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MP2K Asks Microsoft
293
Sean
-
July 31, 2001
I was told by an unnamed Microsoft Mappoint representative at a recent conference that the 15-second GPS update CAN BE changed (made shorter delay) using the ActiveX control. I was told that this was undocumented and was so as not to compete with other mapping applications (I am presuming MS Streets). I wanted to try this site first to see if you guys knew how to accomplish this.
Answer:
Our understanding of this situation is as follows. Microsoft has agreed with its data vendors that the GPS interface in MapPoint and all its other mapping products will only sample once every 15 seconds. But MapPoint is fully programmable, which means that programmers can develop an alternative GPS interface as a COM add-in which does not have this restriction. We don't have any first-hand experience with this but assume you would need to write a program that detects and reads the NMEA 2.0 data strings generated by a GPS device and pass the relevant information to MapPoint. Doing this does not create any contractual or legal issues (in other words, this 15-second restriction only applies to what Microsoft provides in the product). We know of one company that has developed a GPS COM Add-in for MapPoint (http://www.techgt.com/agps/). Please note that the user license for MapPoint and other Microsoft products do not allow you to reverse engineer and/or alter Microsoft's code - so whatever you do has to extend the product through the object model rather than alter the original programming code.
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