GPS Technology Reviews for news, guides and reviews of GPS hardware, software and services including Handheld GPS, Outdoor GPS, GPS PDA, GPS Phones and Auto GPS Navigators

The Lowrance iWay 600c is the first portable GPS+WAAS navigation device to offer both highway and marine navigation capabilities. For marine duties the iWay 600c has watertight sealing. Lowrance Electronics is fully owned subsidiary of Navico marine electronics company, a well known for its fishing and marine equipment, such as depth recorders, fish finders, and marine GPS devices. Automotive GPS is a new field for Lowrance however, it promises much given the company heritage.

Siblings to the 600c are the lower specification Lowrance iWay 250c, 350c and 500c. The other automotive GPS sibling models do not have the 600c’s standout features of detailed satellite imagery for hundreds of major cities in the US and Canada and marine mapping/navigation capabilities. Maps overlay the satellite imagery as with Google Maps.

A 12-channel parallel receiver has WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capabilities giving the Lowrance iWay 600c enhanced accuracy to within 3 meters.

The 600c has a touch-screen display with voice and visual turn-by-turn directional guidance. It has a 30GB internal hard drive, with 25GB of storage dedicated to high-detail mapping and satellite imagery (10GB dedicated to mapping detail for Western Europe models). 5GB of storage is reserved for MP3 audio files and JPEG image files (20GB for Western European models). The 600c comes preloaded with comprehensive NAVTEQ® digital map data of the USA and Canada, plus electronic charts with depth contours for U.S. inland lakes, Great Lakes and coastal waters. Users also gain access to the NAVTEQ Points-of-Interest database which includes over 5.5 million high-interest destinations such as restaurants, hotels, leisure facilities and gas stations.

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The Lowrance iWay 350c is an automotive GPS navigation device. Lowrance Electronics is fully owned subsidiary of Navico marine electronics company, a well known for its fishing and marine equipment, such as depth recorders, fish finders, and marine GPS devices. Automotive GPS is a new field for Lowrance however, it promises much given the company heritage.

Siblings to the 350c are the lower specification Lowrance iWay 250c and higher specification Lowrance iWay 500c and 600c. The iWay 600c has marine mapping/navigation capabilities in addition to automotive GPS navigation.

A 16-channel parallel receiver has WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capabilities giving the Lowrance iWay 350c enhanced accuracy to within 3 meters. Only the 250c doesn’t have WAAS capability.

The 350c has a touch-screen display with voice and visual turn-by-turn directional guidance. It has a large 4GB internal hard disk drive providing for NAVTEQ maps of the United States and an extensive points-of-interest (POI) database.

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The Lowrance iWay 250c is an automotive GPS navigation device. Lowrance Electronics is fully owned subsidiary of Navico marine electronics company, a well known for its fishing and marine equipment, such as depth recorders, fish finders, and marine GPS devices. Automotive GPS is a new field for Lowrance however, it promises much given the company heritage.

Siblings to the 250c are the higher specification Lowrance iWay 350c, 500c and 600c. The iWay 600c has marine mapping/navigation capabilities in addition to automotive GPS navigation.

The iWay 250c’s 12-channel parallel receiver does not have the WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capabilities which gives it’s higher specification siblings enhanced accuracy to within 3 meters.

The 250c has a touch-screen display with voice and visual turn-by-turn directional guidance. It has a 2 GB MMC/SD card preloaded with NAVTEQ maps of the United States and an extensive points-of-interest (POI) database. 40MB of free space is available on the memory card for MP3 audio or JPEG picture files

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The Lowrance iWay 500c is an automotive GPS+WAAS navigation device which just happens to be sealed watertight. Just why is obvious when you know that Lowrance Electronics is fully owned subsidiary of Navico marine electronics company, a well known for its fishing and marine equipment, such as depth recorders, fish finders, and marine GPS devices. Automotive GPS is a new field for Lowrance however, it promises much given the company heritage. Favorably reviewed by PC Magazine, it received their Editor’s Choice award.

Siblings to the 500c are the higher specification Lowrance iWay 250c, 350c and 600c. The iWay 600c has marine mapping/navigation capabilities in addition to automotive GPS navigation.

A 12-channel parallel receiver has WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capabilities giving the Lowrance iWay 500c enhanced accuracy to within 3 meters.

The 500c has a touch-screen display with voice and visual turn-by-turn directional guidance. It has a large 20GB internal hard disk drive providing a 10GB allocation for NAVTEQ maps of the United States and an extensive points-of-interest (POI) database with the remaining 10GB reserved for MP3 music storage for the built-in audio player.

Siblings to the 500c are the lower specification Lowrance iWay 250c and 350c and the higher specification 600c. The iWay 600c has marine mapping/navigation capabilities in addition to automotive GPS navigation.

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According to the Natrick Soldier Center, High altitude, precision airdrop is expected to be a key enabling technology for the Future Force. Allowing transport aircraft to safely stand off the combat area and exposing troops to less danger during retrieval are just a couple of advantages of a precision airdrop capability.

Natrick Soldier Center conducts research and engineering on military personnel parachuting and cargo airdrop systems. This includes management of the Joint Precision Airdrop Systems initiative for development of autonomous delivery of cargo from high altitudes and significant standoff.

Para-Flite, a military ram air parachute system developer, has the 10,000 lb DragonFly and 2,000 lb FireFly JPADS systems and is currently developing the US Army’s 30,000 lb (13.600 kg) Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS). Para-Flite’s systems are capable of delivering equipment loads over 30km horizontally from a release altitude of 25,000 ft.

JPADS systems use a GPS receiver and a specialist flight algorithm to independently fly equipment to a designated target point. The flight algorithms can be programmed, even en-route, with weather forecasts, terrain details and environmental threats.
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Conventional Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers have specialized processing chips containing multiple “correlating” processors for analyzing multiple GPS satellite signals and determining the devices position. One way to dramatically reducing the cost (and size requirements) of GPS enabling mobile devices is to replace the specialized GPS chip with a software application solution using the mobile devices own general purpose processor chip. The processing power now available in mobile devices such as laptop PCs, PDAs and mobile phones makes this a viable solution.

Software to crunch a GPS position location has been developed over a three year period by numerous Philips research and applied technologies groups. The software, Spot, has been successfully applied to a variety of different mobile equipment platforms. As well a providing a software solution for GPS positioning, Spot also allows for easier upgrading and offers significant power savings as the software can be easily shut down and the RF front-end can be put into low-power standby between positional fixes. according to Philips Spot halves the cost of incorporating GPS, opening up large-volume market opportunities for location, tracking, and navigation applications.
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