[Sneakyzook]

Whats good in Nav gear for wheeling and street finding???

Whats good value for money cheap but not shit?

SZ

[royce]

go get an IPAQ from ebay (hx4700) bout $400

Garmin GPS10 bluetooth GPS
Garmin mapsource software $500 for both

done

honestly there is no simpler cheaper way of doing it without it being painful to use or needing 4 seperate programs or huge compromises

[Westie]

The Bargin around at the moment is the Navman ICN 620 from Dick Smiths $445 ( Front Pg Latest Cat) these units are remanafactured ones, They were in rep vehicles and they have up dated them for the newer Models and these have been fully checked out and come with a 6 mth warantee and 2005 maps. I have a Garmin unit and had both in the car on the weekend and the navman ran rings around the Garmin in the Routing when the Garmin went off Route the navman just picked up where we were and continued.
My Mate bought one and the Neighbour also got one.

If some one is after on try Toowoomba or Gympie or ring your local store and ask who still is showing having one in stock on the computer.

Top unit for the price ($1400 when they first came out) and you can pay $50 extra and get a extra 2year warantee, to me I feel it would not be worth it as if the are going to pack up they would do it in the first 2-3 months.

Ebay have external Ant for them around $30

[royce]

try getting the navman to route you home from the middle of mt mee state forest

navman also wont do breadcrumb trails, cant upload of download your saved track logs from PC (cause it doesnt have any) track logs are basically your saved off road trips, very handy for 'maping' out your favourite locations

Navman appears to handle routes better cause it doesnt tell you youve gone the wrong way

Garmin also had topo overlays now, also can get free maps (save $250) but lose routing

free maps are also user updateble (although hard to do) so you can make maps out of your own track files

plus yout get a very high spec PDA that can do video, music, wireless network, a million other gps programs so on

the likes of the Garmin GPSMAP60c sound good value but have a 500 point limit to uploadede tracks, basically equiv to 1 drive one end of DI to the other

[Westie]

Royce you seem to be negative towards GPS's I have a Garmin GPSMAP 76 and a Street pilot3 and could not be happier with it and the software as I have Blue Charts for the Boat and City Navigator along with some extras.
I have just got an External Ant for the Street Pilot to help in the bush.

I still feel the Navman with voice Navigation as a Into unit and the Price is great value for money.

[royce]

no oh contrare, I love the things, got gigs and gigs of maps here and all manner of software

its just the 2 simple things everybody wants to do, IE auto route guidance on road and unlimited track logs for off road, along with maybe even some good maps as well seems to be near on impossible to achieve

most of the garmin stand alone units (I'm pretty sure the 72 and maybe street pilot, I have only used it on road) cant handle more than 500 points on a saved track, active log is bigger but you cant upload to an active log so if you want to keep records of all your exploits and whack em back in next time for reference, chances are it wont fit

the Navman is great value for route guidence but off road it has useless maps (the free garmin ones are built around peoples off road track logs) so is no good htere, if it was PDA based you could at elast also run GPS gate and Oziexplorer but that in itself opens anther can of worms

I have tried lots of stuff, as well as witnessed other people trying out other stuff and the garmin interface just does it all effortlessley, but you need to either go to a PDA and garmin que or a laptop and n route to get round the track log thingy

one day I will succumb and stop into johnny apleseed and get a new one, sorta glad my ipaq died so its put it off for a bit

[Sneakyzook]

Ta

[Westie]

I can down load all my tracks of the day and save them play with them change them and then send them back to the unit. A days track log would only be 1/4 of the storage for tracks and the waypoints it would be hard to use 500 in a day unless you use them to plt a track.

The latest Map Sourse allows you to do so much more with tracks and editing

[royce]

as an example, my logs for Glasshouse mountains are well and truly over 10000points (I only know this cause I coverted em to ozi once and it spat at me cause there were more than 10000 points)

ive spent countless hours editing them and tidying them up but got sck of it, easier to just bung it all on a PDA so it fits (yeah yeah I know I'm lazy)

we both agree Gamin is the way to go, I just like the extra geek factor of the PDA

[Westie]

the new mapsourse will reduce the amount of points in a track.

[royce]

ooooo it does all sortof cool stuff now, I should pay more attention

if I go spend lots of money on a new GPS tomorrow its all HUGO's fault

[Wooza]

I was talking to a guy in tricky dickies and he runs a PDA with a blue tooth GPS unit and the tom tom program and he said it works a treat. He said he could sell one of there's, but it was cheaper from ebay. PDA $130-350 GPS unit for the PDA $80-120 and down load the program off the net. Is this doable or is he just pulling my leg?????

[royce]

yes you can, while your at it get GPS gate and oziexplorer

if your gunna get a pda get a IPAQ HX4700, best screen bar none, best PDA bar none, then cause you have 2 memory slots get a CF card GPS rather than bluetooth (actually bluetooth GPS are Teh suck to set up) its gunna cost more than 130 though, old ones wil have a scratched up screen and stuffed battery too to newer the better

I have an ASUS MYPAL 636 now, intergrated GPS, buetooth and WI-FI, very cool , still have to output the gs signal to butooth so my other PDA can run off it too

[just_cruizin]

This is a bit of a dig but rather then start a new thread.

I'm looking for exactly what you described Royce, a good off road tracking GPS with a navigation feature as well. As these things change weekly, what's the go at the moment.

I've been reading up on the Hema but it's not getting the raps I thought it would, hey these are paper map guys but thought they would have a good idea on what people want. On 4wdAction there's a thread describing a method of "making" your own Hema style GPS running Windows and Oziexplorer. At the moment don't know whether to go to the hassle of going through all that.

[Zook_Fan]

yeah i was really interested in that thread on 4wd Action as well and am thinking of going down that route. Anyone know if there are any sites that you could get free copies of OziExplorer, OziExplorer CE and HEMA maps?

[foolsp33d]

wooza, my N95 runs a bluetooth gps to. im not sure how it works.. but I can also run Garmin on it to.. sigh.. if only I had an axs code lol... hint hint someone.. lol..

[royce]

Zook_Fan wrote:

yeah i was really interested in that thread on 4wd Action as well and am thinking of going down that route. Anyone know if there are any sites that you could get free copies of OziExplorer, OziExplorer CE and HEMA maps?

I am a shocker for 'evaluating' software but ozi is written by a bloke in QLD and always adds stuff to it and never asks for more money for updates, just buy it tightass

whats the thread on 4wd6weekly? I have heard about getting a mio or somethign gps and adding ozi as they run wince anyway (Bruce and I have similar setups with asus pda's)

I want to look at some of the Nuviis around the place, garmin routes on road and all have been able to create save and load track logs with a PC so as long as there isnt a restriction on track log points they should work and with a 4.5" screen too

once I get a new laptop this old clunker is going to get chopped up fo the car, you cant beat a big screen!!!

[Zook_Fan]

http://www.4wdmonthly.com.au/forum/show ... post881841

[just_cruizin]

http://www.4wdaction.com.au/forum/showt ... hp?t=62405

[Zook_Fan]

royce wrote:

Zook_Fan wrote:

yeah i was really interested in that thread on 4wd Action as well and am thinking of going down that route. Anyone know if there are any sites that you could get free copies of OziExplorer, OziExplorer CE and HEMA maps?

I am a shocker for 'evaluating' software but ozi is written by a bloke in QLD and always adds stuff to it and never asks for more money for updates, just buy it tightass

What about HEMA? got anything there?

[royce]

there are legal free options out there, search festy maps or something

[Zook_Fan]

Nah they probably wont be the same quality of course, i will just buy the real stuff

[royce]

they are better, enthusiast stuff beats commercial hands down

[Zook_Fan]

Festy has only done NSW and VIC so far, on some forums he says that he is working on QLD but hasnt got there yet

[royce]

guess your in trouble then

[Lokidog]

foolsp33d wrote:

wooza, my N95 runs a bluetooth gps to. im not sure how it works.. but I can also run Garmin on it to.. sigh.. if only I had an axs code lol... hint hint someone.. lol..

You can try GPSed. I have it on my N95 and it allows you to save tracks to a website.

AND ITS FREE!!!

http://www.gpsed.com

[Pezooki]

Hi All.

If you know your way around a computer, then by FAR one of the best options is to do the following: (If you have no idea then please stop reading now!)

*Purchase a Mio Moov 300 GPS unit (available everywhere, priced from $199 on special, up to $290 if your getting ripped off),

*Download MioPocket2.0. This is a FREE application that unlocks the Windows CE operating system on the Mio, turning it into a FULL Windows CE PDA.
It is HERE: http://www.gpspassion.com/FORUMSEN/topi ... _ID=109690

*Download OziExplorer CE and pay for it. It is only $40 bucks! Install this on the Mio.
It is HERE: http://www.oziexplorer.com/

*Search around the internet for some free maps for Ozi, or ask your mates, or buy some.

*Install any other CE software that you want (eg TomTom Navigator, Media Players, Microsoft Office for CE, etc.....)

*If you have got this far, then these forums will be your friend:
http://www.ipmart-forum.com/
http://www.austech.info/gps/
http://www.gpsunderground.com


You now have a unit that in my opinion is far better and cheaper than a HEMA because the "Route 66" road navigation software that is on the HEMA is fairly average in comparison to TomTom and even the standard Mio GPS software. The Mio accepts SDHC cards too, so storage space for maps is very good! You could do all of the above on a cheap eBay CE GPS device too (like the 7" eBay ones), however the big problem with these can be that hardly any of them accept an SDHC card, meaning you only have 2GB of SD memory which is just not enough in many cases!

Just my 2c!

Cheers,

Pez

[twitchy]

royce wrote:

try getting the navman to route you

No thanks Roycee, mechanical molestation isn't my thing.....

[Zook_Fan]

Thanks for that run down pez, i will try and find a Mio for around the $200. If it runs as a full PDA does that mean that you could just have the Offroad maps and Ozi installed onto one SD card and onroad maps and say tomtom installed onto another one and just alternate between the two for when you want each one? as long as there is an exe file for the applications it would work surely?

[Pezooki]

Hi Zook_Fan

You should be able to install the lot onto an SD card (MioPocket2.0 and the GPS application that you require.) You can then simply plug in the card you want. The MioPocket program is very clever and it is actually designed to work off the SD card alone, so if you remove the card, the Mio goes back to normal "out of the box" operation! 2GB of storage is plenty if you are only running the normal TomTom type applications, but when you start adding very detailed maps for Ozi, you can start to eat into the storage space very quickly! With an 8GB SDHC in the Mio, you would be laughing!

I should also tell you that I do not personally own one of these Mio's, but I have done it this stuff with other Windows CE devices. The Mio just makes it easier! I have seen the Mio with MioPocket and Ozi in action, and I will be doing one for myself shortly (once the KRUDD cash turns up!)

At the moment the cheapest price I can find for the Mio 300 is $238 from www.ryda.com (you get awesome service from Ryda). It doesn't seem to be on super special anywhere at the moment. Let me know if you find a good deal!

I hope that helps!

Pez