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Posted by Peter H. Coffin on January 17, 2010, 11:29 am


["Followup-To:" header set to alt.satellite.gps.]
On Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:09:28 -0800, gl4317@yahoo.com wrote:
> For some time I have been considering getting a GPS for use in getting
> around in unfamiliar cities.
> However, I am just as likely to use the GPS on transit or while walking as
> I am while driving.
> The GPS units that are specifically designed for use while walking don't
> seem to be well adapted to finding directions while driving, so I've
> pretty well given up on getting one of those.
> However, are there any road navigation GPS units that perform OK while off
> the road? For example, show the correct routing while you are riding a
> train? Or show pedestrian only routes such as staircases on hills, etc.?
> I have several friends with various older Garmin Nuvi series GPS, and most
> of the time they seem to get somewhat confused when taken on a train. At
> the very least, they seem to try to force the display onto the nearest
> road, thus making average speed and route calculations very strange when,
> for example, the train goes over a bridge that forces the GPS into a very
> circuitous road routing.
> One of them came back from Europe with their Garmin Nuvi 350 showing an
> average speed of 199.9 mph for a trip on the French TGV between a city in
> Switzerland and Paris, which was kind of fun, but apparently it did pop up
> with some sort of a "What in hell do you think you are doing?" type
> message due to the difference in local road speed limits vs. what the TGV
> does. Also, since the GPS attempted to force the location onto local
> roads, I'm not sure that the calculated speed is anywhere near correct.
> Because of the number created, I'm also wondering if maybe the Nuvi 350
> tops out at 200 mph, even if it is moving faster than that (not that that
> would ever really matter in actual day to day navigation use).

Many/most road GPS have a "mode" that typically offers options like
"car", "bicycle", "pedestrian", and "off-road". How useful those are
varies with what kind of map is loaded. If you've got only topographic
maps, it'll avoid sheer drops of several dozens of feet, but won't be as
reliable about fast routing on motorways. "Off-road" generally switchs
off most of the sanity checks like speed limits and directions, and if
you try to navigate to someplace, it will probably only give you
direction and distance, which is handy for the train and airplane
situations. For airplane use in-cabin, the difficulty is in aquiring the
fix, and anytime you're having trouble like that, getting a fix earlier,
while on the ground and not moving will help because then the ephemeris
data, etc, will be fresh enough it doesn't need to be reloaded before
aquiring the fix.
boarding

--
Christian Biblical literalists are trusting themselves to an archaic
English translation of a Latin translation of (help me here) Greek?
Aramaic? source. I wouldn't even trust a VCR manual to make it through
that intact. - Dr. Dee

Posted by (PeteCresswell) on January 17, 2010, 4:45 pm


Per Peter H. Coffin:
>Many/most road GPS have a "mode" that typically offers options like
>"car", "bicycle", "pedestrian", and "off-road". How useful those are
>varies with what kind of map is loaded.

Speaking as one who rides a bike quite a bit - and has become
increasingly fearful of motorized traffic - it seems like the
choice of street/path/whatever is very much a judgment call and I
have a hard time imagining that any map DB has enough information
much less any nav application having the smarts to choose a safe
route.

I'm with the poster that says they use their GPS as a mini-map,
but not for routing.
--
PeteCresswell

Posted by acelafella on January 17, 2010, 5:24 pm



> > However, are there any road navigation GPS units that perform OK while =
off
> > the road? =A0For example, show the correct routing while you are riding=
a
> > train? =A0Or show pedestrian only routes such as staircases on hills, e=
tc.?
> > One of them came back from Europe with their Garmin Nuvi 350 showing an
> > average speed of 199.9 mph for a trip on the French TGV between a city =
in
> > Switzerland and Paris, which was kind of fun


For the past year I have been using for train riding on and off the
NEC DeLorme's EarthmateGPS LT-40 unit which comes bundled with "Street
Atlas USA 2009." Once locked on to three or four satellites, the user
will be shown the speed and direction of your train, and Street Atlas,
of course, shows train routes on the map, and can be "focused" down to
a few hundred feet.

I posted an (unfortunately) non-HD clip of about five minutes of
length showing the unit in operation while riding a non-Acela Amtrak
train on the NEC northbound around Midway Interlocking in New
Jersey......

I believe I purchased the unit and software from Amazon for about
$50US.

Hope this helps.

Posted by (PeteCresswell) on January 17, 2010, 7:09 pm


Per acelafella:
>train on the NEC northbound around Midway Interlocking in New
>Jersey......

Does anybody know if there is an analogous application for the
Garmin Nuvi - that runs on a PC and uses the GPS's location info?

Or is the info available on the USB port in some kind of standard
format that many applications understand?
--
PeteCresswell

Posted by Peter on January 18, 2010, 4:43 am


On 17/01/2010 07:09, gl4317@yahoo.com wrote:
> For some time I have been considering getting a GPS for use in getting
> around in unfamiliar cities.
> However, I am just as likely to use the GPS on transit or while walking as
> I am while driving.
> The GPS units that are specifically designed for use while walking don't
> seem to be well adapted to finding directions while driving, so I've
> pretty well given up on getting one of those.
> However, are there any road navigation GPS units that perform OK while off
> the road? For example, show the correct routing while you are riding a
> train? Or show pedestrian only routes such as staircases on hills, etc.?
> I have several friends with various older Garmin Nuvi series GPS, and most
> of the time they seem to get somewhat confused when taken on a train. At
> the very least, they seem to try to force the display onto the nearest
> road, thus making average speed and route calculations very strange when,
> for example, the train goes over a bridge that forces the GPS into a very
> circuitous road routing.
> One of them came back from Europe with their Garmin Nuvi 350 showing an
> average speed of 199.9 mph for a trip on the French TGV between a city in
> Switzerland and Paris, which was kind of fun, but apparently it did pop up
> with some sort of a "What in hell do you think you are doing?" type
> message due to the difference in local road speed limits vs. what the TGV
> does. Also, since the GPS attempted to force the location onto local
> roads, I'm not sure that the calculated speed is anywhere near correct.
> Because of the number created, I'm also wondering if maybe the Nuvi 350
> tops out at 200 mph, even if it is moving faster than that (not that that
> would ever really matter in actual day to day navigation use).
> What have other people here experienced with various road-designed GPS
> when having taken them on a train other otherwise used them off of a road
> system?
I have seen the leader of our cycle group using a "A2B" satnav, which is
essentially a windows CE palmtop with GPS. He has done a bit of hacking
and now it displays location on UK Ordnance survey maps. (Like Bond's
Aston in Goldfinger!). The how-to details are apparently widely
available on line.

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