Pidion BM170 – How to Power Down and Hard Reset

24 01 2012

The Pidion BM170 has become quite a popular little Semi Rugged PDA and we get a lot of requests on how to do all kinds of things with it, this blog looks at how to power down, soft reset and hard reset the device.

 

Power Down

Older BM170′s operated in a very ”Rugged PDA” manner, the power button only put the device into unattended (hibernate) mode.  This is a very low power state so don’t worry too much but on newer devices Pidion have changed the behaviour of the power button so you can now hibernate and power the device completely down on a longer press of the power button.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soft Reset

 Easy peasy, there’s a little recessed reset button on the right hand side of the device as you look at it.  You do need something quite slim to operate this, and the bundled Pidion Bm170 stylus is designed to allow you to press the reset button.  This soft resets the BM170.

 

 

 

 

  

 

Hard Reset

This is a bit trickier and sometimes needs a couple of attempts before you get the knack.  All you do however is hold down the round OK button.  Now keep that button held down and now press the soft reset button as in the Soft reset instructions above.  Don;t let go of the OK button, keep this held down for 5-10 seconds after you have pressed the soft reset button.

You’ll know if this worked because the device will go into its set-up mode.  If not it will just boot back into windows Mobile. 

 

 

 

 

Hard Reset and Clean

A hard reset will not necessarily clean the Pidion BM170 down to factory settings.  If you have been using the persistent directories on the device then you also need to make sure that these are set-up prior to a hard reset.  The directory you need to look at is called “PidionStore”, it’s right in the top-level root of the BM170′s directory structure and you can go right in there with file explorer.  This directory is where you can put all your setup and hard reset resilient applications but of course if you want to clean down the device then you have to sort these out too.

There are 2 ways round this.

Option 1 - What we would recommend is that you either take a copy of your PidionStore folder when you buy your device and keep it safe, or come and ask us here for help.  If you get the wrong files in this folder it can cause the device to become unstable.

Option 2 - Put the device into the ULDR menu and format the PidionStore folder back to its original state.  I’ll cover this in a later blog this week where we explore the ULDR menu of the Pidion Devices. 

www.ruggedandmobile.com


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : How To, Top Tips

Semi rugged PDA’s with Windows Mobile 6.1

23 01 2012
The Pidion BM170 comes with 4 Operating Systems including WM6.1

The Pidion BM170 comes with 4 Operating Systems including WM6.1

We get asked about Semi Rugged PDA’s with WM6.1 a lot here at Rugged and Mobile and people don’t really realise how much Microsoft messed up Windows Mobile 6.5 before they moved development of it into a new team within the business.  Whilst gesture control, new screen sizes and various other nice to haves might have seemed a great idea at the time when it was still being targeted at the Smartphone market, these changes brought a lot of small but often show stopping issues to businesses.

The answer to this question was to find something with WM6.1 still installed on it but the answer might actually be better than this!

There is one Semi Rugged PDA, the Pidion BM170 that comes with 4 Operating Systems:

  1. Windows Mobile 6.5.3 is the normal operating system.  This is the latest version of Windows Mobile and is found on most rugged PDA’s right now.
  2. Windows Mobile 6.5.1 is the Stylus friendly OS, it is more compatible with previous versions of software so give this a try if you;re having issues with your Applications running properly.
  3. There are also a few Windows Mobile 6.1 versions too that give you the proper WM6.1 OS.  These have a slightly reduced spec with 128MB RAM and a QVGA LCD but the backwards compatibility of these make them popular.
  4. Android 2.1 – COming very soon now the BM170 will be the first Semi-rugged PDA with an Android option.

As you can see the BM170 is a very versatile device, most of the above operating systems can be changed or upgraded at a later date and I think this is a really true offering that a rugged…..semi ruged or not, should be doing.

www.ruggedandmobile.com


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Top Tips

Free Semi Rugged PDA Accessories

19 10 2011

 

Free Commercial class Vehicle Charger for BM170 and ES400

Free Commercial class Vehicle Charger for BM170 and ES400

We’re still waiting on benchmark tesst for our current small rugged PDA group test so in the meantime I wanted to just plug an offer we have here giving away a free commercial class vehicle charger on some of our semi rugged PDA’s.  Sorry for the lousy photo, I can’t seem to find our product camera at all this morning so it’s iPhone to the rescue!!

At the moment we’re bundling a free commercial class vehicle charger with both the Semi-Rugged Pidion BM170 and Motorola ES400 devices, saving your over £30.  The charger is our own brand so you know it’s a safe and a quality product, it’s a 2A charger capable of being used in 12V or 24V situations and with auto cut-off and all the electronics needed to keep your Semi Rugged Handheld charged but not over charged!

Our charger also uses a straight, non-coiled rugged cable so they’re easy to use anywhere in the car and have a really nice 3.5mm thick rugged outer casing.  We can adapt these chargers to be used with a growing list of devices so come and talk to us here if you have a vehicle charge other than the ES400 and BM170 as we can certainly help. We currently support the whole Pidion Rugged PDA range, M3M devices, and anything requiring a Mini or Micro USB charger.

You have to read the blog to qualify so just make sure you ask about them and give us the title of this blog to  ensure you get your’s free, for past customers we’re also offering them for a real bargain, otherwise they range from £12 each depending on the connectors used.

www.ruggedandmobile.com


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : New products and First Looks

Benefits of Rugged PDA’s – Semi-rugged PDA’s

1 08 2011
Benefits Rugged PDA Classes

Benefits Rugged PDA Classes

We’re looking at the benefits of different sized Rugged PDA’s this week and today with a series of articles designed to show you the reasons there are a whole bunch of different classes of rugged handhelds.

We kick off with the bottom of the chain, semi rugged PDA’s today and take a look at the reasons your business would choose a semi-rugged PDA fto run its line of business application.  Semi rugged PDA’s are fast becoming the most popular class of rugged PDA that we sell here and there are some good reasons for this.  However beware the pitfalls as these devices can be the worst mistake you made if used in the wrong scenario.

Main benefits of Semi-rugged PDA’s

Cost

Although we feel that cost of devices is only a fraction of your overal cost, it can and does often boil down to how large your budget is and you’re not going to find anything of quality in the rugged market for less than £500 (some less than £400) unless you opt for a semi-rugged device.  You still benefit from better roadmaps, Windows Mobile or WEH OS’s and all the rugged service elements of their larger family of devices but at a far lesser cost. 

Spec

Motorola ES400 - Cased and Cradled

Motorola ES400 - Cased and Cradled

If you just need a PDA with or without a phone with no barcode scanner but with a well featured basic set of smartphone functionality like camera, CPU, RAM etc then this is the way to go.

Size / Weight

Semi rugged PDA’s are almost smartphone in size and weight so they’re not going to be a big brick to your users and they will offer a light more smartphone experienc efor them.  If the scenario is not very rugged and you need a smartphone capable device that can also run your line of business solutions then a semi-rugged handheld is the way to go.

Pidion's BM170 - Called the "rugged iPhone" for a reason

Pidion's BM170 - Called the "rugged iPhone" for a reason

Ruggedness

Or lack of it in this case!  All semi-rugged PDA’s (and don’t let motorola’s meaningless IP43 rating for its ES400 you) are not rugged.  They have a drop spec so they still have a toughness to them but they are far from dust and water proof.  If you need an all weather, dust prooft device then semi-rugged is not the way to go, if you don’t need this though, why pay for it and have the extra bulk?

Accessories

Because of their cost, they are becoming more popular and so the 3rd party accessories grows for these devices.  We typically carry 4 or 5 styles of cases, vehicla chargers and holders, screen protectors and all manner of different accessories all designed to keep you running.

Conclusion

If you don’t have a rugged need in terms of the sheer environment you are working in but you still want to reduce risks to your solution with service, device road maps and everything else that rugged PDA’s bring then a semi-rugged device just might be the answer for you.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the next class up “Small rugged PDA’s” and why you would opt for this class of device over the classic larger rugged PDA’s.

www.ruggedandmobile.com


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Top Tips

New models line up in Pidion BM170 Range

19 07 2011
WM6.1 - A step forward?

WM6.1 - A step forward?

The Pidion BM170 offers customers the only PDA form factor with large LCD device in the semi-rugged class of device and we like it here because whilst there are other devices in the Semi-Rugged PDA line class, the BM170 is the only device that has its roots firmly in the “Rugged” camp.  The others are tending to market and run themselves as durable smartphones and we all know where using a smartphone for your line of business application gets you.

The predecessor to the Pidion BM170 was the BM150R which we announced the end of life for some time ago now.  However the BM150R did leave us a little bit quickly for our liking and as such left a small hole in the market for a sub £400 basic semi rugged PDA.  WM6.5 also gives a lot of software vendors issues and depnding on the sub version we’ve particularly seen problems around the signature capture elements of solutions where the gesture mapping in the WM6.5 device is playing havoc with this.  We’ll have another post on this soon.

Pidion have recognised this and answered the call by launching 2 new budget versions of the BM170 designed to not only offer a reduced price point but also to be more compatible with WM6.1 versions of devices they might need to run along side.

The line up consists of 2 new devices:

The BM170-G is aimed at the field keeping GSM, HSDPA, AGPS and the 3MP camera.  The BM170-L6 is aimed at “within-4-walls” with no WAN capability, no camera or AGPS.  More importantly both devices run WM6.1 instead of the WM6.5 versions of current models and they also sport QVGA LCD’s and reduced 128MB of RAM.  Both devices have significantly reduced price point and the BM170-L6 in particular come sin very inexpensively.

It’s not yet clear if these devices will run the Android OS available to the BM170, we feel it would run it fine and we can’t really see anything that would stop you from upgrading to the WM6.5 in the future if they make that upgrade available to buy.  You need to be careful with the the 128MB RAM but evertyhign else is there.

Sometimes taking a small step back can be a useful excercise and we know there is demand for these devices so its a good move by a rugged PDA company who is clearly looking to develop devices at this end of the market that still fulfill the “Rugged” brief.

www.ruggedandmobile.com


Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: , ,
Categories : New products and First Looks, News & Communication

« Previous Entries Next Entries »


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 497 other followers