A couple of days ago, a good friend of mine called me asking for my help. He said that I was the only one that could help him. He received a GPS device from the UK and he wanted to update it so he could use it in Cyprus. I had no idea what these things were running on and if they could be moded. This seemed like a challenge and a cool project to work on. After some ‘googling’ and some forum searching, I knew what I had to do.

In this post I will show you what I did to hack this device and add maps for your country. Also this post will help users from Cyprus to have a working GPS device with Cyprus’ map.

After some reading I found out that this device was running on WinCE 5.0 Core. That’s a stripped down Windows CE version suitable for such devices. The OS is loaded first and does not provide an interface. Once the OS is loaded the device is set to load the factory’s default GPS application. For these Harman/Kardon GPS-300/500 series it’s the iGo Software. Note that any of the following will probably void your warranty and if you are not careful you could brick your GPS device, so proceed with caution.

Getting your device ready

I found this post here which explains the process really detailed so there is no reason of double posting. After you follow the steps mentioned there you will get a device ready to install anything you want.

GPS software

There lots of GPS software(IGo, Navigator, Destinator) available on the net but not all of them will run on this device. You cannot install “.cab” files or create shortcuts due to the nature of this device. This device is considered a PNA device rather than a PocketPC or a Mobile so you will have to find the right version of the software to Install. Torrent site are your friends so use them wisely. If you live in the UK, US or any major European country, iGo or Navigator are a really good choice.  Finding a software that provides Cyprus’ map is the hard part. I found out the Destinator 7 is running just fine on the device. Destinator’s maps are seeded all over torrent sites so finding your country’s map is a really simple task. Note that I tried many versions of Destinator 7 that claimed that they were working but none of them did. A friend of mine pointed out the right link and it did the job right.

You can get the Destinator 7 application from here.

You can get the Cyprus map from here .

To get any other maps, check GPSUnderground.com. It’s a really good place to start.

Running the software

First copy the ‘DestinatorApps’ directory to your SD card. Then copy in the ‘DestinatorApps/Destinator’ directory the maps of your choice. So for Cyprus copy the ‘CyprusU’ (Greek Map) or the ‘CyprusE’ (English map) to that directory. So if you will use the ‘CyprusU’ map, you will have the following structure:

/SDMMC/DestinatorApps/Destinator/CyprusU

You can install as many maps as you like. Just make sure to select the current map from the software’s settings. Now run the Destinator executable on:

/SDMMC/DestinatorApps/Destinator/Destinator.exe

and you are done!

Setting up the GPS Receiver

Since you are running on a different software rather than the factory default, you will have to tweak some settings to make the device work. Just head in the settings section and use “COM 7″ for the receiver’s port, select any Baud Rate larger or equal than 9600 (It seems to work on any of these) and finally select the “NMEA” as the type of the receiver. These settings exist on all GPS devices and for the Harman/Kardon GPS-300 these are the correct ones.

Side Effects

There are some side effects that come with this ‘hack’ which I think anyone can live with.

  • The device’s hard buttons does not seem to work.
  • To suspend/sleep the device you will have to keep the power button pressed for at least 10 seconds.
  • Once the battery completely drains out or once you reset the device, any changes you made on the root ‘/’directory will be lost. Registry settings though survive.
  • The CPU is a little bit slow (300MHz ARM) for running heavy applications.
  • There is a possibility of totally bricking your device if you install lots of applications/games as this post here explains.

Enjoy your hacked device

The software used here, Destinator 7, is not the best one out there. It’s the only one that seems to work on this device for Cyprus’ users. If you have any other suggestions let me know!

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