Sat Nav for a Bike

michaelm

Anyone have any info on a sat nav specifically for a bike? It would (very obviously) need to be waterproof and have a long battery life - up to 12 hrs on a single charge.

Jonathan

I use a bluetooth gps that i put in my saddle bag. I then have gps on my phone.

Raam

Garmin Edge 705. Blorg has one, he'll be along shortly to explain more

penexpers

Blorg has the 305 and is constantly complaining about the battery life on it I don't think there's any gps units that'll last 12 hours on the market.

Jonathan

This is the one I have. 23 hour battery life.

penexpers

jmccrohan wrote: »

This is the one I have. 23 hour battery life.

Right. And what's the battery life of your phone with bluetooth switched on and the software running?

Jonathan

I havent tested it.

Put it this way tho, I used the bluetooth gps, and using the phone as a modem via the EDGE network for 4 hours straight. This used 1/7th of the battery life.
EDGE is more battery intensive than computing gps data.

Ciaran500

jmccrohan wrote: »

This is the one I have. 23 hour battery life.

Never seen a setup like that. What phones work with it?

Traumadoc

I have a 305 edge which I got for 217 euro with HR and cadence monitors. I previously used a garmin legend untlil i fell off while on a trail.

Jonathan

Ciaran500 wrote: »

Never seen a setup like that. What phones work with it?

List of supported phones here: http://europe.nokia.com/A4984204

penexpers

jmccrohan wrote: »

I havent tested it.

Put it this way tho, I used the bluetooth gps, and using the phone as a modem via the EDGE network for 4 hours straight. This used 1/7th of the battery life.
EDGE is more battery intensive than computing gps data.

My iphone tests say differently - turning GPS on greatly shortens battery life.

What phone is it out of curiosity - getting 28 hours off a phone while using it as a modem and running bluetooth is pretty impressive.

Gavin

I do the same as jmccrohan. Battery life is not a problem with a phone and the bluetooth gps.

It would be ideal to get the osi ireland maps onto the phone, but haven't found an easy way to do it yet. There are a good few java applications for mobile phone gps. I did a wee summary ages ago, but it's still slightly in date.

http://projectglop.com/2006/11/05/mobile-phone-gps-software/

The gps sometimes gets lost in cities and mountains though...

Jonathan

penexpers wrote: »

My iphone tests say differently - turning GPS on greatly shortens battery life.

What phone is it out of curiosity - getting 28 hours off a phone while using it as a modem and running bluetooth is pretty impressive.

Nokia E51

Freddy687

michaelm,
I use the Edge 705, with heart rate and cadence. The GPS is accurate to 3-4 meters.
This has all the features of the Edge 305 and a few new ones. A bigger colour screen for one, easier to navigate when on the move.
Has similar features to a car GPS, you can select a location using the screen using the cursor and the unit determines the distance and route.
You will need to buy the Garmin city navigator maps for Ireland, as the base-map is crap.
Battery life is supposed to be 15 hours. Has 500Mb of internal memory and a slot for an SD card. I have the detailed map for Ireland loaded into the internal memory and still have 400MB free + 2GB SD card. Could probably ride for a year without needing to download.

Forgot to say that the 305 only plots were you have been, but the 705 can plot where you are going.

blorg

penexpers wrote: »

Blorg has the 305 and is constantly complaining about the battery life on it I don't think there's any gps units that'll last 12 hours on the market.

One of the reasons I upgraded this week to the 705 (main one was route length storage) The 305 gives exactly 10.5 hours in my experience. I may well be along tomorrow to elucidate further.

penexpers

Is there a 305 for sale then?

cantalach

blorg wrote: »

One of the reasons I upgraded this week to the 705 (main one was route length storage) The 305 gives exactly 10.5 hours in my experience. I may well be along tomorrow to elucidate further.

305 battery life...tell me about it. It will really bite you if you are doing a multi-day event. I did a four day tour last week and really struggled with this limitation. I'm missing the tail end of the data for one day because I forgot to recharge after the previous. And I'm missing the tail end of another day because the damn thing takes an eternity to charge up and I only had use of a charger for an hour!

I've also found that my 305 doesn't work so well when it's humid/damp. For one thing, it throws up some crazy elevation readings (I apparently spent several minutes at 150 m below sea level on the Limerick/Tipp border the other day!) even when there's a perfectly good signal. And it powers off completely sometimes when you hit a bump. Perhaps the 205 (which, lacking a barometric altimeter, has slightly less to go wrong) might be more robust. But what it smacks of to me is that the 205 and 305 are bleeding edge first generation devices. When they work they're great but they're just not trustworthy.

How are you finding the 705 blorg? Are all the wrinkles ironed out?

Lumen

Wiggle now lists the following:

Garmin Edge 705 With Heart Rate Monitor, £269.99
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Garmin_Edge_705_With_Heart_Rate_Monitor/5360035900/
Preloaded worldwide basemap, no speed/cadence sensor

Garmin Micro SD Card Full Europe, £71.99
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Garmin_Micro_SD_Card_Full_Europe/5360036897/

Garmin Bike Edge 705 Road Performance Package, £323.99
http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Garmin_Bike_Edge_705_Road_Performance_Package/5360035897/
Speed/Cadence sensor can be used indoors for turbo training
INCLUDED preloaded MicroSD road mapping for Europe...European Road mapping on MicroSD card

Observations/questions:

(1) The Road Performance Package seems significantly cheaper than 705+Full Europe+Speed/cadence sensor.

(2) I don't plan on using a turbo, but presumably the cadence sensor is useful outdoors?

(3) Is "European Road mapping" the same as "Full Europe"?

I have a Garmin nüvi 760 which has (very good) Navteq maps for Ireland, but I'm not clear on whether the cycling products use these same maps or not.

Cheers,
John

blorg

The CityNavigator maps are good and were invaluable touring. Wouldn't replace a paper map to give you a general overview but invaluable for getting around/through towns, etc. You can ask it to give you a route and then sanity-check it on the paper map. We did some quite complex ones across France, dodging the main roads, involved turns every 1-2kms or so, would have taken all day with a paper map. Similarly with my trip down to Waterford with Raam, it just blinks up left/right/second exit etc at the junctions and gives you a graphical indication like a car SatNav, so you don't have to stop- I did plan this one using MapSource on the PC though, which gives you more control. Also recalculates when you go off course, like a car SatNav. You do have to be wary that the bicycle routing can be a bit strange at times, it can be a bit extreme in trying to avoid main roads and send you on routes that are not entirely sensible. Routes do need sanity checking and sometimes you have to just go somewhere else based on your paper map. A big downside is that it does not seem to allow "via" routing, you can only choose a destination, so if you want to go via somewhere you just have to set it as the first destination and change it when you get there.

The battery life is significantly better, at a guess I would say 50% better than the 305. You can leave it on all day without worrying that it will run out. If you are being careful and turning it off you might get 2 or 3 days touring out of it. Maybe 15 hours?

The data storage problem is also completely fixed, I believe it has 512mb built-in and 1mb on smart recording seems to get me over 100km so it should bring you round the world before it starts overwriting.

Overall I would say for a touring/multi-day cyclist this is a definate upgrade; for a day ride roadie cycling routes they know the 305 would probably be just as good (I would rarely use the mapping screen when out in Wicklow on the road bike, I have it on exactly the same screen I had the 305 showing- HR, Elevation, Grade & Cadence.) It would be marginally useful if you wanted to head off in a new direction, you wouldn't have to worry about getting lost and the thing would bring you back home.

Cadence sensor is what it is, it gives you cadence- if you want to know this get it (I would on my good bikes.) HR is more important though. The complete package with the maps is indeed discounted, you are getting maps+both sensors for less than the price of the unit+maps+1 sensor.

BaBiT

Freddy687 wrote: »

michaelm,
I use the Edge 705, with heart rate and cadence. The GPS is accurate to 3-4 meters.
This has all the features of the Edge 305 and a few new ones. A bigger colour screen for one, easier to navigate when on the move.
Has similar features to a car GPS, you can select a location using the screen using the cursor and the unit determines the distance and route.
You will need to buy the Garmin city navigator maps for Ireland, as the base-map is crap.
Battery life is supposed to be 15 hours. Has 500Mb of internal memory and a slot for an SD card. I have the detailed map for Ireland loaded into the internal memory and still have 400MB free + 2GB SD card. Could probably ride for a year without needing to download.

Forgot to say that the 305 only plots were you have been, but the 705 can plot where you are going.

Hi Freddy, whereabouts did you get the detailed maps for Ireland?..Were they expensive?

Also, if you look on ebay you'll usually find them even cheaper than wiggle...I got mine (705 + HR/Cad) for around the €220, brand new on ebay..

Lumen

Thanks Blorg.

The lack of "via" routing seems irritating, esp. since my car Garmin does this. Further irritating is the fact that a week or two after I bought my nuvi, Garmin announced that they were making all their GPS units waterproof, so I could have just zip-tied the nuvi to the bike (I guess I can still do this in the dry).

Reading the manual (online) it looks like you can create "courses" with "course points", but only using Garmin Training Center or Garmin Connect (see p28). But that requires pre-planning.

It's odd how some technology seems to be going backwards. When I bought my last Polar HRM (over 10 years ago) it was a little disc which fitted into a watch strap or a bike mount. Now the watch HRMs seem to be one-piece, and I don't like the idea (aesthetically) of strapping a watch to the bike.

Ho hum - maybe I'll just buy a HRM/computer and make do with paper maps.

blorg

If you are a touring cyclist I would get the 705, it is well worth it. It's just not quite as easy to use etc as a car GPS but obviously this is a trade-off with the size, the thing is tiny compared to a car GPS. Even with a car GPS I don't think I would be able to dispense with paper maps when on tour in a foreign country.

Another thing to consider- most car GPSes expect they are going to be plugged in while in use and have miserable battery lives around the 3-4 hour mark, making them unsuitable for touring on the bike irrespective of waterproofing. The 705 goes for around 15 hours by contrast.

You can create courses in MapSource if you have it (presume you do with the Nuvi?) and download them very easily to the device. You can also stick in waypoints, I tagged the Cols in the Pyrenees before I headed over; it then routed me up the Aspin a very interesting way indeed

For a day trip only roadie training on roads you are familiar with the 305 has everything you need for a lower price.

I certainly wouldn't be without a GPS now just for the logging functions, it's great.

Lumen

Traumadoc wrote: »

I have a 305 edge which I got for 217 euro with HR and cadence monitors. I previously used a garmin legend untlil i fell off while on a trail.

Where from? The best I can do is with dabs.com for equiv. €240.

I can't find a cheaper source for the CityNavigator maps, so still looking like €90 for those.

Which brings the 305 with maps to €330, which is 80% of the price of the 705 Road Performance Package.

Trojan

I use my XDA Orbit

blorg

Lumen wrote: »

Where from? The best I can do is with dabs.com for equiv. €240.

I can't find a cheaper source for the CityNavigator maps, so still looking like €90 for those.

Which brings the 305 with maps to €330, which is 80% of the price of the 705 Road Performance Package.

I think he's talking about the 305 which doesn't do mapping and you can't add it by buying maps.

Lumen

blorg wrote: »

I think he's talking about the 305 which doesn't do mapping and you can't add it by buying maps.

Ah OK. A GPS device without maps - genius! I'll put that alongside my doorless fridge then ;-)

16hill16

Hi all
I use a N95 with nokias free app sportstracker
(it should work with most S60 type phones )

http://sportstracker.nokia.com/nts/main/index.do

its a little hit & miss, had me doing 60Kmh down kilternan hill,
but on the whole works quite well
especially as I'd be carrying a phone anyway
You can upload your route to their web site where it can be stored & shared etc.

blorg

Lumen wrote: »

Ah OK. A GPS device without maps - genius! I'll put that alongside my doorless fridge then ;-)

It's actually more useful than you might think, I'd certainly use the data/training/logging features of the 705 more than the actual mapping (as I generally know where I'm going.)

Caroline_ie

I use my Nokia 'Navigator' 6110 and my Garmin 305 ... together as a 'team' ... the phone's battery life is not very good and failed me on top of the hills the other day ... but, it's very handy!

cantalach

Lumen wrote: »

Ah OK. A GPS device without maps - genius! I'll put that alongside my doorless fridge then ;-)

I tend to know where I'm going on my usual training spins! The primary purpose of a GPS device without maps is not to tell you where you are. It's to provide you with a detailed log in 3 dimensions of what you did.

If you are a bit directionally challenged, you can also program it with a 'course' which shows your progress against your planned route, albeit overlaid on a blank background instead of a €400 coloured map. In other words, it tells you where to go even if it doesn't tell you where you are.

EDIT: blorg beat me to it!

Lumen

blorg wrote: »

It's actually more useful than you might think, I'd certainly use the data/training/logging features of the 705 more than the actual mapping (as I generally know where I'm going.)

cantalach wrote: »

I tend to know where I'm going on my usual training spins! The primary purpose of a GPS device without maps is not to tell you where you are. It's to provide you with a detailed log in 3 dimensions of what you did.

If you are a bit directionally challenged, you can also program it with a 'course' which shows your progress against your planned route, albeit overlaid on a blank background instead of a €400 coloured map. In other words, it tells you where to go even if it doesn't tell you where you are

Fair enough, I was being a bit facetious.

I'm currently dithering about whether to get a Garmin or just plump for a nice reliable altitude/HR capable computer, like the Blackburn Neuro 6.0:

http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/Cycle/7/Blackburn_Neuro_60_Wireless_Cycle_Computer_With_HRM/5360036494/

At €124 it's a little over half the price of the Garmin 305, albeit without all the "where have I been in 3D" stuff.

What price logging?