RE: [ST] gps questions

["Anthony Scerri" <tscerri@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings, Ben

I have two GPS units that I have used on the bike.

Firstly, my trusty Magellan Meridian Platinum.  It does not provide
street by street routing, but I can programme a route by means of
waypoints.  It gives me excellent road and track detail, along with a
good variety of points of interest.  More importantly, it is waterproof,
so I do not have to worry about using it in the rain.  Battery life is
also very good, with usually about 10 hours on a set of two AA alkaline
batteries.

My new toy is some software for my IPAQ PDA.  It is a product called
Destinator (www.destinator.com), and I have it running in conjunction
with a Haicom bluetooth GPS.

This application - especially with Destinator 3.0, of which I have a
beta version - is the best GPS program that I have seen for the PDA.
Unlike the Navman and Travroute offerings, which only offered main
cities and road mapping in Australia, Destinator has all the gazetted
roads and a lot of the 4WD tracks in Australia.  It offers route
calculation, and also allows you to specify a route by use of the Trip
Planner mode.  If you go off the specified route, it quickly
recalculates the route to get you back on track.  Voice prompting is
also featured, and I use this via an earphone.  I have the states of New
South Wales and Victoria loaded onto a 128 MB SD card - and that is a
pretty large piece of real estate, as you will see if you get your atlas
out.  I also use it interchangeably between the cage and the bike.  
When I am on the bike, I have the GPS unit in my front breast pocket,
and have no problems with connectivity between it and the IPAQ, which is
mounted on a RAM mount.

I hope that this is of some use.

Regards,

Anthony Scerri

'02 Sprint ST
'04 Vespa GT200

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-st@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-st@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ben
Snyder
Sent: Wednesday, 4 February 2004 12:53 PM
To: stlist
Subject: [ST] gps questions


I know this topic has been hashed over a few times
here on this list, but at least I'm not bringing up
oil, insurance, octane ratings, or any of the other
usuals we participate in when we northerners are all
trying to find SOMETHING motorcycle-related to occupy
our time while our rides are cooped up in the garage.

I'm looking to pick up a gps, and here's the features
I'm looking for:
*Ability to specify a route (not just
start/destination)
*Ability of the unit/solution to calculate a route
back to my specified route should i get off course
*voice prompt via headset in my helmet to avoid having
to look at a screen while moving.
*Ability to store info for a few states at a time
*Suitable for use on bike or in cage

Most of these featuers are mainly to tickle the geek
gland.  A buddy and me are always trying to one-up
each other in geek toys (been doing that since
college), and this would be one thing that would get
me closer to the lead again.

I've already had suggested to me the package by Tomtom
that includes an iPaq, GPS receiver and their
software.  It fulfills my requirements, but I'm woried
about battery life, especially since it seems to be
designed to use bluetooth between the gps and the pda.
 This seems to me that it would chew up the battery. 
Or, I could rig up a way to connect it to the acess
plug on the bike (dont have any electrics, so I may as
well find SOMETHING to plug into that outlet).

I've been looking at the Garmin StreetPilot III
Deluxe, it's about the same price as the Tomtom
package and is nicely contained in 1 unit.  I just
dont know if it (or any other product) fit my desires.

I'd prefer a single unit, just for the ease of
'installing' it on the bike, I dont have to worry
about a cable running from gps to pda, or bluetooth range/signal, plus
it's just easier to manage.  I probably wouldnt use the pda for anything
else (I've had two or three before), otherwise I would just get tomtom
and be done with it.

If anyone has any suggestions, please dont hesitate to
let me know.

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