Hacking the MIO Moov Navman M450

The subscription for Speedcams on my MIO Navman M450 ran out. It’s a logical model to sell the hardware at a fair profit, and then add revenue to the business by subscriptions on up-to-date maps, speedcams and points of interest. Trouble is that they sell the updates at rates of a new piece of hardware. Given the rate of development on hardware, it doesn’t make sense to pay for the upgrade when you can get a better unit for the same amount. So, the hacker in me wanted to see what options there were for seeing if I could bypass the restriction.

It seems the easiest way forward is to install another piece of software.

1) Copy the content.

Just plug it to the USB and access the content using a file manager, where you take all of the content and copy it to a safe location.

You now have two basic option, remove the old content and replace it with something else (think of this as formatting the disk of a computer, and installing Linux on it) or use the existing installation and install a parallel solution (think of this as dual boot, even if it formally is two applications on the same system booted from the same OS).

Option 1:

Delete the old content and install the new. This video on YouTube shows how it’s done (but not where to get the software).

Option 2;

Have a unit that can run more than one application.

1) “Root” the unit

The MIO MOOV Unlock found here does just that – unlocks the Windows CE. After this you have the Windows CE (ouch 😛 ) desktop and an icon that starts the existing MIO program (SmartST).

2) Install another software

It seems a popular choice is iGo which comes in several flavours; Primo and iGo8.

Installation guide here.

I actually managed to install both, in Swedish , with Swedish voices but it was A LOT of work to do it, and I had to pick a chose from several different packages to get it right. Key one here

General

I created two directories – one which was called Primo and one called iGO8. The base distribution I used had a smart way to share the data for the two systems so I do not need duplicate maps, poi:s and so on.

The iGo filer is the “base” where the maps are. I needed to locate language and speech files for it and then it needed the small fix in the sys.txt. I needed to define the relevant path under the folders section of it.

[folders]
app=”\My Flash Disk\iGo8″

The Primo one turned a bit more complex as I had to reference the other installation.

[folders]
sdcardpath=”\My Flash Disk”
building=”..\..\iGO8\content\building”
dem=”..\..\iGO8\content\dem”
maps=”..\..\iGO8\content\map”
poi=”..\..\iGO8\content\poi”
klmpoi=”..\..\iGO8\content\userdata\poi”

I guess I would like to change the voice and speedcam but I have a stable solution now, so I will leave it be for now.

Full giude to the sys.txt is found here.

Shortcuts

It’s naturally quite inconvenient to find the files in the file manager and open it like that (especially while driving 😉 so shortcuts are convenient.

I have two shortcuts – one for each file.

One called “Primo.lnk” which is a file residing in \Program files\Unlock\Desktop. It contains one line of text; 31#”\My Flash Disk\Primo\iGO9.exe” (The first number is length, has as separator and then the actual path enclosed by quote marks). As you see the exe in the pack I use is called igo9.exe.

One called “iG0.lnk” which is a file residing in \Program files\Unlock\Desktop. It contains one line of text; 30#”\My Flash Disk\iGO8\iGO8.exe” (The first number is length, has as separator and then the actual path enclosed by quote marks).

Points of Interest

Also found the POI Plaza when looking around. Seriously kewl!