Nextar ME 3.5″ GPS

June 28th, 2010 nk

We acquired a Nextar ME 3.5″ GPS online. It arrived in a sturdy cardboard box which we opened and promptly discovered that a part was missing. The Nextar is advertised online, and according to the ads the package is supposed to include an AC power adapter. It didn’t.

What was in the package:
the GPS itself – a fairly well made unit as far as fit and finish go,
a windshield attachment with a magnet,
a plastic disk with adhesive on one side that allows attaching the suction cup to the other, shiny, side,
a car power supply with a long cord and a mini USB plug,
a carrying bag for the GPS,
manuals in both English and French.

The Nextar runs the iGO 8.3 navigation software, which is one of the best on the market. A good description can be found here. There are several things missing from the Nextar iGO package, the main being building and terrain descriptions. Usually iGO8 will show 3D images of buildings or at least major landmarks and also terrain features like mountains. The Nextar version is missing this information. Nextar also included only the default skin and color scheme. This though is easily corrected as we will discuss below.

We tested the Nextar navigation system indoors and, when placed next to a window, it acquired the satellites within 40 seconds from a cold start. In a single story house it managed to keep a lock on the satellites anywhere in the house. Quite impressive.

The Nextar version of iGO comes with TTS (Text To Speech) as well as regular voices. The user can select a TTS voice and have the system pronounce the name of the street to turn next. Alternatively one of the regular voices will give just the minimal “turn left”, “turn right” directions, which are actually quite good.

We tested the Nextar on a 16 mile drive in Las Vegas, NV. The display was visible if somewhat washed out in the bright sun. It was useful. The sound is another matter. The speaker is extremely tinny and iGO doesn’t play well with the hardware. If volume is set to dynamically increase with speed it does so in large increments. A speed change from 30 mph to 40mph can double the volume. The speaker’s power range is narrow and setting the unit to a high volume distorts the sound and makes the whole contraption vibrate. At medium volume with dynamic volume control disabled, the unit sounds reasonably loud, though still tinny. The best compromise we found was to set the dynamic range from a minimum of 55mph to maximum of 110mph. At this setting the volume changes were not as abrupt.

Our other gripe is with the maps Nextar chose to install. TeleAtlas and Navstar maps are available for iGO. Both companies update their maps at least once a year. As was mentioned in a previous post on this blog TeleAtlas maps have serious errors in the US. In addition to installing TeleAtlas maps Nextar has no provision for updating the installed maps. On our system, which was made at the end of 2009, the maps are from 2008.

The Nextar ME is easy to hack. It connects to any computer running Microsoft’s ActiveSync. From that point you can open the file viewer and, for example, add skins and color schemes. It also makes updating the maps possible by just buying and update directly form NaviExtras at https://www.naviextras.com/shop/portal.

If you buy maps and a new version of iGO on a Secure Digital card it is a simple matter to direct the Nextar ME to start the navigation program from the card. Just modify the text file SHELL.INI in the root of the ResidentFlash directory.

Nextar provided a MP3 player and a picture viewer. Both are of limited utility. The display is only 3.5″ diagonal – about as large as the displays on many cameras. Why you would want to use it to view pictures is unclear. MP3 may sound OK through earphones but would be torture to listen through the internal speaker.

Conclusion: the Nextar ME 3.5″ GPS is a reasonable system, especially for the price. It has some good features, like a sensitive GPS receiver and excellent navigation software. It lacks mainly in the sound department. It is hard to find anything competitive at the price, but probably paying $10 or $20 more would be worth it.

The ME 3.5″ could be useful to travelers: it’s light and compact. The fabric pouch that came in the package should be useful to carry it while traveling.

The car holder includes a sticky disk and a regular suction cup with a mount. The mount is very convenient. It uses a strong magnet to hold securely the GPS, which makes it easy to remove the unit when necessary. No fumbling required.

Where to Buy: These GPS units are available in many places, including eBay. There is at least one place from where you shouldn’t buy it: ChipsDigitalPC.com. In our experience this company doesn’t ship what it promises on its website and never responds to customers emails.

Edit: after several weeks we finally did get a response from the seller. Their explanation to not responding earlier was email malfunction. Maybe.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Running iGO on a MIO

June 22nd, 2010 nk

We tested several navigation programs on the Mio MOOV 300. The Mio needs to be unlocked before running programs except its own internal MioMap. There are a number of unlocks for the Mio. Actually any unlock that works for a WindowsCE system will work for the Mio, though it will have to be tweaked for the specific system.

All unlocks allow running the navigation program of your choice from an SD card. This way you don’t have to mess with the device’s internal memory. On some devices, like the MOOV 300, there is not enough internal memory to install the navigation programs and their maps (if you want all of the U.S.) – even if you delete the maps and unessential programs from the device.

Running the navigation program from an SD card seems like a perfect solution, but there is a problem: in normal usage you put the device to sleep after you are done using it. This suspended mode is activated either by a special switch or by a partial movement of the regular power switch. Some programs, like iGO, have their own internal module that will put the device into hibernation when external power is disconnected. for this to work the normal hibernation switch has to be disabled, but this is for a separate post.

The problem may happen when the device is re-activated. Since the program is still in memory it comes up instantly and discovers that parts of it are missing – the parts that are on the SD card. If WindowsCE connected the card by the time the program starts looking for its missing parts, everything is OK. If the card is not yet available the program will crash and, in most installations, reboot the device. It’s not a catastrophe but is annoying.

We found no way to avoid this problem with all the programs we tested, except iGO.

In the sys.txt file that defines the starting parameters for iGO you can add the following:

[folders]
app=”Internal Storage/iGO8″
exe=”My Flash Disk/iGo8″

app=…. tells iGO where to find the application folder. Absent any other instructions it will assume that the executable is in the same folder. This is where the exe=.. comes in. It tells iGO that the executable is in a folder in the devices internal memory (My Flash Disk is the name in MOOV devices, others use different names).

These two should be enough to enable installing everything, except the iGO8 executable, on the SD. The iGO executable and several other files will go on the device memory which, usually, has enough space to accommodate them.

One idiosyncrasy: if you are using the Loquendo TTS voices, the .dll files that are normally in the iGO root directory have to be in the same directory as the iGO executable in the main memory.

You can also add the following to the Sys.txt file:

data=”\Storage Card\igo”
content=”\Storage Card\igo\CONTENT”
textures=”custom”
models=”custom”

This will enable you to put the save folder, data.zip and branding.zip also on the SD card. In our tests this was unnecessary: everything worked fine with just the first two lines.

After the above modifications iGO is completely stable and doesn’t reboot occasionally because of timing problems with the SD card.

Please use only legitimately purchased navigation software.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Navteq vs TeleAtlas

January 16th, 2010 nk

Recently we compared the latest US maps by Navteq and TeleAtlas. Both maps were 3rd Quarter 2009.

Both maps had newly introduced bugs. Navteq’s was annoying to use with a Text To Speech (TTS) GPS. Apparently Navteq writes the names of highways twice: US95 (US 95). The result with a TTS system is that is says the name twice. Very annoying, though not really interfering with functionality.

For some reason Navteq still hasn’t updated some street names and refers to streets that have been renamed years ago by their old names.

On the positive side there is even more lane information then was in the earlier version. The maps are generally accurate and usable.

Now to TeleAtlas: The new maps introduced a serious bug: there are many streets that lost their names and now are “Unnamed”. This creates some potentially serious problems. For example: while driving on a highway in the southern direction the map showed us on the correct highway. On the way back we discovered that the northbound lane is “Unnamed”. As a result, before we had to enter the highway the GPS told us to “keep right” on the street we were driving on instead of saying “turn right”. Having many unnamed streets also influences the ability to find an address. If the one you are looking for is on the side of the street that suddenly became “Unnamed” you’ll never find it.

On the positive side TeleAtlas added more lane information which is useful.

We hope that both Navteq and TeleAtlas will correct the errors. Until then we will live with the annoyances of Navteq. TeleAtla’s map is potentially dangerous and somewhat useless, especially if you are driving in a place you are not familiar with. Isn’t the whole purpose of GPS navigation to bring you safely where you are going?

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Sygic Drive

December 24th, 2009 nk

We tested version 7.72 of Sygic Drive (also used to be known as McGuider). It has a pleasant interface and is easy to setup and use. It finds the GPS port and speed automatically if instructed to do so through the setup menu. Sygic found the satellites quickly.

The program has all the regular options: change the routing between Fast, Short, Economical and so forth; change the map display from 3D to Flat to Flat North, locale customization, language, distance units and keyboards.

We liked the way the program gives spoken instructions. It is probably one of the best around, though it has no Text To Speech and therefore doesn’t say the name of the next street (according to the company this option is coming soon). It does say the distance to the next turn and warns again before the turn. It also says the distance to the turn after that, if it comes up soon. The program is very good at telling the driver when to keep left or right in cases where the change in the road is not a clear turn. When driving on freeways it says the name of the road and also says the number of exit to take.

The program’s weakness is in finding Points Of Interest. The database was VERY slow on our WinCE 5 machine. Since the same machine runs iGO, Destinator, MioMap and others at a good speed, we suspect that Sygic Drive is to blame. There are several ways to search for POIs and all have the same weakness: they are slow and sometimes don’t find a point that is in the database. A search by name is normally painfully slow (one search took us close to 10 minutes) and often comes up empty. This is a serious defect.

Sygic Drive has no trouble finding addresses. The maps are supplied by TeleAtlas and, depending on locale, are fairly accurate, though we found the ones we tested not up to date.

Summary: Sygic Drive is a fairly good navigation program with very good non TTS spoken directions. It is quite bad at finding POIs, so be sure to know the address of the place you are going to. iGO and Destinator are better than Sygic Drive, but if the price is right Sygic is not a bad choice.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Navigon 7

September 14th, 2009 admin

We tested two versions of the Navigon software: a version for Windows Mobile (on a HTC Artemis phone) and a version running on a dedicated GPS device.

Navigon is supposed to have a number of advanced features:

Panorama View 3d is supposed to show a 3D view of the terrain you are traveling through,
Reality View Pro shows a realistic view of freeway interchanges and city streets,
Clever Parking is supposed to find parking near your destination,
Lane Assist Pro shows a detailed view of an intersection to help staying in the correct lane,
Text to Speech (TTS) is supposed to say the name of the next street you are going to turn on

We were unable to test most of the features on the US map we had – they didn’t work. The only two features that did work was the Lane Assist and TTS (to some extent).

The software has a nice interface, though it shows a warning screen and asks for assurance that the user will drive carefully. It is a bit annoying and takes unnecessary time every time you start it. It does have a feature that shuts Navigon off when the power supply is unplugged. This may be useful in a dedicated device.

Installation went smoothly, but Navigon’s wizard couldn’t find the GPS on the HTC phone. I had to enter the information manually. After that it acquired the satellites reasonably fast.

We first tried navigating using a US map. The routing was reasonable, though the program is slower than others we tested (especially iGO). The TTS worked only to a limited extent – it said the names of freeways and freeway exits. It did not say the names of any other streets. The only direction was “turn left” or “turn right”.
There was a problem with one of the major interchanges: the instructions were contradictory and confusing. This particular interchange requires a right turn from the freeway and than an immediate left. Navigon said: “keep left” when approaching the interchange, which was misleading as keeping left would prevent a safe right turn.

The Lane Assist was a disappointment since it shows a small image of the lanes you need to chose. The display is marginal on a 4.3″ display and is useless on a phone display. The way it is designed, to much attention needs to be dedicated to this display making it useless while traveling through a complicated interchange.

We continued testing with European maps. Since we are located in the US we could only simulate (Demo) the routes we chose. We didn’t find significant differences between the European and US performance. Our test didn’t show the advanced feature Navigon is advertising. I am sure they exist, but we were unable to check them out.

Our conclusion: Navigon is a fairly good GPS program. The US maps seem to be up to date, at least in comparison with other vendor’s maps. Finding a Point of Interest or an address is easy and routing is reasonable. It is possible to add a via point to a route. We didn’t find a way to view a complete route on the map. For some reason when we tried using Clever Parking the program always told us that there are no known parking places near our destination.

After testing Navigon we would still recommend iGO or Destinator. Even if all the features Navigon advertises work as they are supposed to, they would still be quite useless on a small display and distracting while driving.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

PolNav GPS Navigation

July 7th, 2009 nk

PolNav is a fairly good GPS navigation program. But first a short description: PolNav is the product of PolstarGPS. It has a number of features that are standard on all GPS navigation programs and a number that are not. The company website has most of the relevant descriptions as well as screen shots.

We tested this PolNav version 5 on an unlocked Mio Moov 310.

Installation was easy and the program started quickly. The setup menu has an option to find the GPS automatically. PolNav found the GPS and several satellites within a minute or so. Not bad for a cold start. In subsequent operation (after exiting the program through its menu) satellites were found within seconds.

The main map display is clear and fairly informative and PolNav will bring you where you are going. It has three route options: Fast, Short and Economical. We didn’t see a difference in routing between Economical and Short, but generally the routing makes sense.

The program does not have Text To Speech, which is a serious shortcoming in the current market where major competitors have TTS and pronounce the name of the next street you need to turn on. A more bothersome deficiency is the program’s baffling menu and search system.

If you want to find an address you will be confronted by a menu with three options: Near Car, Near Cursor, City/Postcode. The Near Car and Near Cursor choices will present you with a list of streets that is searchable by name. The problem is that the list includes streets in a radius of approximately 1.5 miles. Anything beyond this radius is not on the list. It would have been great if PolNav could search in a greater radius – say 30 miles – as is, this feature is unique but not very useful. To find a street that is more than 1.5 miles away you have to chose the City/Postcode option and enter either a zip code or a city name. Don’t be tempted to enter a zip code: the program will look only for streets in that zip.

Searching for Points Of Interest: Near Car and Near Cursor options will present a list of POIs at a reasonable distance (about 30 miles) with the ability to filter the results by name. The database is also reasonably large.

A search by Zip Code brings up POIs in the relevant Zip only, plus some stuff from far away. Definitely a bug in the search algorithm. A search by City brings up approximately the same results as Near Car. This may be useful if you want to search for POIs in a place where you are going. Another option is looking at All Cities. This offers the choice of the three major US maps: East, Central and West.

Destination searches can also be done by Coordinates (if you know the exact position in Longitude and Latitude) or by Photograph. The Photograph option may be useful for choosing a destination by its photo – assuming you took a photo of something and it has coordinates attached to it.

The normal choices of Recent finds and Favorites are also available.

A strangeness in the route menu: PolNav can demo a route (drive it), but only if the route has a via point. If the route is between point A and point B it can’t be demoed. Only if a via point is added, will the route be demoed between the via point and the rest of the route.

Conclusion: unless you can get PolNav at a low price it is not worth bothering with. There are a number of much better alternatives, iGO8 (or even Amigo) and Destinator come to mind. PolNav seems like a worthy competitor to GarminXT. With the addition of TTS PolNav would be a much more attractive proposition.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

GarminXT

July 3rd, 2009 nk

In recent days I got the opportunity to test the latest edition of Garmin XT for Windows Mobile.

I installed the program on a HTC Smartphone with a 200Mhz ARM processor, 21Mb of free memory and Windows Mobile 6.1

The installation, using ActiveSync, was easy. The program installed quickly and painlessly.

I was surprised that GarminXT was incapable of finding the internal GPS chip. I had to enter the port and baud rate in a configuration file. After that it found the satellites fairly quickly. Another disappointment was performance: when simulating a drive along a route the program was painfully slow. The display was jerky with very slow screen redraws.

I will grant that the phone I was using is not the mightiest in processing power, but both iGO8 and Destinator work on it without any difficulties.

GarminXT seems to use similar routing algorithms to the other Garmin units. They are not bad and most of the time the routing is reasonable. The program desn’t have Text To Speech, so all the spoken directions are generic, like: “Turn left in 800 feet”. It is not bad, but Destinator 8 has an advantage there.

In terms of route planning the program is somewhat clunky. It’s difficult to check the differences between the fastest and the shortest routs.

There are few optimization options.

In summary: if you have a choice between the GarminXT, Destinator 8 or iGO8 chose one of the latter two. GarminXT is definitely outclassed by either program.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

New iGO (and Amigo) U.S. and Canada maps (2008 Q4)

June 24th, 2009 nk

I just got a sample of the 2008 Q4 iGO 8.3 and Amigo maps.

It seems that the geographical data (streets and buildings) is mostly unchanged. At least a short look didn’t disclose any obvious changes.

The only change seems to be the addition of lane information. Now lanes are displayed all over the place. Most intersections get lane information pop up with fairly clear (depending on the skin you have installed) instructions on which lane to stay in. Also, depending on the skin, you get optional audible warning when lane information pops up.

I found the audible warning somewhat distracting as made a noise at almost every intersection. The feature itself can be very useful in an unfamiliar environment, especially if you are driving on a wide road with many lanes. It will help you to get into the correct lane ahead of time. The turn indicator doesn’t obviate the need for lane info. You ma know that you need to turn right in a mile, but it is also useful to know not to get into the right lane yet, as it ends soon.

Kudos to iGO for this update.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Mio Moov 310 – Chapter 3

June 24th, 2009 nk

Well, the test of the map update was very short. I didn’t check all the maps of the U.S. but the Pacific region maps are OLD. Streets that have been there for more then a two years are not on this “new” map. These same streets are up to date on the Quarter 2 2008 iGO maps from Navteq and TeleAtlas. The “new” Mio maps look like Navteq Quarter 2 2007 maps. The rest of the bugs are still there: the text to speech (TTS) says only highway exits (no street names) and some addresses in gated communities are inaccessible.

In other words: Mio Map 2008 is still a piece of garbage compared with iGO or Destinator. Destinator’s latest maps are of the same generation as the Mio’s but at least its TTS works and it lets you go where you want.

After all this my recommendation is: if you want a 4.3″ GPS buy something inexpensive. The only requirements I would look for: Win CE 4.2 or higher (Win CE5 preferred) and at least 64MB of memory. Mio is still good as a hardware platform at a reasonable price, so if you find one at a good price buy it and use it with an unlock and another, better navigation software. By the way, the TMC receiver in the Moov 310 is accessible only to the MioMap software. iGO can’t see it, so you may as well save your money and buy a model without TMC.

If you want the latest maps and a real good navigation program buy iGO 8.3 – it comes on a memory card and can be used on any Win CE machine. Of course there are a number of unlocks for the Mio family of devices but there are some universal ones as well. I am using Simple Unlock which is compact, fast and easy to customize.

Mio really screwed up with this one.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »

Mio Moov 310 – Chapter 2

June 24th, 2009 nk

Like I promised in the previous Mio Moov post here is an update on the update.

I got an email from Mio telling me that updated maps and possibly (it wasn’t clear) firmware were available. The email included detailed instructions on how to get the update and how to install it. It also included a license key for the update.

I followed the instructions and the update failed – it couldn’t verify the license. After many repeat attempts within 3 days I finally wrote an email to Mio support. Two days later I received a response. The advise was to wait a couple of days and try again as their “servers are busy”. I did that and tried again in a couple of days. Same error message.

Finally, after having tried for 5 days to get the update, I called Mio support. You have to be REALLY patient to get through to them. It took me four attempts and more than two hours to finally get to talk to a live person. The woman that spoke to me was nice and very patient. She promised to get back to me in, at most, four working days with responses to two questions:

1. How to get the update

2. How to get the Text To Speech to actually pronounce street names and not just exit numbers on the freeway.

It has been close to two weeks now and I had no response (she took down both my email address and phone number). So much for the quality of Mio’s technical support.

Just before starting on this entry I decided to try the update again. This time it seems to be working. There is one strangeness though: the old maps are removed from the Mio and you can install the new ones. Except that the space freed in the Mio’s internal memory is not enough for all the new maps. My solution was to start the install minus the Central Time region. This reduces the space necessary. I canceled the install after a few seconds. The program (Mio Desktop) then goes ahead and deletes all the files it already installed. This left me with enough space to install all the new maps. Obviously a bug.

I will report on the results after I test it for a while.

Posted in GPS | No Comments »