Featured Tested My Sat Nav Today

Once you get used to it you'll find it's very useful Joe.

 

That’s great, Joe! I hope it works well for you. When you’ve started using it regularly and get accustomed to it, please let us know what you think of that system.

 

I have the Tom Tom rider and use it a lot. I have it linked to my Nolan helmet intercom.
Likes:

• pre planning a route either for a round trip ride out or a more scenic route to get somewhere.
• Speed limit readout, has definitely saved a few points on the license as they don't seem to use repeater signs much nowadays. Plus speed camera locations.
• pretty easy to read once you are used to it.

Dislikes:

• If you are on a pre planned route and a road is closed it tries to turn you around rather than calculate how to get back on route.
• The twisty route function can take you down some very narrow roads or farm tracks.
• In sunny weather there is a lot of screen glare which can make it difficult to read.

 

I've always had garmin navs. 550, 395 and a 595.

The glare on the 595 is horrible. I fitted one of the after market anti glare filters. Made a huge difference.

Recommend you try one on your tomtom.

 

I never use waypoints with mine. Always tracks. That way you can take wrong turns or go whatever way you want, it will not try to take you back, it guides you to the nearest part of the track. Far better way to navigate.

 

I have some routes as tracks so will have a play with those once the weather improves

 

This continues to be the type of "satnav" that Mr. Sandi and I like to use.

 

I use satnav device itself to plan and save routes and as far as I know there's no way to save as tracks. I've tried downloading routes but they are tracks and from what I read not nice to use because satnav would send you back to where you left the track. Guess from what you say, they've changed that now, or it varies between device. Also, on my device (TomTom Rider 550) tracks seemed to ignore the fact that a road was closed, I would like my SatNav to find an alternative route in such cases.

Anyway, I'm happy with routes and waypoints, and have arranged menus on my device to have 'Skip next stop' easily accessible so I can do it whilst riding if I take a different route, or have passed waypoint whilst satnav is in standby to save battery.

 

If you use planning software such as MyRouteApp you can save any planned route as an .itn file and save it to your PC. Plug in the Tom Tom to the PC and when it asks you if you want to import a route say yes. Your Sat Nav will then come up as a storage device and you copy your saved .itn file to your Tom Tom. Then on the Sat Nav say you are finished and it will import the route and all the waypoints. Now your Tom Tom will have a route with waypoints rather than a track. You will see you get extra functions like blocked path, skip a waypoint etc. Buy a small 8GB micro SD card to fit in your Tom Tom 550 (there is a slot for it) so you don't accidentally overwrite any Sat Nav files. For a full demo see my vid here.

 

If im on a track and come across a closed road I just go whatever way I think best to go around it, like I say, the tomtom will guide me back to the nearest part of the track so after a few miles your normally back on track. Alternatively you have a function 'avoid part of route' which you can use with tracks. Whatever works best for yourself in the end. Its tracks for me as I plan my route and dont want the satnav to deviate off a road I wanted to ride which happens the odd time when using waypoints. Also allows me to deviate off a route if I see something off track I want to explore without the satnav trying to pull me back to the last waypoint. I never have to touch a thing with tracks and it always works brilliantly.

 

Yes, the Sat Nav will only Navigate between waypoints on a route as it sees fit and not follow a track exactly. You just need more waypoints to counteract that. I have found it can get its knickers in a twist with tracks sometimes though, especially if the track crosses or goes back on itself. I have often found myself somewhere unfamiliar and cancelled the track and restarted from the nearest point again as the Sat Nav went up its own arse! You have to be careful of it sending you on the wrong way on a track too, an easy mistake to make. I tend to slice up a days track to 2 or 3 smaller ones and always have some destinations pre-planned as a favourite so you can just navigate to them if you get totally off track. I have found the tracks often get distorted when Sat Nav coverage is weak. More than once it's taken me off a motorway for a few junctions just to ride parallel to the motorway then bring me back on to it. My buddies Garmin handles the same GPX file much better than my Tom Tom I will say.

 

Not that clever then are they?

 

Thanks for that. I had already worked out that method because a year or so ago, a software update on the satnav changed things so that when you planned routes on the device it saved them as tracks instead of routes, which really pissed me off. I had to resort to writing itinerary files by hand in a text editor on my PC, after extracting latitude and longitude values for the waypoints from the track files produced by TomTom's awful web route planner.

Right now I'm happy researching routes on Google maps using street view to check what the roads are like, then programming waypoints on satnav. But perhaps I should see what MyRouteApp is like (if I can use fake personal details to register as I'm loathed to have yet another company monitoring my life).

Edit: Yes you can create an account without giving any personal info other than an email address (which in my case a single purpose email address for using with MyRouteApp). Been playing around re-creating all the routes on my satnav so I have backup should satnav break or get lost.

 

I always use a map to plan the route or journey (and take one with me) but rely on the satnav to actually get me there. English weather is not normally conducive to road side map reading!