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Listing all posts with label GPS device. Show all posts.

Garmin nuvi versus iPhone

Posted by Crandela on November 4, 2011 at 12:41 PM under
GPS device, GPS navigation system, Garmin nuvi, automotive GPS navigation
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I have often wondered how the Garmin nuvi compares to the iPhone for automotive GPS navigation. I recently had the chance to find out. I found myself traveling with a friend about 6 hours away from home and back. I had brought my nuvi along when I went to meet them, but I was told it was not needed as they had GPS in their car. Well, their car is much fancier than mine so I believed it came with a GPS navigation system factory installed. Just after leaving my nuvi behind I learned the truth. Oh my! How I missed my own GPS device once we hit the road. We came across a detour which the iPhone had no idea about and had to figure out the detour ourselves by enlarging the map and watching our car move as a blue dot around the screen working our way back onto the suggested route. Well, that was fun - not. Then again, I have become quite spoiled and like it that way.

My nuvi comes with lifetime traffic and helps me bypass traffic jams and scoots me around detours without hesitation, talking me through every step of the way. Instead of reading directions printed on the screen and trying to follow them, my device makes me aware ahead of time which lane to be in and when and where to turn next, readjusting automatically if I don’t make the suggested turn for whatever reason. I do agree that ‘she’ sometimes seems to get frustrated with me if I decide to take a shortcut that takes me off the beaten path, but ‘she’ adjusts to my choices as well as my mistakes and takes it all in stride. I have plans for another trip soon with yet another friend who says she has a GPS device in her car. This time my nuvi will ride along in my purse just in case I again miss her help along the way.

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The Hunt Is On!

Posted by Outdoorlover on August 1, 2011 at 8:36 AM under
GPS device, Handheld GPS, automotive GPS, handheld gps device
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Living out in the country as we do we have lots of open spaces and great views all around us. With all those open spaces come the most magnificent hot air balloons soaring over and around our property. It is so much fun to help get one ready to fly then watch it float away on the breeze. Beautiful! Another part of ballooning is the chase. We love to hop in the car and try to figure out which back road will lead us to where we think that beauty is going to land so we can meet the friendly people and help to fold that balloon back into it's bag at the end of the ride. Also, you never know when the balloonist might open a bottle of champagne to share afterwards.
With one of the largest balloon festivals in the country happening practically in my back yard I have often wondered how so many chase vans who are unfamiliar with the area are going to get to the right back road to catch up with their own balloon and have seen more than one balloon have to stay inflated enough to pop up in sight for that chase van to find them. Now I have been wondering how many of those same balloonists might be changing over to a handheld GPS device or even automotive GPS so they can give their chase van the coordinates or road intersections they need in order to find them? That would be geocaching taken to a whole new level! I'm going to have to ask about that next time we go out chasing one of those beauties and find out how that might work for them. If anyone has tried this let me know! Sounds pretty intriguing to me.

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Getting the Right Fit in a GPS Unit

Posted by Backpackin on July 4, 2011 at 9:36 PM under
GPS device, automotive GPS, automotive GPS systems, handheld GPS units, marine GPS, motorcycle GPS
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A common question that you hear is “is there a site that one can go to for a profile to fit a GPS to the person and needs?” Generally you can go to any of the major manufacturers' web sites and find comparison charts on their models. Most manufacturers have comparison functionality on their web sites that could help determine what to look for. It looks pretty basic, and you may have already determined what you are looking for. Now you just need to find the right unit. First you must decide what type of unit are you looking for – automotive GPS systems, motorcycle GPS, marine GPS chartplotter or fishfinder, handheld GPS units? I especially like Garmin's site for doing comparisons of GPS device features. There you can pick your interests (basic handhelds, mapping handhelds or on the side there is a link to geocaching). You can learn a lot from their site, and they have a wonderful comparison feature. This would be a terrific place to start. If you like geocaching there are also sites such as geocaching.com which teach you a lot and are a lot of fun. I generally like helping you find answers to your questions, but at the same time a feature which makes great sense to one person will sound like a waste of time and money to someone else, so you really need to do the final homework yourself to be sure you really find the GPS unit which suits your needs and that you will love for some time to come. I hope this helps to simplify things a little for you.

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Live and Learn

Posted by Outdoorlover on May 21, 2011 at 9:10 PM under
GPS device, GPS unit, automotive GPS unit
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My friend and I went to a seminar away from home recently, held in a conference room at a hotel in an unfamiliar town. Well, wouldn't you know that when we went out for lunch we took a wrong turn and got lost getting back. Who hasn't ever done that? Anyway, we realized that the solution to our dilemma was to use her automotive GPS unit. Not having the exact address of the hotel with us, we just put in the town and the name of the hotel chain into the GPS device. This worked great! Step by step we got closer to our goal only to find that we were at another branch of that hotel chain, albeit still within the same city. I guess the moral of the story is to be as specific as possible, looking perhaps for the exit off the highway which was nearly across the street from the hotel rather than the name of the chain. Who knew that such a small city would have two? Well, lesson learned, we followed our GPS unit's instructions back to the correct hotel just in time for our seminar to begin again. We live and learn; still, the GPS actually took us exactly where we asked it to, twice. I hope others will learn from my mistakes. Enjoy your travel with automotive GPS!

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Annual Motorcycle Rally

Posted by Crandela on January 18, 2011 at 12:01 PM under
GPS bike mount, GPS device, GPS unit, motorcycle GPS, motorcycle GPS mount
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I'm watching the snow falling and thinking of Americade. You probably never heard of it, but it is the annual motorcycle rally which normally arrives in Lake George's beautiful little resort town each year just after Memorial Day. What a sight to see cycle after cycle driving by. What a nice group of folks, mostly family types of all ages, on quite a variety of cycles. Some have three wheels, most have two. Some have side cars or little luggage trailers of amazing shapes and sizes.
While walking down the sidewalk admiring all these amazing cycles last summer I began to notice how many had motorcycle mounts for their GPS devices. Most of the GPS units had been removed and carried off in pockets or purses to keep them safe of course, but there was quite an assortment of different motorcycle GPS mounts to be seen. It is easy to understand how folks who like the wind blowing on their faces would like the freedom of discovering new and varied roads and getting off the beaten track, but still wanting to be able to get back to their hotel or their homes reliably. Yup, it is time for the rest of the cyclists to look at the advantages of GPS units with bike mounts to feel even more carefree as they ride off into the unknown. Now's a great time to think about the nice weather and being safe while exploring and enjoying the wind in your face on the open road.

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Live and Learn - Automotive GPS

Posted by Outdoorlover on January 16, 2011 at 11:35 AM under
GPS device, GPS unit, automotive GPS, automotive GPS unit
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My friend and I went to a seminar away from home recently, held in a conference room at a hotel in an unfamiliar town. Well, wouldn't you know that when we went out for lunch we took a wrong turn and got lost getting back. Who hasn't ever done that? Anyway, we realized that the solution to our dilemma was to use her automotive GPS unit. Not having the exact address of the hotel with us, we just put in the town and the name of the hotel chain into the GPS device. This worked great! Step by step we got closer to our goal only to find that we were at another branch of that hotel chain, albeit still within the same city. I guess the moral of the story is to be as specific as possible, looking perhaps for the exit off the highway which was nearly across the street from the hotel rather than the name of the chain. Who knew that such a small city would have two hotels of the same chain? Well, lesson learned, we followed our GPS unit's instructions back to the correct hotel just in time for our seminar to begin again.

We live and learn; still, the GPS actually took us exactly where we asked it to, twice. I hope others will learn from our mistakes. Enjoy your travel with automotive GPS!

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Worth a Smug Chuckle

Posted by Crandela on October 15, 2010 at 10:31 AM under
GPS device, Geocaching, handheld GPS, handheld GPS units, handheld gps system
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I was talking to one of my friends today, and she suddenly started chuckling. She and her husband had been visiting friends this week. One of her friends started talking about how their neighbor was doing something with her navigation thingy looking for stuff and couldn’t understand what she was doing or why they thought it was so much fun. My friend surprised even her husband by explaining to them that they are using their handheld GPS units looking for a geocache. Geocaching is very a popular activity in which you get the coordinates of the location where someone else hid a special waterproof container containing a log and maybe some little trinkets or geocache coins or such, then you go out and find it with the aid of your portable GPS device. It is something that is fun for the whole family to do together. She was pretty smug that, after having talked about geocaching with me from time to time, she was the only one in their group who understood what was going on. Cute. She has since started talking to them about trying it with her soon with her handheld GPS system. Maybe I can tag along, too!

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How Many Channels Do I Need?

Posted by Outdoorlover on September 23, 2010 at 8:00 PM under
GPS device, GPS navigation, GPS receiver, GPS unit, handheld GPS system
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When you compare benefits of various GPS devices, a feature commonly noted is the number of “channels” a GPS has. What are channels, and are they important to help determine which GPS system to purchase? First, it might be helpful to have a basic understanding of how GPS works. Sometimes taking it down to a very basic level is quite helpful. At the most basic level, your GPS needs one channel for every satellite it is communicating with. You need to realize that there are exceptions to this, but we are going for simplicity here. The more channels your GPS reciever has, the more satellites it can communicate with at one time. The GPS satellite system is designed to provide similar levels of service anywhere in the world, so at any given moment your GPS unit will only be able to “see” a few of the satellites at one time. At least half of the satellites will on the other side of the earth, while others could be out of view due to mountains, trees, buildings, and so on. Sometimes channels are reserved for more than just tracking a visible satellite, but also for searching for other satellites which are predicted to come into view. If you continue to watch the screen over time you will see that some satellites disappear from view while other satellites appear on the horizon. While your GPS might be tracking only 8 satellites, it might be using a couple of other channels to search for new satellites which it predicts will come into view.
Some very basic GPS navigation systems have a single or dual channel scanning receiver that can read and 'lock' onto 8 to 12 satellites. If a device can give me a fairly accurate location with only 4 satellites, why would I want more than 5 parallel channels? Since 5 would only allow for a margin of 1 visible satellite, having more channels would permit your unit to maintain a position when you moved behind a building where you suddenly lost contact with several satellites. Ideally you would like to be able track all available satellites simultaneously to maintain a fix under the worse possible conditions. If you turn a corner and several satellites are now obscured from view there is a good likelihood that the extra channels will instantly bring several others into view, thus maintaining continuous accuracy. I hope this has been useful information to help make your decision as you purchase your new GPS navigation system.

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Geocaching Chuckle

Posted by Crandela on April 13, 2010 at 8:00 PM under
GPS device, geocaching, handheld GPS system, handheld GPS units
• 1 comment

I was talking to my friend recently, and she suddenly started chuckling. She and her husband had been visiting friends, and one of her friends started talking about how their neighbor was doing something with her navigation thingy looking for stuff and couldn’t understand what she was doing or why they thought it was so much fun. My friend surprised even her husband by explaining to them that they are using their handheld GPS units looking for a geocache. Geocaching is very a popular activity in which you get the coordinates of the location where someone else hid a special waterproof container containing a log and maybe some little trinkets or geocache coins or such, then you go out and find it with the aid of your portable GPS device. It is something that is fun for the whole family to do together. She was pretty smug that, after having talked about geocaching with me from time to time, she was the only one in their group who understood what was going on. Cute. She has since started talking to them about trying it with her soon with her handheld GPS system. Maybe I can tag along, too!

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Trying to Motivate Yourself?

Posted by Crandela on March 25, 2010 at 8:00 PM under
GPS device, Garmin Edge, Garmin Forerunner, Garmin speed/cadence sensor, speed cadence sensor
• 0 comments

Whether you are preparing for that Century race, or even if you are just trying to motivate yourself to go a little bit farther or a little bit faster every day, you will really like the addition of a speed cadence sensor with your GPS device. For ultimate fitness progress you can monitor your pedaling cadence as you ride with a self-calibrating, wireless speed/cadence sensor. It will help you track your speed, distance and pace so that you can monitor your workout performance. It measures and reports your pedaling strokes per minute, providing feedback for optimal efficiency. The Garmin speed/cadence sensor (GSC 10) is compatible with the Edge 305 and Forerunner 305. The best part is that you can use the speed cadence sensor even on your stationary bike so that you can continue to work out even on the bad weather days we seem to be getting more of this time of year.

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