How-To: Holux M-241 with BT747 v1.52 GPS logger software over Bluetooth
Posted July 12, 2008 
Comments(31)
Comments(31) Here’s a new HOW-TO to connect your Holux M-241 GPS logger over Bluetooth on the Mac using the BT747 application.
- If there is already an /Application/GPS folder on your hard drive, (re)move or rename it.
- Enter the following commands in a shell (Terminal):
sudo mkdir /var/lock && sudo chmod 777 /var/lock
You will be asked for your root password. - Turn the M-241 on and use the Bluetooth setup assistant on the Mac to set the device up (see screenshots below). Use passkey 0000 (four zeros). Once the wizard finishes, the M-241 will show up as paired but not connected. There will be no Bluetooth icon shown on the M-241 as for now because the serial port hasn’t been opened yet. If all is set up correctly there’s an entry called tty.HOLUX_M-241-SPPSlave-1 in the /dev directory of your Mac. Open a shell (Terminal) an try to run the command
cat /dev/tty.HOLUX_M-241-SPPSlave-1
and the Bluetooth icon on the the M-241 should appear almost immediately. Wait another 30 seconds and the last position information should be dumped in the shell. Press CTRL-C to abort. If it says “No such file or directory” the device may not have been set up correctly on your Mac. In some cases, the M-241 may be shown as tty.HOLUX_M-241-SPPSlave-0.
- Extract the content of BT747_1.52_xx.zip to /Applications/GPS
- Run the bt747_macosX.command script (double click it in your /Applications/GPS folder), the BT747 application should start
- On the tab labeled “Con” hit the BLUETOOTH button. If everything is fine the application will connect to your M-241.
- Don’t forget to hit the button “Get Log” on the tab labeled “Log” to download the track information from your M-241
- After the log is downloaded, press any of the format buttons to export your position data to that format.
- This is optional:
Create a subdirectory logs in /Applications/GPS
Change to the tab labeled “File”
Change the output dir to /Applications/GPS/logs
Press “Apply&Set the above values”
All your downloaded and converted GPS files will be written to this directory from now on.
If you get a gnu.io.PortInUseException:
Have a look at step 2 above.
I’m using the default Java Runtime Environment (JRE) on Mac OS X 10.5.4 which at this time happens to be 1.5.0_13-b05-237.
You may also be interested to read:
- How to use the Holux M-241 on the Mac over Bluetooth
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I’m not managing to get this to work.
First time, in step 6, a connection was not established with the HOLUX.
Then, trying to replicate the procedure, I’m stuck in step 3; the bluetooth icon does not appear anymore after typing in the shell command. Also, first, when typing in the shell command, what seemed to be output from the HOLUX was sent to the command line. Now, this no longer happens.
Confused.
Restarts of both Mac and M-241 resulted in me being able to get to step 6 again. However, a connection with the M-241 is still not established, even though output is sent to the command line.
I, too, can get to step 6. The app runs but the BLUETOOTH button fails to connect to the device. Everything works fine until this step. Using BT747_2.X.1580 with snow leopard and Holux M-241 firmware 1.1.
Everything goes fine untill I get to B747 and click Get Log button. It seems to work fine as the bar apears at the bottom and some data is downloaded. But then when I click on ‘to gpx’ or ‘to kml’ I get the message saying:
‘No output files were created!
This usually means that either:
- the filter did not select any points
- the log does not contain any data
Try selecting all point.
If that does not work, it may be a bug.
Where and how should I select some points? The data seems to be there. Can anybody give me a tip what to do with that and how to save the data into gpx or kml, pleaser? Thank you
Also watch out for step 2, if your root password is blank it does not work. I had to create new password, since I used none. With blank password it just did not create the folder /var/lock it should have.
I tried many hours, looking for a solution everywhere… until… I got Photolinker. The perfect solution for Mac users who want to use a logger for Geotagging photos. I use Holux M-241 that does not support Mac. Photolinker is wonderful.
Stop playing with the Mac Console, Java, etc.