You always have to get your priorities right, at least that's what I've been taught. So the new (tiny) gauges on the screen have taken a back seat since late last week when I got the Chinese SD card with the updated sat-nav maps. The card came with some very old licenses, none for the latest maps though. Keeping the base map, which I am licensed for, makes the unit load up ok - the newer base map makes all maps unlicensed and the app terminates... But I could see the 2019 maps were named as inactive when the unit booted ok without a license for them.
I talked to the Chinese guys, they said they wanted to help, until I mentioned the QNX operating system and I never heard back from them! They wouldn't supply me with a newer license file for the maps either, so my advice is don't bother with them.
I bought a very cheap new Android (Vodafone Smart C9) that I was able to download the iGO nav software on and purchase maps for ($27.02 !!!
)
So I now consider myself licensed. And I will always pay for my maps.
You can plug the phone into a computer and get the maps off the unit, but I'm unable to root this phone, so no license files - except the basic one for the software executable itself. Still, this is almost everything the Chinese SD card came with - so that's going to be my method of getting new maps from now on.
Not wanting to waste anything (it's a life choice) I took a look at the DLL the Chinese gave me. It's not an exe, but a JNI thingy (I guess a Java Native Interface "shared object"). I found the version string in the file. I downloaded the original unmodified "apk" Android install file and ran it through WinRAR - and got all the files. I did a binary comparison, found 7 edits. Out of those, they appeared to be in 3 functions.
It took a while (I wrote some programs to put text strings in the disassembly at the point they are referenced - which was tricky since the Android one is "relocatable code" and has a double de-reference mechanism) but after doing so, I had discovered that one of their 3 changes was the one I had already done on the FGII unit! Yay! I tracked down the other two functions by limiting my searches to within where the license-type strings started and ended in the exe - and looking for constants common between the 2018 Android and 2012 QNX software. After a few hours, I had cracked it and the maps loaded:
So, these maps have actually cost me a bit under $200 (and a whole heap of time.. 4 days). But from now on they will cost me $27.02 a year!
I think I'll need permission though from a forum moderator to post the changes I made to the FGII unit software (I've only done the older firmware - from 2012 - not the one in my car yet from 2014).