Hi all, I'm hoping you can help!

The device below is an update dongle for an integrated car Sat Nav. It plugs in to allow you to reinstall your maps onto the device (the maps themselves are on DVD - this dongle is just to prove you've purchased the maps). However, when I plug it in the sat nav says an error occured while talking to the dongle...

I've read that the Sat Nav is based on an old version of Windows CE which leads me to believe it probably can talk to a computer in some way if I rewire the pins to a serial port or similar. I was just wondering if anyone can give me any clues on what to connect it to and how?

Thanks in advance!

Doofer

 

If you were able to read the device, how would that help you?

 

Welcome to AAC!
Presumably the dongle sends a message to the satnav. If the satnav can't read it, how will you? Without knowing the message, how will you persuade the satnav to update?

 

The background is that the sat nav has a HDD onboard, it is failing and has corrupted some of the map files. After bit for bit copying the drive to a replacement the error obviously persists.

However, the update key appears to store the serial number of the old HDD, and as such won't update. Accessing the dongle will (hopefully) mean I can zero the serial number field and see what happens!

 

But, how would you initiate a read from the dongle?

 

That's a good question. I was hoping that the components in the dongle would be recognise by somebody more knowledgeable than myself and would take it from there.

If the correct interface is identified, another step would be to create a cable to plug into the sat nav, initiate the map update command and see what it spits out?