Sat nav's for motorhomes

[Viclen]

Hi all, New to forum as I am, but not to motorhoming. At the moment I use a tom tom car sat nav which helps me around Britain & Europe. I am considering upgrading to either a tom tom 7000 caravan, motorhome, Truck. or snooper S7000 Ventura. Has anyone purchased one of these and would like to pass on their experiences of use to me.

[p0930]

I have the ventura, I find it excellent and it also has TV radio etc.

The real time warnings are first class once you work out how to read them.

[rupert123]

Neither, garmin 456T.

[tonyfletcher]

same as p0930 I have the Snooper, excellent piece of kit, but like any other SAT NAV system it has flaws, it is only as good as the road signs, an example would be that: it knows my length solo, when towing a car and when the car is on its own. likewise with height, weight and width, but on a side road or country lane where the roadsigns do not show the width of the road it can take you down the road.

Happy Hunting

Tony

[flicka]

Hi & welcome to the forum

There have been many threads regarding various Sat Nav's. The search facility should bring up a selection (remember to select anything other than "Since last post"

 

Have a look at this recent thread:-

 

http://www.outandaboutlive.co.uk/forums/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=21327&posts=8

[Brian Kirby]

tonyfletcher - 2010-10-29 1:56 PM same as p0930 I have the Snooper, excellent piece of kit, but like any other SAT NAV system it has flaws, it is only as good as the road signs, an example would be that: it knows my length solo, when towing a car and when the car is on its own. likewise with height, weight and width, but on a side road or country lane where the roadsigns do not show the width of the road it can take you down the road. Happy Hunting Tony

Which bears out my caution regarding these units.  It is, and your post seems to support this, only the legal height, width, or weight restrictions that have been mapped.  Road widths are not mapped, so whatever you input as vehicle data, the sat nav will select routes that avoid breaking the law, but happily post you down a very narrow road if there is no statutory restriction.  Incidentally, the signs do not show the width of the road, they show the maximum with (or weight) of vehicle that may legally use that road. 

I'm not sure that heights are quite the same, in that if you ignore a height restriction and then get wedged under a bridge I don't think you've necessarily committed an offence, but you may well be liable for any costs your actions incur for local authorities, in terms of inspections, diversions etc, and it is unlikely your insurance would cough for them either. 

No sat-nav can be trusted on its own!  :-)

[tonyg3nwl]

Hi, I have 2 electronic versions of Sat Nav, one is a Garmin Quest, and the other is a "Free with motorhome" one by Mio.,a c520 digiwalker.

 

Firstly, the garmin gives the possibility of planning your route on computer screen, setting waypoints where appropriate if you disagree with its original suggestion. This enables me to compare the suggested route with bookmaps prior to the trip and adjust as necessary. Once happy with the route, it is easily transferred to the satnav in the car and usually the preplanning has found to be acceptable, except when there is a "route barre" . The device will auto reroute around the blockage, but that is where you can get in trouble, so common sense must apply.

 

The Mio device decides its route by entering start and end points and it is possible to preset avoidances and preferences IE main roads but not motorways etc, and one the route is calculated, I find it more of a problem to add waypoints to force my preferred route. It can be done but the screen is small compared with the pc so not so simple.

 

Mio has the advantage that a memory card can be added to which waypoint data can be preloaded from the PC eg a file for asci sites, another for aires, a third for camping cheque sites etc.. I have broken these files into countries EG Austrian Stellplatz, and Mio can search and find nearest, or search alphabetically ( if you know the site name.)

 

Both devices are used in the van generally following Garmin advice, the switching to MIO to search for a site nearby.

 

The third option of course is the device which normally sits on the front passenger seat, and has access to relevant detailed bookmaps. Sometimes however, left and right get confused and if that is the case, well we just take the pretty route anyway.

 

tonyg3nwl

[Brian Kirby]

tonyg3nwl - 2010-10-30 4:45 PM Hi, I have 2 electronic versions of Sat Nav, one is a Garmin Quest, and the other is a "Free with motorhome" one by Mio.,a c520 digiwalker. Firstly, the garmin gives the possibility of planning your route on computer screen, setting waypoints where appropriate if you disagree with its original suggestion. ...................... tonyg3nwl

Tony, that facility to plan routes on a PC (running Garmin MapSource) is now very limited.  The Quest models are all now discontinued, the Nuvis, which are normally the recommended units for car use, don't any longer come with MapSource, and (I happen to have a copy via lifetime maps upgrades) don't handle transferred routes very well, as their logic and the MapSource logic differ), leaving just the waterproof Zumo units (intended mainly for motorcycle use) as the only ones that ship, so presumably properly integrate, with MapSource.  Disadvantage is Zumos are around £500, against Nuvis at £300 or less.

If you buy a Nuvi plus lifetime map upgrades (about £100) it'll cost about £100 less than a Zumo, and you'll then get a programme called MapInstall (oddly, to install the maps! :-)) which, as it is a MapSource product, entitles you to upgrade free to MapSource, with which you can then run routes and view the maps on PC.  This will allow all POIs to be transferred and viewed in MapSource, which integrates with Google Earth, enabling you to view POI locations in Google Earth.  This is very useful, as quite a lot of downloaded POIs are inaccurate, or were recorded with vehicles parked, rather than at the actual road entrance to whatever, leading to some strange routing choices!  However, in my experience, whereas running and tweaking a route in MapSource works well, albeit it is a bit cumbersome, transferring the route to the Nuvi results in a totally confused Nuvi!

For all its flaws, I find MSAutoroute the most user friendly, easily tweaked, and flexible route planner.  I then replicate the route in MapSource, to see how its routing logic varies with Autoroute, and then set up the route as a series of day-drive chunks (saved as routes) directly onto the Nuvi, doing minimal tweaks on that to correct its perversities.  That way, I generally get where I want to go, using the route I want to use, but the damn thing still indulges on hare brained divergences from the logical route to save two nanoseconds that are immediately lost at the first junction.  Durrrr!  You can't win!  :-)

[tonyg3nwl]

Hi Again, Thanks for your comments Brian, I know that Garmin Quest is old hat, and Map Source is a bit out of date,. I was able to get an updated map source disk (version 6 13 7 ) which is the version I currently use, and it is better than the original. I also have the Caravan club add on map disk bought a few years ago which gives the CL and campsite locations of that organisation ( still out of date by todays data) .

 

Caravan and Camping club publish map references and these can be entered into Mio via one of the menues and the find option can then be used to locate them. Camping Cheques publish similar data, and I have been creating a similar file of data for some France Passion sites. Motorhome Stopovers have published similar data, so a file exists for that, and similarly ACSI have a downloadable file which I have had to edit into the correct format for Mio (easy with MS Spreadsheet and Word Processor)

 

The data files for Mio are processed using MS word processor or ms spreadsheet, and a special Mio Loader prog has to be used to upload the CSV file (comma seperated variable file) to the MIO required KML file. KML files are what is used by Google so the card can be removed from the MIO and used in the computer with Google to have a look at the site, which is a useful feature.

 

I appreciate that for the non technical motorhomers, this might be a load of gobbledook, so wont bore them any more. If anyone needs any assistance, I suggest a PM would be the way to correspond.

 

tonyg3nwl

 

ps Mio has fixed speed camera locations in its data, a useful feature if you insist on getting there in record time.

 

Forgot to mention that French aires, and German stellplatz also publish the relevant data so a file can be created for those as well to suit MIO

[Keithl]

tonyg3nwl - 2010-10-31 9:03 AM

Caravan and Camping club publish map references and these can be entered into Mio via one of the menues and the find option can then be used to locate them.

 

Tony,

 

The C&CC do publish a full set of POI's for Tom Tom and a .csv for conversion for other makes.

These files are located in the Members Only area under 'Exclusive Content'.

 

They are very much more up to date, and more accurate, than any other set I have found for the C&CC sites in the past and include all CS's, Listed sites and Forest Holiday sites as well.

 

HTH,

Keith.

[Mel B]

Halfords are having a sale which ends tomorrow - there are some sat navs on offer:

 

Halfords

[flicka]

May be worth posting your question on here:-

 

http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

 

Snooper was rated higher than the Tom Tom Truck in may 2010 Practical Motorhome review.

[raffik]

Hi

 

Not sure if this is helpful or not but if you have an iPhone, you can download the satnav App called COPILOT which contains the whole of Europe (and Britain).

It has a RV mode on it which avoids small lanes and low bridges. And the App is only £30 . Hope this helps!

[lennyhb]

Brian Kirby - 2010-10-30 6:12 PM

 

I find MSAutoroute the most user friendly, easily tweaked, and flexible route planner.  I then replicate the route in MapSource, to see how its routing logic varies with Autoroute, and then set up the route as a series of day-drive chunks (saved as routes) directly onto the Nuvi, doing minimal tweaks on that to correct its perversities.  That way, I generally get where I want to go, using the route I want to use, but the damn thing still indulges on hare brained divergences from the logical route to save two nanoseconds that are immediately lost at the first junction.  Durrrr!  You can't win!  :-)

 

Have to agree with Brian Autoroute is by far the best route planner, this year the satnav stayed firmly shut in the glove box.

We use Autoroute with a GPS receiver on a netbook don't bother much with the voice guidance as it's crap, SWMBO does that bit much better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Viclen]

Hi All

 

Thanks for all your views I only really wanted views on HGV sat navs but all other views were very welcome and appreciated. Thanks again.

[Caroline]

Hi

 

I have just purchased a Snooper 2000 via MMM Members Club and Roadpro the discount brought it in to line with the other top of the ranges.

I have managed to enter three different types of vehicles, one of which is a Motorhome and one a small car worked well on both settings and for each route it asks what vehicle you are in. The POI’s that are preloaded are good including the campsites, found the Halfords ones handy. The road navigations seems ok, got us to Disney and back with the choice of the ferry or tunnel, I have found that it loses its self occasionally and I need to turn it off and on again to find the satellites that could be around new bits of road.

The first unit had to be returned because the battery was ‘naff’ (technical term there) and the attachment that holds it in place on the windscreen broke after a week’s use and I can only describe as very poor quality for such an expensive bit of kit.

Still getting use to it but I think 'Snoopy' will fit in the family well.