to connect an external pickup. The device is also somewhat slow to perform bluetooth pairing, and it uses a very stupid and easy-to-guess passcode, which naturally cannot be changed.

Specifications

• 1. http://www.gopass.com.tw/products/bluetooth_gps_receiver_sirf3.htm#