TomTom RDS-TMC Traffic Receiver Available In Europe

rory1968 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 17

I bought one of these from Germany £49 all in. It works intermittantly.I have tried it in different cars and this does not seem to make much difference.When it works its great,but,its very hit and miss.best reception so far has been from M40 south of Oxford to High wycombe.I am using it on a TT710 which I do like.

Wildoat · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 28, 2006 Posts: 48

Eldoylio · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 6

I received my receiver yesterday. After installing it I have made 2 seperate trips from Leicester to Birmingham (M69 & M6) and only the green circle for about 60% of my trips. So far there have been no traffic alerts at all and I have been travelling at peak times.

I am actually beginning think that this may not be the best solution and will have to resort to the subscribed method.

By the way, does anyone know roughly how much data TT Traffic would pull through your mobile in an average month if you were spending approx 2.5 hours in the car a day? I am interested in working out the rough cost!

Tim Buxton · Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 7:10 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure how much data is involved but you can configure it to update every x minutes, where x=1 to 99.
_________________
Tim

hmandco · Occasional Visitor Joined: Apr 04, 2006 Posts: 4

My long awaited TOM TOM TMC receiver arrived today. I have spent the entire afternoon attempting to make it be of any use. I do so want this to work but nothing can rescue me from the fact that this product is a dog. After following all advice of various forums and draping the antenna in every concievable arrangement I was only able to occasionally recieve the signal from SAGA FM which does not carry the traffic info! The traffic details are on Classic FM but this device will not pick that up. Even though I can sit in the car while battling and listen to Classic FM on the car radio and RDS TP is showing! What a disapointment. Avoid this until it gets sorted.

coastersteve · Posted: Wed Nov 15, 2006 9:09 pm Post subject:

The unit has been ripped apart and me and my boss are working on a modification. We believe there's a flaw in the way the antenna line inside the lead is de-coupled.... but with no diagnostic screen or signal strength it's impossible to know whether or not we've improved things. So far it finds every station bar Classic FM!

LT · Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:08 pm Post subject:

I'm in North Lancashire and I have a Go 510. I ordered one of these TMC receivers just before going on holiday 2 weeks ago from INKINO and it arrived whilst I was on Holiday. When I opened it up upon my return and tried to use it I needed the new Go510 firmware and unfortunately BT had turned my broadband off for some reason, but that's another story! So I used my parents computer and managed to update the unit. Then tried the great plug in experiment and put in a route I'm going to tomorrow and after a few minutes it seemed to work and showed a lane closure which was 111 miles away, and when I checked the radio station it was Classic FM and the transmitter was Morecambe Bay which is my local one. So that would seem to indicate that you would get the information anywhere on your route and this wasn't regionalised. BTW I used both strongest signal and UK and I think they both seemed to work. The label on the wire and on the unit itself says 4V000.000.

I also tried the route a short time later using TT Traffic on the mobile phone, and it appeared to show a different traffic situation. Reason I got the TMC receiver was that I wanted to a) use the hands free facility more, which you can't when traffic is on, and b) the phone keeps disconecting from the 510 unit, which was a real pain, having to keep reconnecting. It is really tempermental that way. Mind you, the new TT firmware might have solved that, I'm not sure. Has anyone noticed any improvements in this field?

Tomorrow's the big day, so I'll report back, although it might not be until I get my broadband connection back...

LT · Posted: Fri Nov 17, 2006 11:25 pm Post subject:

Addition to above, seeing as I could't edit my post. Just put in another couple of routes after turning my 510 off and what do you know? The GPRS traffic came on automatically, without having to connect to the phone all the time, as per my previous complaint! Looks like the new firmware has solved the problem of it keep dropping out!

Wouldn't you just know it?

LT · Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 9:39 pm Post subject:

Well, the promised update, and the traffic receiver seemed to work. The green circle remained green for most of the journey, although was grey for some parts where I new there was poor radio reception anyway.

The bottom line is that for the journeys I did, it showed all the traffic problems I would encounter, and there were no nasty surprises. So it did seem to work, to give it it's due. Perhaps a Friday afternoon trip to the other side of London will test it a little more.

coastersteve · Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2006 9:58 pm Post subject:

I think you must be one of the lucky one's!

pete1336 · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 9:50 am Post subject:

algypan · Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 5:50 pm Post subject:

They are now out of stock on TomTom site I wonder why perhaps they have had enough complaints

Eldoylio · Occasional Visitor Joined: Jun 11, 2006 Posts: 6

Have been trying with this now for over a week and still getting nowhere. Emailed TT support and despite telling them I was picking up various frequencies and telling running version 6.520 of the software, the best solution they could tell me was to update my software to version 6.520!!!!!!!!!

I have used this extensively and have only managed to get the Classic FM signal once which was last night when I purposely drove the the Classic FM Transmitter in Sutton Coldfield. But when I was 10 miles away the signal was gone. I played around with the ariel configuration and waited but still no joy. I have however managed to connect to the following array of stations (all of which don't carry the right traffic signal)!

105.7 Saga FM
106.0 Saga FM
103.8 BBC Radio Nottingham
97.2 - Radio 1
106.0 Heart FM
105.4 Leicester Sound
96.0 Trent FM

So, now very annoyed and fed up I called TT support and was give the advice to select a different country, wait a minute, do it again with another country, wait another minute and then set it back to the UK which should reset the system . . . . . . . . . Boulderdash! 10 miles from the transmitter, mucking about with the ariel configuration and setting the receiver to different countries did not work at all.

TT refuse to accept that my receiver may be faulty, but I'm betting that if it isn't then something is wrong with the service. Either way it appears that there are more than a few of us who have paid through the nose for these and are getting nowhere! Evil or Very Mad

plant · Regular Visitor Joined: Nov 26, 2004 Posts: 86

Well, well, well. What a chapter of woe!

I have been looking forward to this for many months (can't connect a phone as the Company won't support it and I'm too tight fisted to get another phone account where I have to pay for it!) but will be waiting a few more yet.

Reason for posting here? To tick the 'notify me when a reply is posted' box, so I can be kept in the loop.

Cheers,

coastersteve · Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:23 pm Post subject:

Got this from TT support this AM.....
"
Thank you for contacting TomTom Customer Support.

Could you possibly please wait for the new software update which you are able to download through your tomtom Home program which will be avalable the coming week.

This software update for the 510 /710 /910 will fine tune the RDS-TMC and instead of tuning directly into the 'Strongest Signal' which may or may not be transmitting the data, it will continue to search till it finds the strongest signal actually transmitting the data.

I appreciate your swift response and thankyou for youre patience, as this RDS-TMC receiver was tested in The Netherlands and not in the UK.

This upcoming update for your device should solve the problem you are experiencing.
"

I love the way they admit it wasn't tested in the UK! So we really are the beta testers!

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