Installing TomTom on the Binatone X350 satnav
Are you a fan of neither getting lost nor spending money? Then read on!
The Binatone X350 is available from Asda for £50, or perhaps even £25 as they seem to be on a clearance (they were still £50 in Asda Cwmbran where mine came from). They are £58 from Amazon. Damned cheap, I hope you will agree. First off, I must admit it isn’t perfect:
- battery life is average at a few hours or so; be prepared to use the (included) car charger. It might improve after a few charge cycles I suppose.
- GPS signal strength is also mediocre, notably weaker than my SiRFStar III unit. It couldn’t get a signal when charging in the passenger footwell of my car, whereas my SiRFStar will work indoors, which isn’t supposed to be possible.
- Probably because of the signal strength, it takes quite a long time (five minutes or so) between bootup and lock-on.
These are only really niggles though, and in light of the price point I don’t think they really matter. The biggest problem is that the included software isn’t very good, but it’s trivially easy to install TomTom on it instead thanks to the good guys at Binatone. It turns out that if an SD card is inserted, and that SD Card has a folder called MobileNavigator containing a file called MobileNavigator.exe, the Binatone GPS will (at boot time) load that EXE in place of the one built in to the unit.
Step-by-step instructions to get TomTom running are below. You’ll need an SD card of at least 512Mb capacity.
- Format SD card to FAT16 — first time I did this with the card formatted to FAT32, it didn’t work, and I think this helps. You’ll need about 280Mb of space
- Download the file from this site (they have BitTorrent or HTTP downloads) and extract it onto your hard disk.
- Copy the contents of the zip file onto the SD card
- Rename the TomTom directory to “MobileNavigator”
- Delete “navigator.exe”
- Rename “navigator_unchanged.exe” to “MobileNavigator.exe”
- Insert the SD card in your device and power it off and on with the small switch on the back. Select Navigation and you should see TomTom load
- During the install process, it will ask what sort of Bluetooth receiver you have. Select “Other NMEA Receiver, set the baud rate to maximum (115,200), and select COM7
- That’s it!
I am informed these instructions also work for the Navigo satnavs, which are available cheaply from a number of online retailers. If you need further help, you’re best off posting in The PC Tailor forums.
I also have this link for a download for TomTom 7 which I haven’t tried yet. The file has a set of instructions with it that look somewhat more involved, but the maps for TomTom v6 are no longer updated so v7 is probably preferable.
(Note that although the instructions mention the Navigo GPS unit, the Binatone device works the same way. The instructions should work just the same.)
Is there a working download link for your menu program anywhere? ta
i cant get it to work i have done all what it says to do but when i press navigation it just loads up binatone not tom tom
Works fine for me – I’ve been using TomTom for years on other devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. I picked up the X350 cheap (Asda/eBay) and like it as it’s self contained (no seperate GPS receiver) and cheap. I’ve used it a few times with the Binatone software but wanted to get round to putting TomTom on, particularly since I can then add maps easily and use it in the USA (I have used TomTom there several times before – very useful!). I downloaded files for TomTom6 UK +7 digit postcodes widescreen with BitTorrent (P’te Bay) modified filenames along lines of these instructions and hey presto, works well. I’m using a 512M SD card, FAT16 – I did try a larger card I had to hand but device does not appear to support cards larger than 2GB or non FAT16. Thanks Richard for putting this info online…. Merry Xmas!
does anyone know if this works on the a431 model?
could someone please help with the keygen i cant get it to work?
ok i got this up and running on my a350 but it keeps asking for me to choose my gps reciever, which one do i opt for int he settings as ive tried them all and i just get no valid gps reciever
Will it work with theA430 wide screen
John
Many thanks for this. I have successfully installed TTN6 using your instructions on my Skyway Navi. A little neat Italian made GPS I picked up on ebay. Seller used for 2 weeks use on an Italian holiday-complete with italian maps!
So I fiddled about with the baud-rate til it worked and Ive now got an as-new very uesable little sat nav for pocket money.
Thanks for the simple instructions! Im going to get a spare Sd card and have a crack at Navigator 7 – will just pop my TTN6 Sd card back in if I screw up.
Thanka
Paul
I have tried the suggested links but they seem to have expired. Can anyone tell me where I can get the required TomTom files to load to SD that will work in my Binatone A430?
Thanks, and Happy New Year to all. Mark
http://simplesatnav.com/ get your self there and register then go to download section m8 and follow the tom tom 7 guide
i just put tt7 on with version 8 maps on my binatone and working a treat
Thank you lads got everything up and running from the bricked X350 works a treat tt7 v8 maps. Here`s the catch it does not keep the time, have to reset it every time I use it. Any ideas what I might be missing.
Cheers and Happy new year.
Hi, i got one of these sat navs for a crimbo prezie of my wife, she paid £30 for the x350. i have windows 7 as my os and when i plugged the x350 in it recognisied the sat nav as “windows mobile device” and it let me access the sat navs internal memory and i could copy the MobileNavigator folder and replace the current one. very easy and if you delete the maps on the device you can replace it with your new one’s. iam not sure how much memory is on the sat nav but i have put about 400mb of data in to the sat nav.. without using a single memory card.. try it if you have windows 7..
success!!!!!!
i am a bit of a technophobe, but i ve got tt6 working, but i have made my x350 boot up in winCE, so i can select either tomtom or binatone maps.
this is what i did.
first, format a 1Gb car to fat16 (i have windows XP, so i followed instructions on here for formatting it).
searched my PC for the explorer.exe file. i copied it, then dragged and dropped that onto my now formatted memory card. plugged it back into my x350. (remember to turn of the switch at the back, not just into sleep mode). turn on the satnav. i now starts in winCE and the binatone maps can be selected from ‘ResidentFlash>MobileNavi>mobilenavigator
next,
download torrent tomtom6. copy the files MobileNavigator and GB_plus_major_roads_of_WE and paste them into the memory card (memory card has to be plugged into your computer, not satnav).
switch the x350 off at the switch at the back, plug memorycard back in. and switch sat nav back on.
now to select tomtom, go
SDMMC>MobileNavi>MobileNavi (picture of the red tomtom hands).
the only thing i couldnt do….. i plugged the sat nav into my pc (with memorycard in) and created two shortcut icons, one for tt6 and the other for binatone maps, and pasted these onto the first page of winCE. (for ease of use) but when i next switched my x350 on, the icons had gone again. any sugestions for this??
thanks guys.
oh forgot to mention. follow the instructions for changing the titles of the files as per the top of this website.
Thanks for a great site. Got myself a Binatone A430 from Argos this evening for £57. Works fine with both TomTom 6 and 7. I’m delighted with it!
if you have windows XP, you need to download windows active sync 4.5, from the windows site.
this allows you to connect windows CE based mobile stuff.
Hello, and thanks works perfectly on my binatone b430 just one question how can i add extra maps of europe?? i have downloaded some and copied them to the sd card but it only the origonal maps. thanks.