Navsync CW25-TIM settings for Lady Heather

[Tony777]

I have a Westpoint GPS Time Base that uses the Navsync CW25-TIM GPS module but it isn't putting out data like normal and Lady Heather 5.0 and 6.0 say "no receiver". When I use it in Realterm with the $11 command it will keep showing a GPS information summary but Lady Heather and no other program I can find can read it. I've also tried VisualGPS View, and the Ublox, and neither will show the GPS data. It runs at 38400 and I can see working info fine on the terminal but it doesn't look like normal data. Can someone tell me what command can fix this ? And if it's possible to get it to work in Lady Heather and under what name ?  I did see the Symmetricon was mentioned by Navsync but don't know if they are related. The Navsync company is out of business as far as I can find. Can someone help with the Lady Heather and commands to make the Navsync work like a normal GPS please ?

[edpalmer42]

Hi Tony,

Somehow I missed this message, so sorry for the late answer.

Are you looking at the actual output of the CW25 or the output of the Westport unit?  They probably aren't the same.  I'm guessing that there's a processor in the Westport unit that could change the output of the CW25 to something that the rest of the Westport system wants to see.

The CW25-TIM was produced with an unknown number of software versions.  The two main versions were a NMEA generic version and a version that emulated the Motorola Oncore receivers.  Yours looks like yet another version as shown by the 'WPR' (i.e. WestPort Research) on the end of the model number shown in the Realterm display.  There's no way to tell what customizations were made.

The only way to move forward would be to reflash the CW25 to one of the standard loads which Lady Heather understands.  Coincidentally, with the GPS rollover coming up, Connor-Winfield, Navsync's parent company, has released updated firmware for some of the CW25 versions.  You'll be wandering around in the dark, but you might be able to find something useful.  Of course, this could break the Westport unit, so move carefully!  Once you flash the unit, you can't revert to the original load, so make sure you really want to do this!!

http://www.conwin.com/pdfs/gps_week_rollover.pdf

I tried to look at a couple of the rar archives listed, but they seem to be corrupted.  YMMV.

Ed

[texaspyro]

If you are seeing that debug info screen, the serial port is connected to the CW25 UART3 debug port.  The NMEA and $POLYx data come out of UART1.

I got in a CW25-TIM last week and am adding proper support for it to Lady Heather.

The CW25 is rather weird.   Not much you can control or set... there is supposed to be an elevation mask command, but the CW25 firmware does not support it... WTF?

When powered on or RESET it does a whopping 10 minute self survey then goes into "fixed base" mode... not fixed position mode...  the lat/lon/alt readings keep changing... but the receiver seems to clip or filter them to +/- 2 meters from the surveyed position (no way to set or read back the surveyed position).

[texaspyro]

Well, right on schedule, the CW-25 crapped its pants and stopped tracking sats.  So, I upgraded the firmware to the new version.   Upgrade went well,  it even added the elevation mask setting command.

Alas, three hours later, it is still not tracking any sats with the new firmware.  After a while, it gets the time... but, a few minutes later it seem to do a restart and the time goes back to 00:00.  It looks like this repeats every 10 minutes.

[texaspyro]

After 10 hours the CW25-TIM started tracking sats again.  All seems well now.