Hacking The Omnitech 16878-US | The Nerd Show
by Henry Kroll III
I purchased an Omnitech 16878-US GPS off of craigslist for $20 in early 2011. It came with some worthless manuals and a CD full of stuff I'll never use. The unit used to be sold at Staples and their parent company, Quill.com. The Omnitech 16878-US GPS and other palm-type devices running Windows CE are great for hacking. The Omnitech has been discontinued as far as I know, so the used market may be the best place to find one of these or something similar.
Bicycle Mount
The Omnitech 16878-US comes with a suction cup mount, so I hacked it (well, not really) and mounted the unmodified mount directly to the bicycle using zip ties. Under settings there is a setting for Bicycle or Pedestrian that calculates routes avoiding major highways and freeways.
One of the first things I noticed was that there were no maps for Alaska. Included maps were privy to the lower 48 states only. The included Destinator 7 mapping software has no new maps or hacks; the promised map update was apparently never released. Following a hint from this website forum post www.techsmarttips.com/newforum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=596 I searched around for a download called "Navigon and iGo Complete," since none of the download links worked.
Do Not Ask Me For A Link
Any link I provide is likely to stop working. Navigon and iGo are commercial, copyrighted software and downloading or distributing them may be illegal in your country. This information is for educational purposes only. We do not condone software piracy here, only the freedom to learn about and use our technology in any way we see fit. ;)
Street Map and Route Software
Navigon and iGo are two different mapping programs that are compatible with Microsoft Windows CE (WinCE), the operating system of the Omnitech 16878-US and other small devices like these. I went into the torrent and checked off only the maps I was interested in downloading to save time. While the download was in progress, I installed the firmware update to fix the clock showing the wrong time, following the instructions on navsupport.net/navsupport/gps/quickfix/
Basically I just backed up and erased the original Omnitech 16878-US SD card on my PC, copied the new NK dot bin file to it, installed the SD card back into the unit, and powered it up. The procedure is likely to be the same on most other Palm PCs and devices. After the update had completed, I pressed the reset button using the stylus. It is always best to back up your files before hacking!
The iGo Maps Look Good
Once the new mapping software and maps finished downloading, I removed the Omnitech SDRAM card from the powered-off unit and installed it in my PC again, erased it, and installed the Navigon and iGo Complete software and maps following the directions in the included "READ ME FIRST.txt" www.techsmarttips.com is the password for the included SD_Shell.rar. I also installed the font update from the above forum post. The instructions said it could take hours, but it only took a few minutes to find satellites again after the update.
Navigon Maps
Having different versions of mapping software installed on the GPS makes it seem like different GPS units! Of the two mapping software packages, I prefer the iGo software and that is what I would recommend installing on the Omnitech 16878-US based on my review of its features and performance.
Mio Pocket
Installation of Mio Pocket requires a freshly formatted 2GB SD card. SDHC cards of 4GB or more are confirmed not to work.
Mio Pocket unlocks the full capabilities of the unit, including a Palm OS style desktop. A Windows XP style taskbar and programs are included to enable the WinCE functionality of the Omnitech 16878-US GPS.
I did not follow the instructions at www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=136798 because I wanted to choose whether or not to boot into Mio Setup. This lets me start the GPS faster when I need it, without going through the full WinCE boot. First, I copied the above setup of Navigon and iGo from backup.
For my customized install of Mio Pocket, I created an icon for MioAutoRun and copied the MioAutoRun folder, MioAutoRun.exe and MioAutoRun.mscr to the root of that card. Finally, I went into Skins and changed the contents of SysInfoSettings.ini to "MainMenu\MainMenu04.ini" and changed one of the icons to point to "Command = \SDMMC\MioAutoRun.mscr" so I could run the Mio Setup any time. The first time I ran Mio Setup it installed a bunch of things and powered off. The next time I ran it, it did a quicker initialization and everything worked.
Marine Charts
A variety of programs can be used to display marine or nautical charts and track your position on WinCE devices like the Omnitech 16878-US GPS. The first one I was able to get working on my limited budget and time schedule was the demo version of OziExplorerCE following the instructions on http://www.gps-forums.net/bsb-kap-map-t10105.html. First, I downloaded the PND version of OziExplorerCE and extracted it to a folder on my device's SD card. Then I downloaded the PC version of OziExplorer and ran it on my Linux laptop using wine. The PC version includes a demo version and a trial version. The trial version is able to import USGS raster navigational charts and convert them to .map files usable by OziExplorer on the PC, however; the newly created nautical charts will not work on the GPS without further conversion. To convert the .map versions of USGS raster charts into the proprietary Ozfx3 format for OziExplorerCE, I had to download Img2ozf and run that. Finally I copied the .map and .ozfx3 files to the corresponding Maps folder on the device.
Further Hacking
I replaced the startup screen with my own hacked-together logo. The TomTom launches Mio Setup. To create the backdrop I created an image the same size as the original and saved it as a bmp image. Being Windows CE, the Omnitech 16878-US can run practically anything for ARM processors and WinCE 5.0. You must install Microsoft ActiveSync for Windows unless you're a hacker like me. ActiveSync does not work on Linux, so I had to use cabextract to extract the files manually and rename them according to strings in the ..000 files... The bigger 2GB SD card is needed for it to hold the files. The unit is only compatible with SDSC cards up to 2GB, which is what I had on hand. The Omnitech 16878-US does not understand newer SDHC 4-32GB and SDXC 32GB-2TB cards. Just to be sure, I tried a 4GB SDHC card and it would not read or boot with it. Happy hacking!
Adding a Microphone to the Omnitech GPS System for Voice Recognition
