Aftermarket Gps Help Please!

[theblackpig]

what unit's the best all depends on what you want it for and how you want to use it.

A colleague and me do a lot of location work. On one trip we ran a Navman 510 and a Garmin Street Pilot 2610 side by side to compare them. Both are dedicated navigation units with internal antennae and they run of the car's accessory power plug. Navman has battery back up. Garmin only works when plugged in.

The Garmin acquired the satellites so much faster than the Navman, it was ready to go within 5 - 10 seconds of starting the car. The Navman took 30 - 60 seconds to aquire satellites, sometimes longer than two minutes. Very boring.

The Garmin was more stable, and had more depth to the navigation instructions, the maps, and the 'points-of-interest' database. And was easier to operate on the road.

The Navman 510 was $400 or more cheaper, smaller, neater and more portable, had better looking maps (more like street directory maps than the Garmin's stick maps), and had an easier to use address entry and storage system.

The Navman can also be loaded with 3rd party speed camera location databases - there are free ones and low-payment (about $20) ones available on line.

I did a one month touring trip of Scotland earlier this year and ordered the UK maps on line (Navman maps are cheaper from the Navman Europe web site than the Navman Oz web site). I loaded them into the Navman and scrolled around and ran some dummy drives in the UK (like from the airport to the hotel a coupla towns away, and from Edinburgh Castle to grandma pig's house) before I left Oz. Very fun and interesting.

I also downloaded a current database of all the different kinds of UK speed cameras. It even includes locations where mobile cameras are frequently parked. Very useful. Kept me out of all sorts of trouble in the UK where you might go past 30 or more cameras in a day's drive, many of them are concealed, and they are proliferating rapidly because local governments are now so heavily dependent on them for general revenue.

In Scotland I set the Navman to 'avoid main roads' and it navigated us point-to-point through all the little back roads, winding country lanes and 'hidden' villages. Magic!

The Navman gets easily confused in cities (that poor satellite reception again), but would always re-route and eventually get us where we wanted to go. Muuuuch easier than paper maps especialy when you're a strange pig in a strange land.

On return to Aus, I reloaded the Oz maps and used it for a few more months, running alongside a Uniden GPS 301 Speeed Camera warning system.

The Uniden has a way better aerial than the Navman. (if it falls off the dash onto the floor, it keeps working!) But it has a sickeningly annoying set of chimes or buzzes for speed cameras that go on and on, and when it does warn of a speed camera with it's incessant honking and beeping, instead of the display giving you a GPS-accurate read out of your speed just when you need it, it scrolls the words "speed camera" over and over.

Makes you want to yell at it "I f**kin KNOW there's a speed camera you dumb piece of s**t! Just tell me how fast I'm going!!"

Yo want to shake the thing for being so robust and fast and accurate, but so stupidly and annoyingly programmed and set up. Setting the options up how you want is distressingly confusing and counter intuitive too. Hardware engineers: 10, audio and ergonomics engineers: MINUS 8. Total: 2. (coulda been a 20!!).

Now I have a Siemens VDO integrated navigation unit in the Typhoon. The CD and processing unit is in the boot, the aerial is fixed on the back parcel shelf where it gets a major good look at the satellites. The unit plays to the console screen and voice commands come through the left speaker. Very clear and easy to take in. The dealer had it fitted. VDO used to supply the Ford factory nav units till Ford went over to Blaupunkt.

The installer reckons the VDO is better than the Blaupunkt - faster, clearer and easier to use. But I don't know, not having seen a Blaupunkt unit in action. I'd check 'em both out.

The VDO unit (5540) is is awesomely accurate cos it has a built in inertia system so it keeps on navigating you between city buildings and in tunnels. It's brilliant in that respect.

address entry and retrieval is good and easy too, using the supplied remote control which works with the infra-red receiver built into the factory console.

It uses Sensis maps and data which are more current that the Navman maps and Sensis provide more categories and bigger databases of 'points of interest'.

It can't accept 3rd party databases however, and only has a few (some out of date) speed camera locations. So in terms of keeping Typhoon drivers out of trouble it is useless.

And it will only indicate cameras when you are actually navigating to a particular destination. If you just have the maps on and scrolling, but you haven't entered a destination, it will not indicate when you're near a speed camera. This I think is a particularly idiotic restriction on the speed camera indication 'feature'.

I phoned VDO several times and they said the next iteration of the software and maps would have a more complete database of Strayan speed cameras. But like I said, if you can't set it to indicate cameras when you're not point-to-point navigating, then it's no good for day to day driving. Useless - at least for my purposes.

ALso the VDO5540 is touted as the latest VDO technology in Australia but is CD-based, not DVD based like modern navigation systems should be. In fact, the 5540 seems to have been superceded in Europe three or four years ago, when the last 5540s were heavily discounted to clear them and make way for the new generation DVD - based units. So looks to me like Siemens VDO may be dumping old technology in Australia (and presumably NZ). Most other manufacturers of technology products seem to treat us a bit better than that.

At the moment, I'm running the VDO 5540 and the Uniden GPS 301 together, full time. The VDO for rock solid navigation and, when I'm not navigating, to have the maps scrolling on the screen while I'm driving around (useful for checking out street names and figuring where you are relative to geographic features and points of interest). And I'm running the Uniden GPS301 for rock solid speed camera warnings.

Oh how I wish Uniden would fix the bloody monotonous noise their unit makes, and would re-program it to give useful information,like current speed, when a camera is detected.

In ascending price order we have:

Uniden GPS 301 (speed camera warning system) coupla hundred bucks

Navman 510 (navigation and speed camera warning) five or six hundred bucks

Garmin Street Pilot 2610 (navigation) around twelve hundred bucks

VDO 5540 (navigation and partial (but useless) speed camera warning) two and a half grand or so.

Sorry this is loong but I tried to get useful information in, there was a lot to tell and it went on longer than I expected. Now I got sore trotters from typing.

Oh. One last thing. The software upgrades and improvements to the map databases really make a major difference to each unit. I was ready to throw the Navman 510 away till I got the latest software and map database, now it's a bit of a special.

Check any unit you're considering to see how often they upgrade the software, if there are any upgrades due now, and how much the upgrades cost (you might get the retailer to throw in an upgrade for free if it's due for release in a month or two). And the maps vary greatly between units and between upgrades. Check out how much and how frequently the maps are upgraded before U buy.

Any questions, google 'in-car navigation forum' and you'll find some great resources.

Edited 04/11/06 02:48 AM by theblackpig

[4runner]

Does this have the newish Sydney main roads M7 and Cross City Tunnel on it?

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Yes Ross, it has both of these roads. It uses the whereis maps and is loaded with build 3.20.0035.

I found it very good with redirecting after a missed turn. However it did sometimes take a while to find the satelites - about 30 secs.