NavMan axe their technical support team...?

DaveMatthews · Regular Visitor Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221

Hi folks,

Some of you may remember that I ditched my woeful S90i some time ago and went back to my PDA-based Navigon MN4 software. Well unfortunately my PDA broke down a couple of weeks ago, so I got the S90i out of the loft to use as a temporary measure...

I then realised that I had never got around to finding a suitable adaptor to use the car radio antenna with the NavMan's ludicrous 4-pole TMC socket. So I e-mailed NavMan support to ask them how the socket was wired. This is the reply I received...

=============================================
Dear Mr Matthews,

Thank you for your email.

This is possible, please go to http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/ and check the forums on instructions on how to do this.

=============================================

Now I'm not in any way denigrating the superb advice given by so many people on these august forums... but NavMan seems to be approving "unofficial" advice in preference to their official support team. (Needless to say the "instructions" are nowhere to be found on the forum, anyway). I wonder if NavMan have actually sacked their support team in a cost-cutting exercise.

Either way they clearly don't even know what should be pretty straightforward details about their own products. Scary. And yet another reason why I would never buy another NavMan product.

--

Cheers,

Dave

mikealder · Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:53 pm Post subject:

The easiest option is to strip 5MM of insulation from the end of the existing aerial cable and solder a BNC plug to the end, couple this to a mini-scan mag mount aerial - this provides for a removable installation that will provide a decent signal.
You can find the Mini-Scan Here And a suitable connector Here

If you really want to couple the aerial wire to the cars existing aerial you will need to make sure that the installation doesn't feed 12V to the aerial via the coax cable, some cars do this and connecting the RDS device to such an installation will damage the RDS receiver and quite probably the navigation device.

You can still connect to such a system but will need to put a small capacitor in series between the RDS-TMC cable and the car aerial, this effectively blocks the DC component whilst still letting the RF signal pass through. the 0,1 µF on This page will do the trick, splitting in to the existing aerial lead will also need a couple of plugs/ sockets, but until you pull the radio out you won't know what type of connectors are used.
There are also dedicated splitter cables ready made for this type of installation, but I have not seen one specific to the Navman devices making the only solution a DIY proposition - Mike

DaveMatthews · Regular Visitor Joined: Dec 25, 2004 Posts: 221

Thanks very much for the info, Mike. I've actually already got a splitter (that ends in a BNC plug) that I used successfully with my old Navigon TMC receiver - so I'm just trying to find a way of re-using the splitter with the NavMan. As you suggest, a DIY adaptor seems to be the only way forward.

However the main point of my post was that having asked NavMan to supply me with simple pinout details for their TMC socket, why do they not know the answer? And, more importantly, what does it say about their competence and professionalism when their response is, effectively, "We have no idea what the answer is to your simple question about a product that we manufacture - try asking other customers"?

--

Cheers,

Dave

MaFt · Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:50 pm Post subject:

perhaps we should forward any and all navman queries from the forum direct to navman!!

MaFt

	PocketGPS
	Web