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Joined: Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 39 Location: NW London
Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:20 pm Post subject:
[quote="Buff20"]
alanf wrote:
Buff20 wrote:
Also, I note that there is a family of very cheap handhelds on the market at the mo - Mio/Medion/Navman/Acer N35. The principal differences between them seem to be the software they come with - Destinator, etc.
I intended to use my Acer n35/Destinator3 in my MGB later this year. It has dynamo and no 12v socket. I was going to fit one discreetly out of sight, carefully insulated and positioned because of +ve earth.
I tried using one 'in ear' headphone for voice only directions. Normal 3.5mm headphone socket on the top and the Acer sits neatly in a shirt (or jacket) pocket. You flip out the antenna to turn the GPS receiver on, either straight up or out front seems to work. Works fine with (vinyl) top on or off and even in my everyday car with a glass sunroof.
Not sure how long a single charge would last or how other roof materials could mask the signal.
Just spotted this, and sorry for the delay. I had a cigerette socket inserted into my glovebox. Neatly hidden and available if I ever needed it, like charging my mobile phone if I broke down, that sort of thing. However, the upside is that I can now charge the Ipaq or any other sat nav and using a sticky mat, have a "table" to rest my "systems" on... Only downside might be the passenger complaints as their hit they head on it in an accident _________________ iPhone5, TomTom, Google maps, Navfree, Viewranger and Apple Maps (ekk)
Every few months Aldi sell quite a good starter/charger unit. It has compressor for tyre inflation, lights, jump starter, and 3 12v cigar sockets - all in a compact carry case design. Cost around £25 but I've found it great for all sorts of things including running sat nav and PDA's away from the car. Easily carried in a footwell. Similar units sold elsewhere.
Also, I note that there is a family of very cheap handhelds on the market at the mo - Mio/Medion/Navman/Acer N35. The principal differences between them seem to be the software they come with - Destinator, etc.
I intended to use my Acer n35/Destinator3 in my MGB later this year. It has dynamo and no 12v socket. I was going to fit one discreetly out of sight, carefully insulated and positioned because of +ve earth.
I wasn't anticipating problems mounting the pda on the windscreen with the usual cradle. Not too worried about hearing the voice as long as I could check junctions visually as I got to them. Your vehicle takes adaptation a little further!
How useful would the cheaper hardware be? Well, you could run the hardware off a battery box as already suggested or maybe a rechargeable 'jumpstart' pack with cigarette lighter socket built in if you had the space. Something like http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?criteria=N36BF.
It does have an earphone socket if you could stand being wired and need the voice. No contours on the supplied map, and the 'avoid' feature is only set for toll roads. If destinator can automatically avoid motorways I don't know how.
You can use 'trip planner' to set a route via waypoints, and the waypoints can be imported as 'favorites' from a csv file. That's probably as close as you get to importing a route unless someone knows better.
Good luck with your search.
Righty-ho..... I've gone with the cheap-skate option and bought an Acer N35 with Destinator 3. I didn't buy it for the software, but because it's a Pocket PC that it seems will be compatible with many software packages and it's cheap(!) (£139 plus VAT, in fact, from Morgan's in Oxford Street). :D
Trying the unit and the D3 software out in my modern Skoda it seems pretty good and very easy to use (excpet for the APPALLING charging/info socket, which, in combination with a very short charging lead, has already got bent). :x
For the old motor I've got a re-chargeable battery pack that should keep us going all day.
I have worked out how to do the waypoint thing, as described above, in Destinator Console on my PC. However, a lot of minor roads appear to be un-waypoint-able (you click and nothing happens), and then, I get to 15 way points and it won't let me put any more in. Nowhere can I find this mentioned in the manual or in the product description. Anyone else encountered this?
I'm not really moaning though, as I expected the software to be limited. So it looks like I'll be looking elsewhere. Alturioin looks promising, but any other ideas welcome (to run on the Acer):
Route planning on PC
UNLIMITED waypoints
voice directions
and a new one......speed indicator in large letters (I've discovered it's SO much more accurate than the old speedo!)
Joined: Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 39 Location: NW London
Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:29 am Post subject:
Buff20 wrote:
I have worked out how to do the waypoint thing, as described above, in Destinator Console on my PC. However, a lot of minor roads appear to be un-waypoint-able (you click and nothing happens), and then, I get to 15 way points and it won't let me put any more in. Nowhere can I find this mentioned in the manual or in the product description. Anyone else encountered this?
...
Route planning on PC
UNLIMITED waypoints
voice directions
and a new one......speed indicator in large letters (I've discovered it's SO much more accurate than the old speedo!)
When you create favorites (sic) by tapping the map on the PDA/Destinator screen it seems to approximate to the nearest junction or address it has stored on the map if it can find one. On a minor road that might be some way off and a tap is ignored. It also only works in certain modes. I can't say I've tried generating a lot of favorites like this because it is a bit tedious. I've tried putting 20 or so points into a favorites file like this and it seems OK.
If you import a favorites file from a csv file it uses only the latitude and longtitude values without approximating or ignoring any. There doesn't appear to be a limit to the number of items in the list. There's a national trust poi list on poihandler I have used with over 300. Although it's slower to load than a short favorites list once it's there I can use 20 or more of the listed items as waypoints in trip planner.
I had a brief look at what the Google maps interface can do. One of the listed examples shows the lat and lon for a given point. I reckon it should be possible to use some scripting to assemble a list of points into an itinerary. When you have that, copy it to a csv, import to favorites and construct a route using those as waypoints.
Put like that it seems a long process but it's a chance to explore the Google maps API. Others have constructed the Destinator .dat files that the favorites are listed in and use external programs to sort or add to favorites files. The trip planner also apears to use .dat files although the internal format looks different, maybe there are some more direct methods we could program.
I've only had Destinator actually reading the GPS signals so far but if something like this could work on an Acer: http://www.pocketpcfreeware.com/en/index.php?soft=853 it's certainly possible to write something independent to do a full screen digital speedometer.
I have worked out how to do the waypoint thing, as described above, in Destinator Console on my PC. However, a lot of minor roads appear to be un-waypoint-able (you click and nothing happens), and then, I get to 15 way points and it won't let me put any more in. Nowhere can I find this mentioned in the manual or in the product description. Anyone else encountered this?
...
Route planning on PC
UNLIMITED waypoints
voice directions
and a new one......speed indicator in large letters (I've discovered it's SO much more accurate than the old speedo!)
When you create favorites (sic) by tapping the map on the PDA/Destinator screen it seems to approximate to the nearest junction or address it has stored on the map if it can find one. On a minor road that might be some way off and a tap is ignored. It also only works in certain modes. I can't say I've tried generating a lot of favorites like this because it is a bit tedious. I've tried putting 20 or so points into a favorites file like this and it seems OK.
If you import a favorites file from a csv file it uses only the latitude and longtitude values without approximating or ignoring any. There doesn't appear to be a limit to the number of items in the list. There's a national trust poi list on poihandler I have used with over 300. Although it's slower to load than a short favorites list once it's there I can use 20 or more of the listed items as waypoints in trip planner.
I had a brief look at what the Google maps interface can do. One of the listed examples shows the lat and lon for a given point. I reckon it should be possible to use some scripting to assemble a list of points into an itinerary. When you have that, copy it to a csv, import to favorites and construct a route using those as waypoints.
Put like that it seems a long process but it's a chance to explore the Google maps API. Others have constructed the Destinator .dat files that the favorites are listed in and use external programs to sort or add to favorites files. The trip planner also apears to use .dat files although the internal format looks different, maybe there are some more direct methods we could program.
I've only had Destinator actually reading the GPS signals so far but if something like this could work on an Acer: http://www.pocketpcfreeware.com/en/index.php?soft=853 it's certainly possible to write something independent to do a full screen digital speedometer.
Thanks for the swift response. Now I'm going to sound a bit dim....
In thick-persons terms, are you saying that instead of doing the waypoint/console thing, I have to create each of my waypoints as POIs? And then create a route using those POIs in a certain order? Sounds straightforward enough, but can I do it on the PC using console, or do I have to plan the whole thing on the PPC? Am I alone in finding the manual supplied with console a bit on the limited side?
Thanks for the link to the speedo software. Looks like exactly what I need. Will it run concurently with Destinator, and will the voice commands still come over, even if I can't see the screen? (You might have gathered that I'm not au fait with things computational....)
Joined: Mar 13, 2006 Posts: 39 Location: NW London
Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2006 6:18 pm Post subject:
Buff20 wrote:
are you saying that instead of doing the waypoint/console thing, I have to create each of my waypoints as POIs? And then create a route using those POIs in a certain order? Sounds straightforward enough, but can I do it on the PC using console, or do I have to plan the whole thing on the PPC? Am I alone in finding the manual supplied with console a bit on the limited side?
I'll agree the Destinator pdf 'User Manual' is sparse, it's a little sketchy on how you use waypoints so all I can pass on is what I've found by trying it. I'm not claiming to be a Destinator or PDA expert, I just stumbled around looking for something close to what I wanted to do.
From the 'trip planner' on the PPC/PDA/Destinator you can add waypoints to a trip. These can be addresses, items in favorites or others. If you are making deliveries, then addresses is probably simplest. If I follow you, what you're trying to use is points on unnamed minor roads so address searches are not adequate.
What we could do is use the tap on the map at arbitary points and use the context menu to store those as items in a temporary favorites list. But creating favorites items like this mostly approximates to the nearest address and it's a small screen to scroll around working out your route.
You're suggesting you want to route plan on PC where you have a bigger screen, faster graphics and so on. The Destinator console is only there to transfer data like maps from the CD and favorite lists into Destinator on the PPC, it's not a way of displaying or using the maps itself. So we have to record waypoints on the PC and transfer those to something we can use in Destinator. The only way the manual lists is importing favorite items from a csv file with the Destinator PC console. The points in the csv file are just lat and lon so you are not forced to the nearest address. But getting a list of lat and lon readings for waypoints is tricky without some software to help. I'm suggesting that Google Maps could be a (free) way to do it, but I'm not aware of anything existing and ready to go. Maybe you know of some other route plotting software that could be used?
Buff20 wrote:
Thanks for the link to the speedo software. Looks like exactly what I need. Will it run concurently with Destinator, and will the voice commands still come over, even if I can't see the screen? (You might have gathered that I'm not au fait with things computational....)
Not really, as supplied what you have is a PPC and GPS receiver in one pack. Only one piece of software on the PPC can talk to the GPS receiver at a time which it does as a serial stream through a virtual COM port. What the free software does is show it's possible to write a standalone speedometer, but you could not run it at the same time as Destinator, even if the processor could keep up. I think you're probably stuck with the small text below the map if you want a speed reading from Destinator.
The Garmin I3/I5 units are also small and with a long battery life (aa format too).
The Asus A636 is a PDA with 6-8 hour advertized battery life too, plus it comes with Destinator PN which offers a motorcycle as vehicle type for routing purposes, I'm guessing that means scenic routing but I it could mean something else like narrow allys ;)
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