Sat Nav Systems

[Suzukikettle]

Good evening all and a happy New Year to everyone we have just bought a Papido M96 which we love but find the Mercedes sat nav totally useless so looking to buy a Tom Tom with the motorhome dimensions that we cad add to we had a Swift Kon Tiki which we could input the motorhome details but Mercades want stupid money to include this in the sat nav software.
So decided much better to just get a dedicated motorhome Tom Tom so any one who can recommend a good motorhome Tom Tom would be much appreciated

 

[Gellyneck]

Good evening all and a happy New Year to everyone we have just bought a Papido M96 which we love but find the Mercedes sat nav totally useless so looking to buy a Tom Tom with the motorhome dimensions that we cad add to we had a Swift Kon Tiki which we could input the motorhome details but Mercades want stupid money to include this in the sat nav software.
So decided much better to just get a dedicated motorhome Tom Tom so any one who can recommend a good motorhome Tom Tom would be much appreciated

There are a number of threads on Fun on "dedicated" stand-alone sat nav units and mobile phone apps. General outcome is it's "user preference / what you get used to" as to which to use.

Personally, we've had a number of Garmin car / motorhome units including Camper 760 (which is still working well after a number of years) and Camper 780 (now also discontinued) as we use their associated computer software, Garmin BaseCamp, to plan routes and load to the unit.

As said, there will be incoming "preferences" for Tom Tom, "Chinese copies", etc, etc, etc, and phone apps. Google Maps also has a number of supporters.

 

[Reallyretired]

My routine one is copilot on a 10.5" tablet. I also have it installed on my phone as a backup. Otherwise Chinese cheap 7" is good also. Gave up on tomtom years back as it was reluctant to recalculate its route if I wandered off its recommended route. 'Turn around when possible ' for the next 50 miles was unhelpful

 

[bigtwin]

If you are used to Tom Tom, I’d suggest that you stick with them.

An alternative to buying a dedicated unit is to download the TT Navigation App and use it via Apple Car Play (or the Android equivalent). The TT App has the option of a Camper subscription so it would be just like having the Camper device where you can add your vehicle dimensions and max speeds etc.

Ian

 

[Brains]

Like us, I presume you have one of the dreaded Zenec (Xzent) units.
They have their uses, doorstops and paperweights being the most favoured.

If you do a search on the site for 'Zenec' you will several threads, bottom line is the best bet is to get a 'stick on the screen' GPS unit.
We went through all the options a few months ago, we eventually bought an 'Avtex tourer three plus''
(Also sold as the "Garmin RV 3")

^{_{Subscribers  do not see these advertisements}}

 

[bigtwin]

Like us, I presume you have one of the dreaded Zenec (Xzent) units.
They have their uses, doorstops and paperweights being the most favoured.

Are you suggesting that that unit doesn’t work with Apple Car Play (or the Android equivalent)?

Ian

 

[Guigsy]

I've got a tablet that I've run TomTom, CoPilot and currently Sygic Truck. All of which are vehicle size aware.

But 95% of the time, I use Android Auto to the radio and Google Maps. Because the vast majority of the time, size makes no difference to the routing, but Maps has better mapping, guidance and traffic info. I've been totally unconvinced that the others are any better at stopping you going down narrow lanes. And the few times size has made a difference, my size aware satnav got it wrong anyway. Yes, they occasionally help, but they are worse at pretty much everything else.

 

[bigtwin]

I've been totally unconvinced that the others are any better at stopping you going down narrow lanes.

None of the navigation devices/apps can prevent this as narrow lanes don’t carry width restrictions and, consequently, there’s no way of them being identifiable by any software algorithm.

Ian

 

[Brains]

Are you suggesting that that unit doesn’t work with Apple Car Play (or the Android equivalent)?

Ian

Nope, at least the ones installed pre-2019 did not.

 

[Guigsy]

None of the navigation devices/apps can prevent this as narrow lanes don’t carry width restrictions and, consequently, there’s no way of them being identifiable by any software algorithm.

Ian

That's largely the conclusion I came too. I used to work with satnav and mapping companies. I've worked on similar road traffic modelling. You can't just measure the average width of a lane to decide if it's passable. A tiny single track might be easy because it's very quiet, whereas a wider track might be a nightmare because it's busy with poor forward visibility or bad passing spots. The best I think they can do is collect travel data from known large vehicles and try to estimate from their routes they take and the speeds they go when they do use sketchy lanes how hard a narrow lane is. The data would be really error prone. The other problem is that even then, what could be trivial for a 2.05m wide panel van might be tough for a typical 2.3m coachbuild, and then impossible for a 2.5m. But it depends on many factors that would be really hard to model.