New car... with its own Sat Nav.

[DennisN]

My built in satnav is Renault R-Link, which has TomTom (NAV 2) functioning, but with proprietary firmware making the SD card untouchable except to see four files TOMTOM.0000, TOMTOM.0001, TOMTOM.0002, TOMTOM.0003. (it started with just two, 0000 and 0001, but updates or my wickedness have granted it two more). Double click gets me nowhere with opening them.

So you can't do anything with it. Except that some clever French bloke has written a program which gets in there and sort of runs Windows Explorer (prog called R-Link Explorer, logical!). So I CAN put the cameras on there and the system works similarly to TT satnavs and I can put warnings on there - I have the pMobiles running, complete with distances and .OGG warnings (grandchildren when they were children shouting "Wake up Dennis, Speed Camera check ahead" and "Wake up Dennis, Mobile Camera check ahead").

Unfortunately, it's Windows only program which won't run on my Mac and I lost Windows on Mac via Parallels some time ago when all the up-dating to 64-bit happened - it stopped working with Win XP. I didn't fancy the expense of newer version of Parallels and Win 10 (I tried a few times to use Win 10 on a laptop and it completely defeated me).

So to put cameras on my built in R-Link, I have to use my old laptop with 250GB HD, running Win 7 Home. I say running, but that's a misnomer. It takes close to 30 minutes just to boot up and several minutes to respond to each key press. Putting the latest DB on there is a very time-consumimg business, so I don't bother. I just update it every few months, the real point of having them on there is to get the grandchildren's voices giving us a bit of a thrill.

For the proper job, I run CamerAlert on my iPhone.
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Dennis

If it tastes good - it's fattening.

Two of them are obesiting!!

[Roy124]

Just to update this. I have travelled in several new cars and their built in Sat Nav displays are far superior in size and detail to my Garmin but this still draw the eye down and away from the direction of travel.

My 3598 mounted above the coaming but clear of the view is much easier to glance at. I do like the North up car display for orientation with road up for driving.

[Kremmen]

Fully agree

Honda moved their SatNav from eye level to a low down headunit, under the face level vents.

I posted my displeasure on a Honda forum but it got little response. I pointed out that withthe lower location, when you look at the SatNav the road is no longer in your peripheral vision and therefore potentially dangerous.

What I am noticing is that almost all the German brands, and Ford, are now putting their SatNav's in a pseudo tablet design that protrudes above the dash and is a far better solution IMO.
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Satnav:
Garmin 2599 LMT-D (Indoor test rig)
DashCam:
Viofo A119 V3
Car Average MPG :

[BigJohnD]

[PhilHornby]

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