Eggfinder with Bluetooth - Anyone using with Windows Tablet?

[patelldp]

I finally threw my hat in the ring and purchased an Eggfinder through Cris's sale. I'm excited to have a small GPS transmitter to tuck into rockets that I don't necessarily want to work my AIM Xtra into!

I purchased the starter kit that comes with the simple dongle type receiver with Bluetooth module. I understand this works pretty seamlessly with Android, but what about a Windows tablet and the suggested MapSphere software? I'd like to use the same tablet for the Eggfinder that I use for my AIM. Using the Bluetooth connection is preferred as that leaves the single shared charging/device hook up on my tablet free for an external battery if needed.

Any experience out there?

 

[cerving]

I tested it early on but with a Windows laptop instead of a tablet. Windows is a little finicky about serial Bluetooth connections, but it will work.

 

[Charles_McG]

I've tested a Bluetooth adapter on the LCD connection header, connecting to my Surface Pro running Mapsphere. Worked at home - I haven't tried it in the field.

What I noted was that the COM number incremented each time I set it up. I can't recall at the moment if I was re-pairing each test session or not; so it might have been the pairing that incremented the COM. It did seem to stabilize at COM 8 or so.

 

[patelldp]

I tested it early on but with a Windows laptop instead of a tablet. Windows is a little finicky about serial Bluetooth connections, but it will work.

Appreciate the input! I'll give it a shot and I'll report back when I get the thing together and working. I will also be developing some solutions for the Tx and Rx using my 3D printer. Should be a fun adventure!

 

[ksaves2]

WinDoze with Bluetooth stinks period. A promising java app that fizzled was YAAC: https://www.ka2ddo.org/ka2ddo/YAAC.html I came very, very close to being workable with an off line map except B/T implementation stinks.

The program does allow one to designate a local NMEA stream for local position and you can take a second NMEA stream "EggFinders" or what have you and set that up as a "remote" station to monitor instead of or in addition to APRS stations.

I got B/T working fine on a Linux laptop but Linux handles B/T in a more "safe and sane" fashion.

I can't get B/T to consistently work with YAAC for two NMEA devices. Stinks. I would have been able to come up with a one page instruction sheet that ANYONE could have used to use a live map tracking and navigating app.
Even though this was Ham software, would have been perfectly legal for non-Hams to use in the ISM band. Close but no cigar. The screens below show some old local testing.

The only mapping apps one can use on Windows for EggFinder, 3DR and Missileworks or any NMEA stream based tracker is Mapsphere. It is an unsupported app that can sometimes have connectivity issues.
It will only tell you where your rocket has been on a map and cannot be used directly for navigation. You have to "dig into" it to get to the last known position out of an internalized table and do the recovery by other means.

APRSISCE/32 can be made to work but it's even worse to setup than YAAC. Once setup it's pretty rock steady but I think it misses in flight positions because I've been running a second instance to keep track of my local position
concurrently. I think there are position collisions that cause me to miss legitimate inflight positions.

I haven't had a chance to run one instance to track the rocket in flight by itself and then open the second instance to track my position to go out and effect the recovery. I think this might lead to better live plotting of positions.

Again, this is too darned hard for a non-ham, non-aprs savvy person to setup.

Xastir is cool but again it's in Linux so a non-linux, non-ham and non-aprs person would be even more clueless. Live map and navigating is not there yet for NMEA trackers.

For Beeline GPS on the Ham Bands it's been doable for 10 years with APRS handi talkies and some Garmin GPS units. Kurt

 

[cerving]

I've tested a Bluetooth adapter on the LCD connection header, connecting to my Surface Pro running Mapsphere. Worked at home - I haven't tried it in the field.

What I noted was that the COM number incremented each time I set it up. I can't recall at the moment if I was re-pairing each test session or not; so it might have been the pairing that incremented the COM. It did seem to stabilize at COM 8 or so.

You have to go into Device Manager and override the assigned COM port, once you do that it will keep it as long as it's the same Bluetooth device (they have their own unique addresses even if the name and pairing code is the same).