GPS Advice

[merv]

On the faking it thread a few mentioned using GPS as an accurate measure.

My problem is every time I go into a shop and look at the things or read about them on the internet I'm still left wondering what is the model I should shell my cash out on?

I would like one that does all the biz and has decent maps of NZ on it so you always know where you are or where to go.

Tell me what model do you reckon is the best - easy to use, weatherproof if you are talking about it being used on the bike etc etc?

[jrandom]

Tell me what model do you reckon is the best - easy to use, weatherproof if you are talking about it being used on the bike etc etc?

I should point out that I work as an R&D engineer for Navman (www.navman.com) so I'm a bit biased but I can also answer your queries pretty good ;)

BMW have just started factory-mounting a waterproof Garmin GPS navigator on some of their tourers, but I'm not sure if it's separately available. In any case it would be stonkingly expensive and NZ maps would *not* be available. Apart from that there's nothing on the market that's road-bike specific. If you want to use GPS offroad, there are plenty of low-cost MTB-oriented GPS products that would transfer easily to trail riding etc.

Now, in terms of GPS, you can have basic positioning, or you can have positioning plus electronic maps, or you can have both of the above with the inclusion of street routing, which figures out paths through road networks, etc and guides you along, intead of just having a 'map image' that it plots your position on. That's the *real* sexy application for it.

Unfortunately the only cheapish, waterproof and portable (ie, bike-mountable) GPS units you'll find in shops right now are targeted at the low-end marine and tramping market and don't have any concept of road mapping.

Assuming you want the sexy street routing option, which is the only one that really helps on the road, your best option might be to use a PDA (like a Sony Clie or a Pocket PC) loaded with navigation software and a Bluetooth GPS unit. Bluetooth GPS units (like the Navman GPS4400) are weatherproof, battery-powered (eg, 30 hour life for the Navman one) and come with magnetic mounts. It'd work well on the tank. The PDA could be put in a wee plastic baggie or a waterproof pocket, and since the mapping software (eg, Navman SmartST Pro) provides voice guidance instructions ("In 400 metres, turn left... turn left now... enter the roundabout and take the third exit") you could run the audio to a headphone in your helmet.

Merv, PM me if you'd be interested in having a play with some of this stuff, that goes for any other KBers too.

[Drunken Monkey]

Merv, PM me if you'd be interested in having a play with some of this stuff, that goes for any other KBers too.

Damn, now you tell me...I just ordered a CF GPS for my iPaq the other day. 3 hours of reading reviews and tech specs and I'm still not 100% sure of what I'm getting into. All part of the fun of being a techno-pioneer I guess...

The current goal is: SysOn CF GPS receiver, iPaq 2210 and WinFast Navigator software (at least to start). I'll chuck it in the tank bag when I get it, go for a few runs and report back in this thread if anyone's interested.

[sAsLEX]

Talk to Jrandom as this is his kettle of fish!
And maybe wait a wee while to something better hits the market

[sAsLEX]

I should update me threads a bit more often I think

[toads]

Hi we have a garmin etrex, it's little portable and waterproof, it apparently doesn't float however, so I guess being waterproof is only an advantage if it doesn't fall into the sea!!, we use it for tramping and for using in the boat, and on car trips, it's quite user friendly and affordable, it does chew the batteries though so I have plenty of spares whenever we use it, we use it in conjunction with tumonz software which is very reasonably priced and informative, it reads speed and distance quite accurately but takes several seconds to respond accordingly, so far we have never had a problem locking onto sattlelites either, go to www.dse.co.nz to check out what they have available, a good read up is there on each model, and www.tumonz.co.nz also has a lot of guff about their mapping software. cheers L

[jrandom]

SysOn CF GPS receiver, iPaq 2210 and WinFast Navigator software (at least to start)

Look forward to hearing your opinions DM.

[NordieBoy]

eTrex Legend + handlebar mount with BrentC's NZ street maps.

You can get all of NZ in the Legends 8mb.

Don't leave home without it.

I use the slightly older map with just streets/roads and it updates in realtime and is excellent for navigation on the fly.

His newer maps have searchable streets as well.

PS. My speedo cable broke about 6 months ago and I just use the GPS.

[jrandom]

eTrex Legend + handlebar mount with BrentC's NZ street maps.

Just to clarify the difference, the PDA stuff I mentioned earlier is differentiated from the eTrex by the PDA software's ability to calculate routes to destinations and issue voice and on-screen guidance instructions in relation to your current position.

If you don't care much about assistance in finding your way from A to B, but just want to locate yourself on a map, the eTrex is a pretty good choice, although it's about the same cost as a PDA. You're swapping the routing ability for the waterproofing and rugged case.

[NordieBoy]

Just to clarify the difference, the PDA stuff I mentioned earlier is differentiated from the eTrex by the PDA software's ability to calculate routes to destinations and issue voice and on-screen guidance instructions in relation to your current position.

Voice guidance on a motorbike?
Speak up I can't hear you!


You're swapping the routing ability for the waterproofing and rugged case.

Routing ability?
As long as I've got the petrol I like tiki-touring :)
Waterproofing is also good.

[FROSTY]

Holey cow --is it actually possible to get lost in godzone.

[Milky]

Holey cow --is it actually possible to get lost in godzone.

I believe it is sir... didn't you post something about this just before the spanner evening mk1? or is this not the sort of 'lost' you are thinking of? :shake:

[Ghost Lemur]

Holey cow --is it actually possible to get lost in godzone.

I've tried. And the answer is a definite NO. :lol:

[jrandom]

Routing ability?
As long as I've got the petrol I like tiki-touring :)
Waterproofing is also good.

Yup. The whole routing thing is pretty much a cage idea. Pity, really.

Making something do the same job on a bike is much less easy... it's noisy and wet and you're wearing big fat gloves and you can't push twiddly little buttons.

[jrandom]

As mentioned above, here you go:

http://www.garmin.com/products/bmwNavigator/

As far as I'm aware it's the only bike-specific product out there, and of course it doesn't do NZ. And, of course, I am deeply humiliated to report that at the moment, Navman doesn't do a motorcycle-oriented product, in spite of the fact that the land navigation division's vice-president rides a V-Rod and an F650, and one of the directors of our American parent company is also on the Harley Davidson board... :whistle:

[Ghost Lemur]

As mentioned above, here you go:

http://www.garmin.com/products/bmwNavigator/

As far as I'm aware it's the only bike-specific product out there, and of course it doesn't do NZ. And, of course, I am deeply humiliated to report that at the moment, Navman doesn't do a motorcycle-oriented product, in spite of the fact that the land navigation division's vice-president rides a V-Rod and an F650, and one of the directors of our American parent company is also on the Harley Davidson board... :whistle:

So is there at least something in the works in the R&D dept? Obviously you have thrown the suggestion to them that they're missing out on a huge market.

[LB]

Merv: James has one fitted to his F650 - give me an email at work tomorrow and I'll give you his contact details.

[wkid_one]

Isn't half the fun - not knowing where you are going?

[jrandom]

So is there at least something in the works in the R&D dept? Obviously you have thrown the suggestion to them that they're missing out on a huge market.

(a) Whether or not something is in the works is certainly not a matter I'm free to comment on in a public forum! My views expressed here are not those of my employer. Blah, blah, blah. I just happen to like bikes, I don't have any direct influence on Navman's strategic decisionmaking.

(b) Unfortunately the size of the motorcycle market, especially when compared to the cage market, is rather in doubt. And since product development decisions are made on questions of several hundred thousand unit-per-year sales (or not) in Europe and the USA, the response of any potential NZ market would likely be meaningless to any GPS company considering a motorcycle product.

[geoffm]

eTrex Legend + handlebar mount with BrentC's NZ street maps.

You can get all of NZ in the Legends 8mb.

Don't leave home without it.

I use the slightly older map with just streets/roads and it updates in realtime and is excellent for navigation on the fly.

His newer maps have searchable streets as well.

PS. My speedo cable broke about 6 months ago and I just use the GPS.

Where do you get the maps and stuff from? I have an Etrex, which is ok, but doesn;t pick up the satallites very well under trees in the middle of the boonies..
Geoff

[bgd]

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=46

Lots of good stuff on the above link, although Europe orientated.

[Drunken Monkey]

Well I have the SysOn unit running on my iPaq. WinFast Navigator's velocity field wouldn't display a reading. I have changed the software to Vito Navigator II, which works pretty well.
Now supposedely the accuracy of the GPS speedo is +/- 0.1 km/h. I thought that was a bit ambitious as the position indicator is typically between 5 and 13m out (usually <8m), but I guess if the discrepancy is constant, then it shouldn't matter.
It appears to do a basic d/t calculation, with a short delay between samples (or at least updating the display). This means the feedback isn't 'real time' - there is some lag on the speedo of around a few seconds.
I did a quick test on the way home in the Mitsi = 55km/h on the speedo was giving 51km/h on the GPS, which is about expected. I'll try and get a run past the fixed distance markers at Ramarama before the start of next week and post some more stats. Hopefully the Gixxer will be back soon too and we can see how much that digital dash is out by.

[jrandom]

It appears to do a basic d/t calculation, with a short delay between samples (or at least updating the display). This means the feedback isn't 'real time' - there is some lag on the speedo of around a few seconds.

You got it.

I work with the SiRFStar GPS module (www.sirf.com). It's about the top of current commercial GPS module designs in terms of performance, more or less. It only integrates measurements from satellite signals once per second, so you get a phase delay of about a second in reported position and speed.

And I know for a fact ('coz I've hacked that part of the SiRF GPS firmware) that the reported velocity is a real straightforward one-line 'last time we looked we were over there, how far away and how long ago was it' calculation. You guys should be able to work out pretty quickly what the stated 'accuracy >= 5m' specification does to the margin of error at different speeds.

[k14]

So in other words it is useless for checking the accuracy of your speedo cause it is just, if not more inaccurate than that??

[Drunken Monkey]

So in other words it is useless for checking the accuracy of your speedo cause it is just, if not more inaccurate than that??

Not necessarily = as long as the standard error remains constant, you should be fine. If it was a simple case of the GPS speedo being as inaccurate as the 'standard error', the speedo would be between 18km/h and as high as 47km/h out, which it isn't.

These figures being calculated on:
converting m/s to km/h: m/s * (60sec(in a minute) * 60min(in an hour) = 3600) / 1000m(in a km) = m/s * 3.6

After some more experimenting and research, once you get a 'good fix', the error does indeed remain relatively constant. So it shouldn't matter that the GPS is reporting your distance a few meters from where you actually are, as long as that error stays the same, you are effectively getting an accurate measurement for "d" each time the sample is taken.
It even appears to be measuring my walking speed (of around 5.3 -5.5 km/h) with good accuracy (checked against a stopwatch and a known fixed distance). Yes I had nothing better to do tonight!
Yes it won't accurately read diddly squat if your speed varies, but it doesn't take long to set your speed to a constant and let things settle - especially when you hit that 'cruise control' button.

Besides that, the manufacturer specs indicate a speedo accuracy of +/- 0.1km/h (or about .028 m/s). Surely they wouldn't be fibbing :)

Between this and my G-timer, I can be a wealth of useless performance statistics about your car/bike/truck/etc...

[jrandom]

once you get a 'good fix', the error does indeed remain relatively constant.

Indeed. In fact, the module manufacturers' quoted 'max errors' are quite conservative. DM's comments re. a 'good fix' are certainly true - with a good view of the sky, accuracy is often sub-metre. It all adds up to GPS receivers providing pretty good speed readings.

It wouldn't be the usual case by any stretch of the imagination for a receiver's reported position to jump around randomly within a 5m radius circle from one second to the next unless it has a minimum of satellites in a bad signal environment.

[jrandom]

Oh yeah, and www.pocketgps.co.uk is a good site for GPS receiver consumer info. They even say nice things about Navman sometimes...