Cycling with TomTom

R1chard · Regular Visitor Joined: Feb 07, 2004 Posts: 64

I thought other users might be interested in my experiences using TTN3 for cycle touring.

I recently toured Sweden, Norway and Denmark and covered a distance of about 1200 kilometres. I took with me regional maps scaled at about 1:300000 together with TomTom Bluetooth GPS Receiver and an Ipaq 2210. The Ipaq was mounted on my bike using a Ram mount with a home made clip to secure it to the handle bars. The receiver was protected in a plastic box (which originally contained screws from B&Q) which was slipped into a handlebar bag which has a clear top where you can also store a map for easy viewing.

To avoid being routed along motoways and international roads I set the speeds for those roads to 5 kph and all other speeds to 15 kph. This effectively gave me the shortest routes whilst avoiding motorways but I was quite surprised that TTN3 found some "roads" which were no more than dirt tracks where a speed of 15 kph on a fully laden bike was somewhat optimistic. The categories of road in the TT3 properties doesn't specifically mention dirt tracks so I didn't know how to adjust the speeds to avoid them. On one occasion I was routed along a "no through road" and then through what appeared to be someone's private driveway!

Of course the biggest problem is power given that neither the Ipaq nor the receiver is blessed with batteries that last more than a couple of hours. However I found that by only switching them on when I needed them (e.g. when I arrived at a junction and didn't know which way to go, or when I was trying to get out of a town centre) I was able to conserve enough power so that I could last a day or two without recharging. Sometimes navigating on a bike is easy - just a long straight road that takes you from A to B, but other times it's more complex perhaps taking you through rural areas where only the next tiny village is signposted at junctions or maybe though towns where, in my experience, signpostng is rarely good enough for cyclists. So for the simple journeys you don't need any help from TTN3 but for complex ones I generally switched the receiver and Ipaq off if it was more than 1 kilometre to the next instruction and watched the distance on my cycle computer so that I would know when to turn it on again.

An irritation was that sometimes the next instruction was to go straight on at a junction but I often found that the "junction" was no more than a goat track where only a goat might choose not to go straight on. One such junction in Norway was simply a gap in a hedge!

I experimented with solar power, taking with me an Isun fold-up solar panel and battery pack which sat on the back of my bike soaking up the rather dismal Scandinavian rays. Whilst it provided me with a small amount of power for recharging the receiver and Ipaq I felt that with the added weight (700 grams) there was only margnal benefit in taking it as I was able to charge up the equipment at camp site washrooms but not wanting to leave the stuff on show I managed to get about 10 minutes for each item each day (i.e. while I was washing/shaving etc). Now and them I found power points at camp sites where I could confidently leave it for longer. If I'd realy struggled then I would probably have paid for an electric hook-up for my tent which would have been considerably cheaper than buying a solar panel.

I've done this sort of cycle touring for many years and have always survived with just a map and compass but having used GPS navigation over the last three weeks I wonder how I ever managed without it. In fact I navigated the whole 1200 k without once having to ask directions. However it's not possible to rely solely on the GPS so a good map and a compass are indispensable.

If anyone needs more information please feel free to post hear for TomTom related issues or email me direct at rthorpe@netfury.co.uk for any cycling/touring/camping/Scandinavia questions.

Richard

barryd · Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 11:10 pm Post subject:

When I were a lad, my bike's lights were powered by a dynamo driven round by the rotating bike wheel. Do these things still exist, with say a 12v output akin to a car cigarette lighter socket? If so, I'd have thought they'd provide plenty enough power to keep a PDA charged.

Barry

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