GPS software recommendations

[bj]

I got a Garmin etrex for Christmas, and in addition to using it walking around, I'd like to use it in the car hooked up to my pocket pc. Anyone else rolled their own in-car nav setup this way? I'm interested in what mapping software you recommend. I've been looking through gpsinformation.net at some of the reviews, but I'd like some impression from the folks here.

I'd like the basic mapping and re-routing functions, as I'll probably bring this on travel a bit (where I'd tend to get lost and miss turns more...). Voice prompting would also be desirable. Your thoughts would be much appreciated.

 

[Flashlightboy]

bj,

I'm not familiar with your particular setup enough to give you a recommendation although you might want to spend some time at geocaching.com.

Those wacky geocaching folks probably have tried the set up you're considering.

Good luck.

 

[Byron Walter]

There are presently two versions of the Etrex, the Legend and Vista (or so I believe), both with color screens. Do you have one of those? They both have 24 megs of internal memory which can store a fair amount of map info. What you need to bring these units to life is City Select Version 6 for North America. You can then download map detail for the areas of interest. For example I have the Map 60c unit with 56 megs and it presently has about half of Alaska, half of Ohio, some of Pennsylvania and New York. Alaska,due to its small urban areas, takes little memory.

Once you get City Select, you and do all that routing stuff, which works pretty nicely on my unit. Your unit, like mine, should zoom in when you come to interspections and beep and provide you with easy-to-see turn arrows and street names. You might also want to check out the automotive mounts that Garmin sells. I just wedge mine into the arm rest of my car and it works fine.

You can also get the Garmin topo maps and play with them too. You can have a topo map and a City Select map for the same area in your unit. You just have to turn off the CS map to "reveal" the topo map.

BTW, you can use Garmin's website viewer to get a look at the mapping software. I did. Let me know if you have any other questions that I might be able to help with.

 

[bj]

Thanks for the info so far!

I got the original etrex for two reasons:

I wanted something simple and cheap as a starter unit - see how much I'd use it, etc. At under $90 the etrex filled that bill.

I wanted a unit with data output. The cheaper gekos and some of the other lower end units don't have this. I really envisioned this as a core reciever for my car setup.

I figured for the car I'd use a pda as the display/mapping device. Nice big screen and voice output for much less than a dedicated vehicle receiver.

It's something to play with. To see what I can do with it...

I'll check out Garmin's site and see what they've got.

 

[Byron Walter]

Have fun with that GPS. I've had very good luck in the Ohio area for locating places & auto-routing. But last July I arrived in Juneau with the address of my hotel already plugged into my 60c. I leave the airport (with heavy backpack) and the GPS unit says, "turn right", which I do. It was raining & cold and after a nice soggy hike I end up in some sort of industrial park with no hotel in sight. It turns out the unit had sent me in the opposite direction due to a map error. Had I only looked left when I left the airport I would have seen the hotel.

Live and learn /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[Flashlightboy]

Byron,

I too have the 60C and I've experienced similar errors. I upgraded to the latest City Select v6 and while it was better it isn't perfect.

The directions said I was there but the the address and building were a quarter mile away. I travel all over the place and this is the only error I've encountered. V5 was buggier and less accurate.

I love the 60C but I wish it had more memory. I'd be happy if I could get all of SoCal in it but alas, I can't. Garmin has a new marine unit that is small and holds a gazillion bytes. It doesn't look any bigger than the 60C.

I'm very satisfied with the memory on the 60C and it isn't terribly time consuming to download maps. I just wish it could hold a little more data.

 

[Lurker]

What you need to know you can find at the website you mentioned. The article to start with is linked below:

http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/PDA.htm

Good luck and have fun. You may find that having two pieces of hardware and cables is a bit cumbersome in a moving vehicle compared to a stand-alone unit, but obviously the cost is an advantage.

 

[Brock]

I think Street Atlas has software for the pocket pc, but haven’t tried it yet. I have used it with my GPS on my laptop and it works quite well.

 

[Byron Walter]

FlashLightBoy,

With respect to screwy addresses it just goes to show that you can never put too much faith in "black boxes", eh?

But the 60c is pretty nice. The screen and battery life are both good. Mine got a pretty good water resistance test up in the Yukon/Alaska region. It did fine. Surprisingly it had a pretty decent map of the river that I traveled on... much better than the Delorme SA map.

Another nice feature on the 60 is the location of the power button. It would be almost impossible to accidently either turn it off or on.

I could see you eating up those 56 megs of memory pretty fast out in California... I'll have to check out that marine unit

Byron