TomTom Rider - how to disable 'Drive Mode'

Keba · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 15

Phase 1:

Get some sticky tape (use your teeth or get some scissors for cutting said tape - totally up to you)

Phase 2:

Cover the 4 little pins that are part of the wiring system that would provide power from the motorbike battery.

Phase 3:

Put up with having to recharge the TomTom between journeys until such time as somebody comes up with a way of wiring the TomTom Rider to the motorbike battery while still disabling the mount sensor.

Drive mode is probably a good idea for those people who are still learning how to ride their motorcycles, or those that only ride for the sake of trying to get their pegs on the ground. From a commuting point of view, Drive Mode is the stupidest thing that TomTom could possibly have come up with as a 'mandatory' feature.

The mount that comes with the TomTom Rider has some electronics in it which when the Rider is placed into the mount lets the Rider know that it is in the 'motorcycle' mount and thereby goes into 'Drive Mode' whenever the Rider either a) hasn't got a satellite fix, or b) has a fix and knows the bike is moving.

Personally I haven't got around to pulling either the Rider or the mount apart, as I'm sure that will void my warranty. I'm sure either myself or somebody else will eventually get a round tuit and come up with a better plan that will allow the motorbike battery to power/recharge the Rider whilst still disabling Drive Mode until such time as TomTom get the clue they are missing and give us the option to disable Drive Mode if we so wish to.

If anybody else does feel like giving the electronics side (of the mount preferably - I'd rather not touch the Rider itself) a looksie at and can tell us how to disable the sensor properly, please do tell! I'm more than willing to follow instructions and then get myself one of the aforementioned round tuits and then wire in the battery cable....

It turns out its a good thing the Rider has a battery afterall ;)

Apologies if you are reading this message on multiple different TomTom sites - not everybody reads every sites forums, and this is information that I know a lot of TomTom Rider users want to know...
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Keba
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Tim Buxton · Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 9:04 am Post subject:

Have you tried isolating individual pins? I'm looking into this over the weekend to see if I can fool it into still charging the unit whilst not going into 'drive' (should this be 'Ride', I wonder?) mode.
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Tim

Keba · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 15

TazUk · Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 11:58 pm Post subject:

As they can determine the speed the bike it travelling at a more sensible approach would have been to activate Drive mode over a certain speed Confused

Skippy · Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 1:23 pm Post subject:

TazUk · Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 12:08 am Post subject:

kragbell · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 09, 2004 Posts: 13

So sorry Keba - the forum icons weren't showing up in my browser so I was trying to guess where the 'post reply' button was. Just realised I must have hit the pm by mistake - TWICE! Embarassed

The question is for the whole forum (if I'm still allowed to post Laughing

).

So what is 'drive mode' & how does it alter the operation of TT Rider that so annoys everyone ?

I use TT5 on PDA in car and am desparate (well, not necessarily £700 desparate) to get sat nav for my bike. However, if TT rider has such a seemingly critical flaw I will avoid.

Cheers - andrew

tomthompson · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 9:32 pm Post subject:

What drive mode is that it restricts the standard menu options on Tomtom to only 4 choices . It appears that this comes into action when your speed is somewhere above 10 or 15 mph. Its not a bad idea cos when your riding the smallest distractions can be dangerous.

But of course if you make these safety decisions for us mandatory we get up in arms about it
Twisted Evil

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TazUk · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 3:00 pm Post subject:

tomthompson · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 4:47 pm Post subject:

chatting to the owner that was trialing one at the basingstoke meet he did say that it seemed to be speed related but only happens when in the bike mount
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Tim Buxton · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 4:56 pm Post subject:

It certainly only happen when in the mount. I've had it sat on the passenger seat of my car many a time and I always got the full menu, even when moving 'at speed'.

I also get the full menu when it's in the bike mount and I am stationary and I have a satellite fix.
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Tim

TazUk · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 10:54 pm Post subject:

So what's the complaint about it then Confused

Tim Buxton · Posted: Thu Dec 15, 2005 11:13 pm Post subject:

The complaint is that TomTom have imposed a 'Safety' screen on PTWs that they haven't imposed on car drivers. Just because we ride instead of drive, do we need mollycoddling?
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Tim

Keba · Occasional Visitor Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 15

Personally, I think the main issue isn't that they attempted to force a decision on us, but that the options left whilst in Drive Mode are pathetic.

Having a 'drive mode' menu is a good idea - large buttons are good! So why not just change the entire menu system to the large buttons, rather than the current layout which is next to useless.

Unless of course you changed your mind about where you were driving to and want to just go 'home' - the 'recent destination' option is indeed the option you are already aiming at otherwise :/

One of the posters on mytomtomgo has come up with a fully tested solution for disabling the drive mode while still using the standard mount - http://www.mytomtomgo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4217 is the link if anybody is interested - my abilities with sticky tape seems to be limited!
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