TomTom Go 530 - Way to use British National Grid?

[liamchadwick]

Hi All,

I have recently bought a TomTom Go 530 when updating my sat nav. Previously i have stuck to Garmin and Garmin PDA's. Recently though with other friends and colleagues having TomTom i decided to give them a go and i do find the device much better in many respects but what i miss is the fact that i cant display my coordinates in the british grid/os system. Are there any plugins available to assist with this? Or plugins that will let me enter a British Grid reference and convert it to D*m.s
I like tomtoms navigate to lon/lat which i have never had on a garmin but with where i work, mobilising messages have the British Grid coordinates on and i don't have the time to go online to convert the location.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[DennisN]

I cannot help, so wait for somebody clever to come along.

HOWEVER, it seems to me like a good opportunity for you to get brownie points by suggesting to "whomsoever" that these days with the widespread use of satnavs with Long/Lat (you said "friends and colleagues"), it would be a good idea for "them" to issue mobilising messages complete with both Grid and Lat/Long locations. One might expect the mobilising centre has the capability to get those details easily before issuing the message. This suggestion is not copyright, but if you win a prize, feel free to share it with me.
_________________
Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

[liamchadwick]

Although a good suggestion, they live in a paper world! If you saw the actual maps they use I'm amazed they are in one piece still... As for the issuing centre, although it is possible I'm sure for the lon/lat to be included the actual 'political' issues involved would be enough to prevent it (the overall fear that eventually lon/lat will be the only coordinates given and the British grid will disappear). Change comes slowly and for the time being it will be easier to find a suitable conversion program that can be used on the TomTom or if not that, a symbion mobile / windows mobile pda.

[mikealder]

Have you considered using a web based conversion page via your mobile phone? not ideal but I am not aware of any third party application for a TomTom that will do what you are looking for.
Also the PDA software seems somewhat lacking in an application that is dedicated to doing this which is rather basic mathmatics - Mike

[liamchadwick]

yea i had considered it but it needs to be an offline solution since a mobile data connection isnt going to be the quickest and not only that but finding a website that will also display correctly on a mobile phone may be hard to find. if i knew the full mathematics behind it i would create and excel sheet. I have osgb.xls but i have yet to fathom how to work it.

[stuart]

Its a shame GPS Speed Sentry can't do this. It does show your current Lat and Long and also shows your postion as an 8-figure Grid Reference

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