Running iGO on a MIO

June 22nd, 2010 nk Posted in GPS | No Comments »

We tested several navigation programs on the Mio MOOV 300. The Mio needs to be unlocked before running programs except its own internal MioMap. There are a number of unlocks for the Mio. Actually any unlock that works for a WindowsCE system will work for the Mio, though it will have to be tweaked for the specific system.

All unlocks allow running the navigation program of your choice from an SD card. This way you don’t have to mess with the device’s internal memory. On some devices, like the MOOV 300, there is not enough internal memory to install the navigation programs and their maps (if you want all of the U.S.) – even if you delete the maps and unessential programs from the device.

Running the navigation program from an SD card seems like a perfect solution, but there is a problem: in normal usage you put the device to sleep after you are done using it. This suspended mode is activated either by a special switch or by a partial movement of the regular power switch. Some programs, like iGO, have their own internal module that will put the device into hibernation when external power is disconnected. for this to work the normal hibernation switch has to be disabled, but this is for a separate post.

The problem may happen when the device is re-activated. Since the program is still in memory it comes up instantly and discovers that parts of it are missing – the parts that are on the SD card. If WindowsCE connected the card by the time the program starts looking for its missing parts, everything is OK. If the card is not yet available the program will crash and, in most installations, reboot the device. It’s not a catastrophe but is annoying.

We found no way to avoid this problem with all the programs we tested, except iGO.

In the sys.txt file that defines the starting parameters for iGO you can add the following:

[folders]
app=”Internal Storage/iGO8″
exe=”My Flash Disk/iGo8″

app=…. tells iGO where to find the application folder. Absent any other instructions it will assume that the executable is in the same folder. This is where the exe=.. comes in. It tells iGO that the executable is in a folder in the devices internal memory (My Flash Disk is the name in MOOV devices, others use different names).

These two should be enough to enable installing everything, except the iGO8 executable, on the SD. The iGO executable and several other files will go on the device memory which, usually, has enough space to accommodate them.

One idiosyncrasy: if you are using the Loquendo TTS voices, the .dll files that are normally in the iGO root directory have to be in the same directory as the iGO executable in the main memory.

You can also add the following to the Sys.txt file:

data=”\Storage Card\igo”
content=”\Storage Card\igo\CONTENT”
textures=”custom”
models=”custom”

This will enable you to put the save folder, data.zip and branding.zip also on the SD card. In our tests this was unnecessary: everything worked fine with just the first two lines.

After the above modifications iGO is completely stable and doesn’t reboot occasionally because of timing problems with the SD card.

Please use only legitimately purchased navigation software.