GPS Sony NV-U50 / 70

My friend bought this Sony NV-U50 4 years ago and week ago he told me that sorry he cant use it anymore, because GPS maps are too old (2006). So i told him no problem just lets update maps (fail), if you go to sony support site then you feel really soon that you may be visiting some kind of tech museum.

Sony dont like to play or support these toys anymore! I have googled for over hundred blogs and forums to find any information about updates or even language files, but no you cant do it right way anymore.

But the good thing with that sony and with some Mio moov devises are that they run Win CE or Windows mobile so you can modify it on your on way. For example you can buy really cheap old sony or new/expired Mio moov for 40$ - 100$ usually users selle them for cheap, because they dont know what to do with them or new ones on market sales. After few hours of study any "smart pen" can figure out, that if you run windows on GPS or any device, then you can just install some other programs like: Tomtom, iGO, Sygis, Route 66, Garmin etc.

So lets start with TomTom

1) Install showtaskbar in the GPS.

This will allow existing Windows CE Initiate the GPS rather than the application of sony.

Conectais feeding the GPS and the computer with Activesync installed. Once recognized and sync your GPS, accedeis to it from My Computer and going to the \ Mounted Volume \ Sony \ nav-u \ and pegais the showtaskbar.exe.

Arcivo Renombrais the nav-nav-u.exe to showtaskbar.exe u2.exe and call him as the first: nav-u.exe.

Download showtaskbar .

2) Installation of TomTom v.6.021 or better.

Unzip the downloaded file and copy the folder as is (tomtom) to the GPS path \ Mounted Volume \.

After you copy all the tomtom folder go to your Windows CE menu and locate to TomTom folder and create a shortcut to the executable TomTom Navigator.exe, cut this shortcut and paste it into the Windows Desktop folder (\ Windows \ Desktop) in your Win CE. This will put a shortcut on the desktop to TomTom Windows Ce of our GPS.

TomTom v.6.021 download from the TomTom website payment or use a "demo".

3) Modify the Windows CE registry.

To recognize the TomTom maps you are going to install is needed to modify the registry, because the program looks for maps in the My Documents folder, put we placed them in Mounted Volume \.

This install the program Registry Workshop on the PC, run it, here are a Try It (trial version), go to the File menu (File) and click on Connect Mobile Device Registry.

We see the log of the GPS, we go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Explorer \ Shell Folders, look for the right record to My Documents, open it and replace where it says \ My Documents to \ Mounted Volume.

Additionally you can copy into \ Mounted Volume \ Editor automatic registration (copies the file downloaded tomtom2.cab as read-only) that will edit if recidivism automatically by the browser software.

Download Registry Workshop

Download automatic registration Editor

4) Install tomtom maps and radars.

Are downloaded maps (maps of Spain and Portugal) and copy the unzipped folder directly (ES_and_PT_plus_major_roads_of_WE 1409) to the \ Mounted Volume \.

The radar signals are copied and decompressed once inside the maps folder, ie \ Mounted Volume \ ES_and_PT_plus_major_roads_of_WE 1409 \.

Possibly do not be room for all if this happens you can go to the folder \ Mounted Volume \ Sony \ and delete the previous map browser, is a file called Spain_MIKA.map.

Download Maps (ES_and_PT_plus_major_roads_of_WE 1409) as Dige from the Tomtom website payment or a "demo".

Download DPI'S and radar pdis.es

5) Setup TomTom GPS antenna.

Let the TOMTOM menu, change preferences, Show GPS Status and Setup:

1 º Select the GPS receiver, select the option Other NMEA GPS and press select

2 º GPS transfer rate: 9600 and we made it

3 º GPS connected to: select Serial COM for GPS and automatically returns to the display of the GPS.

Once completed you will see how searches for satellites and connects.

And we have our Sony Ready Gps running with TomTom.

Another really nice GPS appligation is iGO

I googled for iGO8 "demo" from internet and found nice package for Win CE and for Windows Mobile.

I placed it to \Mounted Volume\iGO8\ and found another cool tool U50 Unlock.rar that can unlock your NV-U50 and copied it to \Mounted Volume\Sony\nav-u\ after restart of device it started iGO automatically from \Mounted Volume\iGO8\iGO8.exe now that old Sony NV-U50 looks like new :)