GPS system

Thanks for the advice 1775. Our routes are to avoid as many big cities as possible. No desire to see tall building or drive thru their tunnels. Lived in a big city most of my life and know what city traffic is like too. Moved away 4 years ago and don't miss it. Still have family there, so sometimes have to make the trek back.:( I prefer to see tall mountains now...preferably looking up rather then looking down:E So much to see, so little time.

As bad as the Eclipse/Tom Tom in-dash unit that Roadtrek was using before, your Clarion/Tom Tom sounds worse. I don't have any problem getting addresses into the unit and it does find our location fairly well. The routing is terrible and it will at times say to turn right when the display shows to turn left, plus it will make a zigzag route when going straight would get you there just as fast. None of these are RV specific GPS units and will take you on roads that have too low clearances or are restricted to RVs including Roadtreks so be very careful to check where it is going before you follow it on to any limited access road.

Good to know Bob. It is a POC. Yet, it gets rated high. Those people must not travel very far or often.

Horizon...thanks for that IMPORTANT tip. Never gave that any thought. This GPS had our home about 5 miles north....should have left it in there:B Took ya right to a farmers field. I like the idea of the police station. You could call them and let them know your stolen vehicle could show up there:@

Just a suggestion but NEVER put your HOME coordinates into your GPS. If stolen the crook knows where to find you if he also stole keys etc. I do have HOME in mine but it would take them to my local Police station and not my house. :)

yizit wrote:
We have a built in GPS system in our 13RS. We hate it. It's a Tom Tom based system. It uses a SD card, which stores the maps, just like our Garmin does. Has anyone replaced the Tom Tom maps with another map, by replacing the SD card? Is it possible?

Got the same piece of junk in my 210 Popular and I hate it. To top it off the day/nite sensor line is factory wired to the dash dimmer control. (Took me a year to figure that snafu out and I still haven't found the fix.) If I turn the dash lites down to low the damn GPS flashes between day and nite mode at nite - which is mainly when I want to turn down the dash lite brightness.

Anyway, I'm seriously looking at putting a Kenwood DNX570HD in as a replacement. It has a Garmin GPS and more radio features than the Eclipse TomTom. The prices have really come down this past year (around $600) and it's compatible with the back-up camera. The day/nite lighting control on the Kenwood is determined by GPS time, not the headlight signal from the vehicle.

Thanks for your responses. I guess it's more of a program issue then a "map". We get so frustrated when trying to enter an address, because it eliminates letters and numbers. Especially the numbers. Try to enter the numbers and sometimes it only gives you one number......grrrrrr. Our garmin does not do that, so now we carry it along with us. The garmin you can look at the list of directions to compare with what I printed on line. Gives me peace of mind that the route is correct. Haven't found this option on the Clarion/Tom Tom . Had the wrong location for our address to.

I'm pretty sure with a TomTom system you will have to use TomTom map data. Even where different vendors buy data from the same mapping companies, formats aren't necessarily the same. Also, TomTom routing systems wil use preference information that is likely specific to TomTom, and this comes with the map data.

Routing preferences is why you can get a route calculation and answer in a few seconds, that would take all of NSA's computers hundreds of years if the software really was trying all the possible routes to get the best answer. Been there, done that, on much simpler linear programming problems than the whole U.S. road and highway network. Each supplier of routing software, GPS, online, installable, has their own routing cheats tied to their own version of the network, both treated as trade secrets.

I have a Samsung galaxy tablet (thru Verizon) with "navigator" installed. I bought a cradle for it so when I slip the tablet in I can adjust it, see it while driving. When I leave the van I take it with me, I activate an ap that remembers where I am parked. When walking I use it to navigate me to where I want to go and gets me back to the van. I do have a brand new, unused TomTom stored just in case the tablet fails for some reason.

I have a Magellan GPS with lifetime updates/road alerts etc. Only problem I have is it needs to be kept plugged into 12v as battery memory has a, well, short memory. On the other hand my 2011 BMW528i has a very pricey Nav system which requires an equally pricey software update every year, if you think you need it. It is more sophisticated and adaptable but for our RV trips the Cheapie Magellan(Maggie) does the job. I wonder if the OP has one or more free downloads to update the software??
AL