Garmin ZUMO 390LM [Archive] - Kiwi Biker forums

BlackSheepLogic

30th September 2014, 20:36

This is GPS designed for Motorcycle use. There is a large price premium paid for motorcycle rated GPS devices. There are several reasons for this, the main being:

Limited market. These are a category device targeting a small subset of the GPS market. The developing and marketing costs have to be recuperated over fewer units and like any neesh product, there is a higher cost.
More rugged design. It’s much heaver and better built case to accommodate the harsher environment/handling these devices are exposed to.
Water resistance design. This unit can be immersed in water one meter in depth and continue to function.
Vibration. These units like other systems on motorcycle have to withstand considerable vibration stress over what a in-car unit would experience.
The unit comes with a variety of mounting options including a DC/DC converter for wiring to the motorcycle electrical system.
User interface options for ease of use on a motorcycle with gloves on.

Some of the points above can be accommodated by many of the cases/boxes available to protect a car GPS unit on a bike. Vibration on some bikes is better than others, and there’s also a trade off in durability vrs price. You could for example buy several basic GPS units for the price of this GPS. My decision to get a motorcycle rated GPS and pay the premium price for the 390LM was reliability and the ease of use.

The LM suffix refers to life-time maps. This means as map updates become available they are free to download. This extends the useful life of the unit. Map updates are not cheap if you have to pay for them.

Battery life is claimed to be 10 hours. I have not got anywhere near that since owning the unit. It is probably related to some of the options I have set. No time-out on the display and bluetooth is probably the main reason I don’t get the 10 hours claimed.

The routing is quick and directions work well. I like the routes chosen on the whole. If I chose to deviate from it the GPS unit recalculates the route quickly. The voice prompts are excellent, there is pre-warning of directions (for example in 1KM, turn right onto....) and as you approach the turn the directions given are clear and timely.

The map display is very good, there are several map options and the route is clearly highlighted on the map. There are choices for daytime and nighttime use, and the display is also resistant to water and petrol/oil etc. The display is advertised as readable in bright light/sun - I don’t agree.

The 4” touch screen has been optimized for use with gloves on, graphics are large enough to select with gloves on and there is also a on-screen keyboard for use with gloves. The icons functions are large & obvious.

The address book and points of interest work well and categories can be added as desired. The address entry is excellent, it is easy to enter and search for an address. It also reduces options to only those valid based on what you have already entered.

Once an address has been entered (or selected from the address book) information like distance and route plans are available before starting the trip.

I find some of the additional apps are quite useful. I use the service app to record fuel and maintenance for the bike. The unit converter is also very useful. I like being able to add additional information to the address book (phone numbers for example).

I have the GPS unit paired with my Sena 20s, pairing on the Garmin was was easy once I got though the Sens 20s setup.

The unit charges though it’s USB port. There is also two pad connections for the cradle to provide power. Power though the cradle is provided by the DC/DC converter which is provided in the box. I did not wire the DC/DC converter to the bike as it will always have some current draw from the bike. I could have wired it to a circuit only hot with the ignition on but I wanted to be able to continue to power the unit when the bike was off (fuel stop or trusted waypoint).

I checked the output of the DC/DC converter and as suspected it was 5v so I cut off the DC/DC converter from the cradle wiring and spliced in a USB cable. In my tank bag I have a Dewalt XR USB charger. As I have several slim XR battery’s I take a couple with me in the tank bag to power the GPS and my phone (this is several days of power).

Mounting the unit to the busa was a challenge. There was not enough room on the bars to clamp it so a RAM stem mount would be the preferred mount. I don’t know if these are available in NZ (if someone knows a place let me know). I mounted the GPS to my tank bag using a plate adapter which came with the GPS. I reinforced the mounting point in the tank bag with some particle board. The setup works well.

While riding I rely on the voice directions played though the helmet’s Sena bluetooth system. The voice directions are excellent and I almost never need to stop and look at the map.

There are a couple of issues if have had with this unit. It occasionally stops route guidance and I need to restart it. The other issue I had was the map display stopped being updated but voice navigation continued. When I stopped for fuel I noticed this and restarted it. I find if I restart the unit before every trip I do not have these issues. I updated the firmware a couple of days ago, perhaps these issues have been fixed but only time will tell.

Recently the Garmin Zumo 590LM has been released in NZ. It has a couple more options including music and a larger 5” screen (vrs 4” screen on the 390LM). The claimed battery life on the 590LM is much shorter than the 390LM. If I had to purchase again I would still chose the 390LM. I don’t see a need for a bigger screen and my phone has my music library on it.

Overall for my needs I am happy with the 390LM and would purchase again. I expect several years of use from the unit. The lifetime maps option will keep it current and it looks & feels well built. Excellent product for my needs, frequent map & software updates, couple of minor software glitches I’m sure in time will be resolved.

Blackbird

1st October 2014, 09:16

Looks like a really nice unit. As you say, pretty expensive. Seems to be $800+ in NZ and only a little cheaper ex-US. I've got a Garmin 3760 in the car which is excellent and an old Garmin 76CX on the bike. The 76CX is a hand-held unit with a small screen and not bluetooth capable. Have owned it for a good few years. The small screen and no bluetooth are a limitation but it's surprisingly still quite useable. What I particularly like on a Garmin is the ability to pre-plot routes using MapSource or the latest software. I'm a voluntary Observer with IAM and it gives me the opportunity to plot in advance a range of conditions to suit whatever rider I'm mentoring at the time. The other thing I like about Garmin is that there's an Open Source mapping group in NZ and their maps are free. They're also updated on an extremely regular basis.

I'd really like to buy one like yours but it will have to wait. Just about to replace my rear shock and the Chief Financial Officer would blow a gasket with all my recent expenditure :yes:

Bender

1st October 2014, 13:37

I have bought some ram mount bits and pieces from www.ramsolutions.co.nz. (http://www.ramsolutions.co.nz/lifestyle/shop/motorcycles/ram-mount)

I can put my Zumo 500 or GoPro on it. Found the guy good to deal with.

BlackSheepLogic

1st October 2014, 16:11

I have bought some ram mount bits and pieces from www.ramsolutions.co.nz. (http://www.ramsolutions.co.nz/lifestyle/shop/motorcycles/ram-mount)
I can put my Zumo 500 or GoPro on it. Found the guy good to deal with.

Thank you!

Bender

2nd October 2014, 08:50

Some info on how I mounted it might help. My bike has clip ons with no room for the ram handlebar mount. So I used the top half of the handlebar mount, drilled and tapped two holes into the top triple clamp and screwed the top half onto the triple clamp.

Works very well and gives me a range of places I can locate the Zumo so it's not in the way or obscures the instruments etc. Good mounting system for sure.

I can arrange a photo if you're interested.

biggo

2nd October 2014, 20:35

slofox

2nd October 2014, 20:51

I've had a zumo 220 for a few years now. This is a bike specific unit as well.

Couple of points:

1. Built for a bike makes a helluva lot of difference to ease of use.

2. All Garmin units can get lifetime free maps in NZ via the Open GPS project. Free download and updated weekly.

3. I rarely use the bluetooth connection. In fact since it lost its pairing with my blueant headset I haven't bothered to pair it up again. That's about two or more years ago. Don't miss the voice prompts at all.

4. Well worth wiring a unit into the bike circuitry. It's pretty easy to hook it up to an ignition activated auxiliary circuit. When the ignition switches everything off, the 220 asks if you want to turn off or continue using battery. If you do nothing it turns off after 30 seconds so no problem running down your bike battery.

Big Dog

3rd October 2014, 00:36

A cheaper alternative I have had one for two years only problem is goes flat after 6.5 hours continual use.

https://www.chinavasion.com/china/wholesale/GPS-Sat_Nav_Devices/Portable_GPS/All_Terrain_4.3_Inch_GPS_Navigation_System_For_Mot orcycle_Rage_-_IPX7_Waterproof_Rating_4GB_Internal_Memory_Blueto oth/

What mapping software are you using with that?

Does it pair through? E.g. Connect your cell to the gps and the GPS to your helmet.

Has anyone any experience with the Strike GPS?

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

biggo

3rd October 2014, 05:40

What mapping software are you using with that?

Does it pair through? E.g. Connect your cell to the gps and the GPS to your helmet.

Has anyone any experience with the Strike GPS?

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

Yes it pairs to my sena headset never used cell with it though but has built in MP3 player that I use all the time.
Use IGO8 software cost me $30 at my local GPS supplier can be done free off net if your that way inclined.
I use a program called TYRE (http://www.tyretotravel.com/) to map my rides just been planning route for next years TT2000

Big Dog

3rd October 2014, 11:35

Lol, I bought a cheap gps off tard me. It had igo on it. Fantastic software. Shame it was a cracked copy. Maps got out of date real quick. Igo would not sell me a replacement copy. Trader just denied knowledge. Refused refund unless unit was unused. Then closed trademe account.

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

Big Dog

3rd October 2014, 11:37

I think that is where the money for the garmin or the strike goes. Knowing that what you buy will work.

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

BlackSheepLogic

3rd October 2014, 20:26

I would like a pic if you are able. Like to try that not sure I have the room. Take a look at the PIC I posted above.

Some info on how I mounted it might help. My bike has clip ons with no room for the ram handlebar mount. So I used the top half of the handlebar mount, drilled and tapped two holes into the top triple clamp and screwed the top half onto the triple clamp.

Works very well and gives me a range of places I can locate the Zumo so it's not in the way or obscures the instruments etc. Good mounting system for sure.

I can arrange a photo if you're interested.

BlackSheepLogic

3rd October 2014, 20:33

Does it pair through? E.g. Connect your cell to the gps and the GPS to your helmet.

It can pair the phone though the GPS, but I don't always carry the GPS with me so I prefer to pair them individually to the Sena. There is a trade off in that the GPS audio is not overlaid with the phone if you pair them individually.

Big Dog

3rd October 2014, 23:48

I have never actually used a. Full gps on a bike. I have used google maps and I have had a gps In a pocket. Loss I music / phone has been one reason. The other not wanting to get to cluttered so much as to lose the adventure or riding. If that makes sense. I like the idea. But I hate the idea

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

Big Dog

3rd October 2014, 23:49

Who is odd. Can't live without it in the car.

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

Gremlin

4th October 2014, 00:03

Interesting, evidently out of the loop and didn't see the 660 had been replaced.

As slofox said, maps, I use NZ Open GPS project (compatible with Garmin) and it's way more accurate than Garmin (partially because I've submitted corrections, plus all the other enthusiasts). Bit of a killer that this new range forces you to use Basecamp. I've tried switching but found it hard to use, so opted for the easy route and continue to use Mapsource.

First GPS was a Zumo 550, did about 100,000km with it. It's still floating around somewhere, with a new screen I (still) haven't fitted, as the original got quite worn. Currently using a Zumo 660, it's probably had a harder life with more adventure riding, probably done around 30k? with it? Would have to check. I use wired comms and bluetooth comms, both work fine, fine in torrential rain etc. Using bluetooth, it's for directions, music and controlling my mobile (so pretty much full functionality)

The improvement in performance would certainly be valued, screen size, Ok, bigger would be nice (just have to make sure there is space), but otherwise, doesn't seem to be anything I need from the new one. 660 works for me.

I would suggest wiring to bike via an ignition live circuit. GPS fires up as the bike goes live, when I shut the bike down at a gas stop or similar the power feed is stopped but it switches over to battery immediately (and prompts with a 30sec countdown to continue on battery or turn off). Once bike power resumes it uses that and charges the battery. I don't need the GPS for daily riding/commuting, but I've done a lot of route planning across the country with it... found some really nice roads confident that I can never really get lost... just end up someplace I didn't plan to be :laugh:

Big Dog

4th October 2014, 18:31

I hear one of your adventures resulted from blindly following your earlier one.

Not lost. Just not where it said.

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

Gremlin

4th October 2014, 20:44

I hear one of your adventures resulted from blindly following your earlier one.

Not lost. Just not where it said.
First line probably relates to a field and a paddock around 2-3am... :laugh: The road layout was wrong, but I was able to prove how wrong.

I've had mixed results when agreeing or disagreeing with the GPS. Sometimes I'm wrong, sometimes she's wrong, but it's all an adventure :sweatdrop

Big Dog

4th October 2014, 21:16

That's the one. Sounds a bit like apple naps.

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.

Bender

5th October 2014, 12:04

This is the Ram mount set up I have , as mentioned before. I had no room on the handlebars but a fairly wide triple clamp. I can also put the GoPro on the ram mount using a mount I got from ramsolutions.

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BlackSheepLogic

5th October 2014, 12:48

Thanks, the first pic showing the mount at an angle makes sense now. I will get that mount option, the stem mounts can rotate, this looks a lot better.

This is the Ram mount set up I have , as mentioned before. I had no room on the handlebars but a fairly wide triple clamp. I can also put the GoPro on the ram mount using a mount I got from ramsolutions.

BMWST?

13th October 2014, 21:13

BlackSheepLogic

19th November 2014, 19:27

I use NZ Open GPS project (compatible with Garmin) and it's way more accurate than Garmin (partially because I've submitted corrections, plus all the other enthusiasts). Bit of a killer that this new range forces you to use Basecamp. I've tried switching but found it hard to use, so opted for the easy route and continue to use Mapsource.

OK, took a while but I did finally get the NZ Open GPS project maps installed and working using basecamp on OS X. First had to run the setup exe to install them on basecamp in windows. Garmin provides a map convert tool that will take an installed map in basecamp on windows and convert it to the OS X format. After that on OS X you have to use the map manager to install them on OS X Basecamp and then use map installer to transfer those to the the GPS unit.

Also, if you just grab the .img file and copy it onto the device in the map directory (you may have to create this on the device the first time) it works as well but I preferred to have them in basecamp as well without having to connect the Zumo.

One other issue is that in basecamp you can search for an address using upper & lower case characters. On the Zumo the open gps maps address searching only works if entered in uppercase. I created a en_NZ.kbd file in the keyboards directory (copy one of the existing english keyboards, does not matter which one). You will select this new keyboard definition in setup. On the latter ZUmo's and Nuvi's you can select multiple keyboards and toggle though them using the language key when entering text. The older Zumo does not provide this option so your stuck with only one active ant any one time.

Edit the file and search for all id="0" entries and line that has an output= entry for a alpha character (A..Z) change the id entry to "id=0,1" and delete the following line for the lower case character with an id="1".'

Example:
level id="0" label="A" output="A"
level id="1" label="A" output="A"

changed to:
level id="0,1" label="A" output="A"

I also changed the keyboard labels:
level id="0" label="A-I"
level id="1" label="a-i"

changed to:
level id="0,1" label="A-I"

Finally, change three lines in the file header section to match this:
en_NZ
New Zealand English
STR_LANGUAGE_NEWZEALAND_ENGLISH

Also, although the FAQ recommends to "Search All" the "Spell Town" does work as long as you enter the correct suburb.

Gremlin

19th November 2014, 19:34

Also, although the FAQ recommends to "Search All" the "Spell Town" does work as long as you enter the correct suburb.
The reason for this, is that you don't know which town/suburb a location has been set as. I live in East Auckland, so my address can be anything from Howick, Pakuranga, Botany??, Bucklands Beach etc. Hence search all, because you may not use the right one...

Also recommend you wrap the id stuff into code tags, otherwise it's not visible.

BlackSheepLogic

20th November 2014, 07:29

Also recommend you wrap the id stuff into code tags, otherwise it's not visible.

Yes, the entries have to be in code tag format but I could not paste those lines into a replay. When you look at the instructions only change the part of the text suggested.

I hope this post gives clues about how to make this work. The maps are wonderful but it took me several hours to finally figure out how to make them work and to do so in a way if was easey enough fix for my wife to use.

Thanks Gremlin for providing the original reference to them.

Blackbird

20th November 2014, 14:00

I had only vaguely heard of Basecamp before because like others here, I use MapSource together with NZ Open Source maps and have always been happy with the result. This thread piqued my interest so had a poke around on the net and found this Garmin forum discussion: https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?17087-MapSource-vs-BaseCamp. I think that on balance, I'll stick with MapSource. The car GPS has lifetime maps for NZ and Oz so I just plug it into Garmin Express on the PC and that's all there is to it. The Garmin on the bike is an old 76CX but it still does the job.

slofox

23rd November 2014, 10:35

I am happy with the Zumo 220, apart from one problem that I simply cannot seem to fix. Outlined below. Any ideas?

I can set up a route in Basecamp and apparently, import it into the Zumo220.

However, when I ask the Zumo to find the route ("import route from file"), it just hangs up at "Searching for Custom Routes." This will go on and on forever until I tell it to stop.

If I hook the unit up to Basecamp, it appears as a device. I can open up internal storage and see the route or I can open up the memory card and see the route there - depending, obviously, on where I sent the route to. But the unit itself seems unable to find the route when I ask it to.

Why can the device not find the file to import? Multiple reboots have done nothing to help.

When I first had this unit, I could import routes. But not now. WTF?

Bender

23rd November 2014, 12:45

How many routes do you have stored? Some Zumos have a limited number of waypoints that they can store and you might have too many in there.

BlackSheepLogic

23rd November 2014, 13:49

That really should not be a problem if the route with waypoints are done in Basecamp because those waypoints don't count against the devices max.

How many routes do you have stored? Some Zumos have a limited number of waypoints that they can store and you might have too many in there.

Bender

24th November 2014, 13:01

It was a problem with my Zumo 500 - would not accept a route with over a certain number of waypoints (and I can't off the top of my head remember what number it was).

The other problem I found was having two different maps - the one in basecamp being a different version to the one in the Zumo.

BlackSheepLogic

26th November 2014, 20:15

While I don't believe waypoints created in basecamp for a route are counted against the device limit, I think there may be a limit on the number of waypoints (routing points etc) within a route. I have not yet run into this limit (I think it's something like 100 points), but one way around this limit I've seen on some of the discussion forums was to convert the route into a track and then use that.

The obvious issue with a track is that you won't get voice prompts but it would be better than having to stop and switch routes if you could see the screen.

It was a problem with my Zumo 500 - would not accept a route with over a certain number of waypoints (and I can't off the top of my head remember what number it was).

The other problem I found was having two different maps - the one in basecamp being a different version to the one in the Zumo.

Gremlin

26th November 2014, 22:26

Split routes into legs if length is an issue. Only time I struggled with a 660 was a route with an ETA of more than 24 hours.

Big Dog

27th November 2014, 11:50

Split routes into legs if length is an issue. Only time I struggled with a 660 was a route with an ETA of more than 24 hours.

So you were routing for too long?

Stupid phone / Tapatalk, apologies in advance.