While this is possible, how to do it means searching many web sites in order 
    to get all the information required. Commercial cables are available but not 
    easy to find. I have tried to collect all the information you need to make 
    your own cable and transfer your data. 
    Cable and a nine pin female connector is the start point although an old serial 
    port mouse is the easiest way to start. The connection to the Gps is made 
    from credit card type plastic board. With the aid of the images below and a 
    soldering iron you should be able to make your cable. The power connection
    is not normally required.

    

   You can now connect the iFinder Go to your computer via the serial port.
   I have tried also using a serial to USB converter cable. These are readily 
   available and allow a USB port to act as a serial port. So if you do not have
   a serial port this will work very well. 
   
   In the iFinder system setup menu, select com port. 4800 baud rate works fine for
   me. Initially I had both NMEA input and output turned on, this allowed me to 
   see immediate results when I tried to connect. I only use the cable to upload
   co-ordinates for geocaching so I turned the NMEA output off once I was 
   happy with the connection. Hyperterminal is the standard Windows telnet
   program (usually found under Accessories, Communications) and can be used
   to make your connection. Not much setup required, a name for the connection,
   the com port being used (com1, com2 or what ever), flow control set to 'none' 
   and the baud rate (4800).
   If all is ok you should start to see data coming from the gps. As long as your 
   cable connections are good the most likely reason for any problem would be
   that you have selected the wrong com port in the telnet setup.
   
   Transfer into the gps is as simple as pasting the data into Hyperterminal.
   GPSBabel is very good for this allowing you to convert many different formats 
   to NMEA 0183 sentences. I have transferred large batches of co-ordinates to the
   gps by outputting to the screen in GPSBabel, then copy and paste to Hyperterminal.
   
   Using GPSBabel with a command line input also works but seems very slow compared to 
   paste in to Hyperterminal

gpsbabel.exe -p "" -w -s -i geo -f "your-file-location-geocaching.loc" -o nmea,baud=4800,snlen=20 -F com2:

-p "" - disables use of predefined options (or ini file)
-w - waypoints
-s - to give 'real' names rather than GC12345 names
-i - set input format in this case geo which is the format used in .loc files from geocaching.com
-f - then name of input file - note case is important (lowercase input file - uppercase output file)
-o - the output format in this case nmea 
baud - the baud rate in this case 4800
snlen - maximum length of 'real name' given by the -s option in this case 20
-F - the name of the output file but in this case direct to the serial port 
     to which the gps is connected = (com2) = your com port number

    

Web site established 10 November 1998

This page last revised 27 May 2010 (Renamed iFinder_Go)