TomTom 910 and Trio 650

2007-05-15T06:28:00Z

Finally got my Trio 650 connected to TomTom 910. The phone is not officially supported. After hacking at for a thousand times over hours and hours of loosing sleep over it, I finally got it working! *relieved* I’ll explain later in the article on how I achieved it.

After using it for awhile, here are my experiences, but first let’s go over TomTom Go Software and along the way, I’ll explain what love and don’t love about it.

Screen Shots

A list of available downloads and what’s installed on your TomTom, nothing especial

This section as far as I’m concerned, it does pretty much the same as “Download your updates”, why two sections?

This section is used for backup which brings up the question why have another “Make backup” section further down the menu? Why not merge them?

Now, manage photos is cool, but tell me how do I know what was copied to my Tomtom? There is NO LISTING!! One of the WTF moment.

Manage music. Same thing as manage photos, there is no listing of what’s currently on TomTom. In addition, in the physical device, Tomtom organize songs into “Genre”, “Artists”, “Albums”, “Playlist” and etc. There is no way to do that from the software, wth?

Here is the thing that completely throw me off and I spend a good hour trying to figure this one out. As you can see, the mobile is disabled and in addition, the menu doesn’t display Music at all.

At first, I thought I did something wrong, but eventually I came to my senses and checked the physical device. As it turns out, the software is simply not in synch with the hardware. It looks like it’ll take another few firmware updates to have them to be completely synched together.

So that was my quick recap. Here are the issues

Pet Peeve #1.

When I got my Tomtom at first, after I connected to the software, updated the fireware, my device no longer worked. The screen either displayed the default “TomTom” screen forever or simply went blank. I waited and charged the thing for a good 3 hours and hoping that after it’s completely charged? It’ll be alive again. Oh no, nothing happened.

Eventually, I went onto TomTom’s support site and found this article on how to “reset” Tomtom using a little needle through a hole on the back of the device. Still, nothing happened. Then I realized perhaps? I need to hook it back onto the home docking station and have it synch with the software, maybe the software has to reset certain settings? So I did reset, put back on home docking station, turn the device on, bang, I’m back online. Only then I realized, it’s REQUIRED that you explicitly disconnect from the device through your software before you take your device off the docking station. That’s why it went blank screen!! So for you people out there, please remember to disconnect from the device (through the “Device” Menu). Otherwise, you’ll waste a few hours just like I did.

TomTom should have a warning message of some kind to warn us of such sever consequences.

Pet Peeve #2

Again, when I got it, I turned it on inside of the house, it was a blank screen, seems like the screen was frozen. That was because Tomtom couldn’t get any signals or it’s trying to locate the satellite. Instead of showing a blank screen, it should tell the user some kind of progress so we know it’s doing something. Pretty annoying without any messages isn’t it?

Pet Peeve #3

On the physical device, there is a charge light, but there is no “on” or “off” lights. So sometimes (and especially in situations where it froze with a blank screen), I wasn’t sure if the device is on or off!

Pet Peeve #4

Okay, here comes the Mobile issue. My Trio 650 is not officially supported. My god, I was about to scream when I read that… so of course, the first thing I try is to “force” myself and try to connect it, but TomTom says Trio doesn’t have the features it needs, so I can’t use the Mobile features.

So what do I do? Google it of course and eventually I landed on this forum post that explains how to get Trio connected to TomTom. For everyone’s benefit, I’ll just copy and paste it here.

1) First do a "soft" reset of the treo. May not be necessary but doesn't hurt. Then soft reset the TomTom.
2) Open the Bluetooth display on the treo. Make sure dial up networking is OFF. Make sure discoverable is on. Then turn Bluetooth off, wait a few seconds and turn it back on.
3) Go to "Setup Devices", then "Trusted Devices". If your TomTom is already listed, go to Details and delete it.
4) Then work your way back using the "Done" button to the Setup Devices page. Choose "Hands-free Setup". The next page tells us to get the hands free device ready to pair so get the TomTom ready.
5) On the TomTom, go to the "connect to phone" button and let it find the treo. DO NOT hit "Continue" when it says it is ready to start the pairing process!!!!
6) Back on the treo you may have had the phone turn off, if so work your way quickly back to the screen where it tells you to set up the handfree device to pair. The Button you want to hit here is "Next". The treo will search and should find the TomTom. Highlight the TomTom on the list.
7) And this part is critical. Hit "Continue" on the TomTom and "OK" on the Treo at approximately the same time. You will get the enter the passcode for the TomTom on the Treo pretty quickly, enter 0000 (zeroes) and hit "OK" quickly.
8) During the first attempt at pairing the two the treo gives you the option setup as a headset or carkit. Choose CarKit. The TomTom will likely at this point refuse the connection and tell you no features are available. DON'T panic. Finish the Treo setup and then try the TomTom again. Now that the Treo is open to the TomTom, the Nav unit "sees" the treo and finishes the connection on its end.

I followed the steps above, but still no go. What I ended up doing is chaning step 6-8 a little bit. Instead of hitting the buttons at the same time, I have my Trio try first. Eventually Trio would find Tomtom and connect to Tomtom installed as “trusted device”. Only then, do I hit the continue button on my Tomtom and finally got them synched up.

Afterwards, Tomtom can get my phone address, recently called list and etc, I was exhausted by then, but a happy man nonetheless.

Having said that, don’t think I will give a bad review to Tomtom. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I love it A LOT and I use it now almost everyday, very smooth and very accurate. I haven’t been this satisfied and excited on an electronic device since I heard about IPhone. It plays mp3 while I drive, if there is a directon or phone call comes in, the build in voice would cut in, no interferences. Crystal clear and absolutely enjoyable.

If you get lost in the cities (especially cities like D.C), I highly recommend you get one. You just have to have patience and expect 6-8 hours to get it completely working.

Toys - My Passion

2007-04-20T03:53:00Z

I've always loved toys :) never ever grew out of it, so here I am, starting my first blog post.

Check out this "Japanese Dancing Doll"

PLEASE tell me it's cool! How sweet is that, I want one on my desk jumping to the beats out of my IPOD! I WANT THIS!!

After some digging around, found out this toy is made by Marek Michalowski & Hideki Kozima from CMU. From their project site,

"BeatBots is a project to develop technologies and methodologies for human-robot interaction that incorporate the rhythmic properties of human interactive behavior.

We are currently developing and studying dance-oriented nonverbal play with between children and the robot Keepon, designed and built by Hideki Kozima. Keepon is a small creature-like robot developed to perform emotional and attentional interaction with children. It has four degrees of freedom, a soft rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes, and a microphone in its nose."

Furthermore,

" We are developing and evaluating an architecture that will allow these robots to perceive, model, and generate social rhythms such that the robot's behaviors are synchronized with those of a human interactor. We believe that rhythmic synchrony will be as important for establishing engagement, rapport, and comfort between a robot and a person as it is between people.

For example, synchrony between the tempo of a speaker's voice, the punctuation of the speaker's gestures, and the frequency of a listener's nodding is characteristic of smooth and comfortable interactions. Social scientists such as William S. Condon and Adam Kendon have identified interactional synchrony as a phenomenon that plays an important role in the regulation and coordination of movements, vocalizations, and other social cues.

We are using the Max/MSP software package from Cycling '74 to design our architecture for rhythmic social interaction. While we are beginning with dance-oriented play as a domain for developing and evaluating our technologies, the capabilities for perceiving, modeling, and generating rhythmic behaviors will be useful in less constrained interactions."

Now that's a project well worth supporting, imaging it be the top item on amazon, not possible? I don't think so.

Again, I WANT IT!!

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X.U Toy Chronicle

TomTom 910 and Trio 650

Toys - My Passion