Tomtom Car Street View

[Jenelle Centeno]

RecentlyMicrosoft started adding new data to its street view service, Streetside. This is quite a surprise as Streetside was inactive for years and all of sudden new countries started appearing, including countries not covered by Google Street View.

South Africa was the first country to appear with coverage near Cape Town. Eventually the whole country was added. In the meanwhile many other countries in southern Africa were added: Botswana, Lesotho, eSwatini, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The imagery is not made by Microsoft but by TomTom and unfortunately the quality is quite poor.

As you can see some of the countries are not available on Google Street View: Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. Considering TomTom is a quite smaller company than Google this shows how much Google could cover if they were motivated enough.

Again some areas are not available on Google Street View, like Aceh in Indonesia. Conversely the island on Mindanao in the Philippines is not on Bing Streetside but is on Google Street View. But the major difference is Vietnam which is available as a whole on Streetside while the very small coverage that was visible on Street View got removed in September. This shows coverage could be published in this country and Google did drive cars there in the past.

Again imagery is done by TomTom, with similar quality than the other recently added countries listed above. Most of the covered areas are already available on Google Street View however some places are not, such as the area close to French Guyana in the northern state of Amap or the southern part of Chile on the Tierra del Fuego region. Coverage in Chile seems more complete on Streetside but in Argentina Google is way more complete.

Overall the coverage of Streetside is starting to look interesting despite of the low imagery quality. As a reminder, Streetside was widely available in the United States and some areas in Canada, United Kingdom, France and Spain were covered. Here is a picture of the global coverage, before and after the latest additions:

15. Using File Explorer, navigate to the .CAB file you copied to your SD card and install R-Edit on your Pocket PC. R-Edit can be acquired from but you can also Google for any other Windows Mobile 5 Registry Editor.

21. On your Pocket PC, go to Settings > Connections to ensure that the GPS icon is there. If it is not then I can only apologise but it may not be possible to get TomTom working with your GPS device. It is necessary for TomTom to see a specific GPS serial port that can (as far as I can tell) only be set by this GPS connection program. After you have paired with your Bluetooth GPS device you could try setting an Outgoing port to COM7: as that is a default COM port that TomTom Navigator can connect to. Do step 22 then skip to step 26.

22. Turn on your Bluetooth GPS and stick it in a location that it's likely to get a signal. On your Pocket PC, enable Bluetooth and search for new devices. Establish a bond (pair) with your GPS device and ensure you check the "Serial Port" option.

24. Other guides on the Internet tell you to also create an Outgoing port and setting it as COM7 but doing this would not work on the PPC that I was using so I had to create the Outgoing COM port on COM0. Either way you need an Outgoing COM port to be set. If you can set it as COM7: then you should do so, if not, use COM0:

25. Go to Settings > Connections > GPS. Set the GPS communication port to the same Outgoing COM port that you set above. For the PPC I was using, I had to set it as COM0: above so will set it here as COM0: also. The "Manage GPS Automatically" checkbox should already be checked but if it isn't, check it and OK out.

28. You will be given a list of ports that your GPS device is likely to be on. Remember that this is the Outgoing port that we created earlier in steps 24 and 25. Basically the COM port you set here must be the same as the one you set in step 24 and 25.

29. Select the relevant COM port and then click Next. You will likely be taken straight in to the map view and with any luck your Pocket PC and GPS device will start communicating and your Pocket PC will show your position on the map.

30. If you made a mistake in setting the COM port that your GPS device lives on, simply tap anywhere on the screen. Tap Preferences, tap Next three times until you see an icon that looks like a satellite labelled GPS status. Tap that icon and then tap configure to change the COM port.

Hi ya, I wonder if I was that helpfull chap, I was sending people info how to do that, anyway, I have a prop that my tomtom 5 now, it shuts down when it feels like it, it just seems to reset, then I lose all my settings and Im back to square 1. Is there a patch or anyone knows where I can get it? Cheers jason

I had the same problem on my XDA Exec but with Navteq software (ie, Dell satellite navigation which I previously had on a Axim V50). Thanks to your help I now have it working with the Nokia ld-1w bluetooth gps receiver.

Just a quick thanks for posting the TT5 MDA Exec fix. I was about to pay that Ebayer a fiver for the info but a quick Google and I found this page. The fix works a treat. Very generous of you to post it freely. Ta, Aero

Note that TomTom will not detect an external GPS signal if the XDA is set to flight mode.

Turn off flight mode and it will work. I spent a day trying to get the above to work, and I had flight mode on to save batteries. As soon as I switched off flight mode it all worked.

I also got memory map to work by telling it to use com 0 (BT was actually set to com 8 outgoing for TomTom). So now Tomtom and memorymap work with no fiddling about.

Just a few other points that might help. After editing the XDA registry I set the incoming com

to 8 and the outgoing com to 0 inthe Bluetooth setup. Then set the program com port to 8 then the GPS hardware port to com to 0, checked the Manage GPS automatically, then reset the soft reset on the PDA.

When I got to the config page in TomTom I was then able to select COM8: which did the trick.

Thanks for your help , Barry.

Installed TomTom 5.2 update and followed instructions to edit reg for GPS settings, some comm port fiddling following the link from Zishan above for BT GPS reciever. Works great, thanks for publishing info.

Dunno what all the fuss is about.

TomTom installed and ran first time with no registry hacks whatsoever on my exec.

Bluetooth receiver and hands-free both paired up and working simultaneously.

Ivor, it will be a limitation within the TomTom software not being able to interface with the internal GPS. This is exactly the same with the Nokia N95 which has an internal GPS but even the latest version of TomTom 6.0 cannot interface with the internal GPS and as such still requires the use of an external Bluetooth GPS.

TomTom N.V. is a Dutch multinational developer and creator of location technology and consumer electronics. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, TomTom released its first generation of satellite navigation devices to market in 2004. As of 2019 the company has over 4,500 employees worldwide and operations in 29 countries throughout Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Americas.[1]

The company was founded in Amsterdam in 1991 as Palmtop Software, by Corinne Vigreux, Peter-Frans Pauwels and Pieter Geelen.[3][4] The company focused on corporate handheld device software before focusing on the consumer market and releasing the first route planning software for mobile devices in 1996. Software was developed mainly for Psion devices and the company was one of the largest developers of Psion software in the late 1990s.[citation needed] Palmtop also worked with Psion in the development of EPOC32.[5] Software was also developed for Palm and Windows CE devices.[6]

In 1999, Vigreux's husband, Harold Goddijn left Psion Netherlands, for which TomTom made software and where Vigreux was previously sales director, to join TomTom. He had previously invested in TomTom.[7] In 2001, the company's brand name changed to TomTom,[8][9] while its legal name was also changed by 2003.

In 2010, they produced an advert saying You are not stuck in traffic. You are traffic.[15] A photograph of this was widely circulated on the internet. It became a meme, often with different images and sometimes reworded slightly.[16]

In late 2015, TomTom extended its deal with Apple and signed a new contract with Uber, in which Uber driver app uses TomTom maps and traffic data in 300 cities worldwide.[21] In May 2018, TomTom launched new portable navigation device the TomTom Go Camper to cater for the requirements of caravan and motorhome users.[22]

Until 1996, TomTom developed business-to-business applications such as meter reading and bar-code reading for handheld devices, such as Palm Pilot, Compaq iPaq and Psion Series 5.[25] Subsequently, the company moved its focus to PDA software for the consumer market.[26] Early mapping software included EnRoute, Citymaps and Routeplanner.[27]

By 2001, they released the first car satellite navigation software, the TomTom Navigator, shifting the company's focus to GPS car navigation.[28] In 2004 a built-in subscription-based traffic update service was added.[29]

The first all-in-one device personal navigation device, the TomTom Go was released in March 2004, creating a new consumer electronics category.[30][31] TomTom reports it has sold about 250,000 units of TomTom Go and this product represented 60% of the company's revenue for 2004.[32] As of 2016[update], the company had sold nearly 80 million navigation devices worldwide.[30]

In 2005, the ability to download new voices was introduced.[33] The ruggedized, water-resistant Rider navigation device was released for motorcycle users in 2006. The Rider was the first portable satellite navigation device designed for motorcycles and scooters.[34]

Text-to-speech for road names was first introduced in 2006, along with hands-free calling and traffic support. TomTom Home, software for managing and downloading content for TomTom on a PC, was first released at this time.[35]

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