Any GOOD RV-oriented dashboard navigator?

[tomseeley]

I've got a regular plain vanilla Garmin dashboard navigator my kids gave me for Christmas. It's ok, but it's not particularly customized for RV driving.

I've just learned there are RV-oriented navigators out there. Garmin offers one. So does Rand McNally. Probably others also.

I'd like to hear from any of you who use one of them. Do you like them? Do you find they are not particularly effective? Or what else do you think?

I'd like one that knows enough to avoid routing me on small narrow roads when I'm off the interstates.

I'd like one that knows enough to avoid routing me through the center of towns if there's a bypass and the device knows I'm making a long trip, NOT simply headed down the street in whatever town is coming up next.

I'd really, really like one that knows I'm following a route with a route number, on a long trip, and DOES NOT simply tell me "turn left on Smith Street" or "turn right on Jones Street". I want it to tell me "turn left on route 105" etc. If I'm in the middle of East Bum**** somewhere, I couldn't care less what street names are! I just want to know where the route number I'm following goes next!

I'd really like my device to let me plot routes between Point B and Point C when I'm IN Point A. My regular plain vanilla Garmin only lets me plot routes starting from where I am right now. I want to plot routes between pairs of cities or towns I'm headed to but haven't gotten to yet.

I would really like a device that lets me find state, county, national park, and Corps of Engrs campgrounds a lot easier than my Garmin does now. Mine is definitely biased toward private campgrounds, which we almost always try to avoid on our long trips.

My regular plain vanilla Garmin doesn't do any of these things all that well.

Does any RV-customized device do things like that? Or are they merely the same as the regular devices, but they've been gussied up with a lot of extra data like gas prices, etc?

Thx, in advance!

Tom

[tatest]

When you put enough qualifications on "GOOD" the answer is going to be "NO!"

The necessary intelligence to do what you want has not been yet been built into anybody's map databases, and nobody's routing software has reached the level of "divine my personal intentions."

Route/street naming is one of the most difficult problems, because each "arc" in a topology needs a unique name for database purposes, and may have many aliases for human interface purposes. Think of the two-block long segment in a small town that carries three U.S. highways, two state highways, and is a city street and a county road. For turn-by-turn navigation purposes, it must deal with users who are looking for a local address, which will usually carry the city street name. So when it talks to you, it uses the city street name at that point.

My experience, 40+ years of human navigator sitting in the right seat, people don't do a whole lot better than computers, even when they better understand your immediate intentions. In the case of the computer, it doesn't understand your needs. In the case of the human, it doesn't have the information.

[englishmatt]

tomseeley wrote:
I've got a regular plain vanilla Garmin dashboard navigator my kids gave me for Christmas. It's ok, but it's not particularly customized for RV driving.

I've just learned there are RV-oriented navigators out there. Garmin offers one. So does Rand McNally. Probably others also.

I'd like to hear from any of you who use one of them. Do you like them? Do you find they are not particularly effective? Or what else do you think?

I'd like one that knows enough to avoid routing me on small narrow roads when I'm off the interstates.

I'd like one that knows enough to avoid routing me through the center of towns if there's a bypass and the device knows I'm making a long trip, NOT simply headed down the street in whatever town is coming up next.

I'd really, really like one that knows I'm following a route with a route number, on a long trip, and DOES NOT simply tell me "turn left on Smith Street" or "turn right on Jones Street". I want it to tell me "turn left on route 105" etc. If I'm in the middle of East Bum**** somewhere, I couldn't care less what street names are! I just want to know where the route number I'm following goes next!

I'd really like my device to let me plot routes between Point B and Point C when I'm IN Point A. My regular plain vanilla Garmin only lets me plot routes starting from where I am right now. I want to plot routes between pairs of cities or towns I'm headed to but haven't gotten to yet.

I would really like a device that lets me find state, county, national park, and Corps of Engrs campgrounds a lot easier than my Garmin does now. Mine is definitely biased toward private campgrounds, which we almost always try to avoid on our long trips.

My regular plain vanilla Garmin doesn't do any of these things all that well.

Does any RV-customized device do things like that? Or are they merely the same as the regular devices, but they've been gussied up with a lot of extra data like gas prices, etc?

Thx, in advance!

Tom

I beleive the GARMIN DEZL 760LMT or RV 760LMT will do what your asking..

I have a ZUMO 665 that I use on motorcycle trips and it does EVERYTHING your asking for if you set up the correct route avoidances etc...

I just purchased the DEZL 760LMT based on a demo I saw yesterday where I believe I can create routes and points between B and C (when I'm at A)...along with all the other city avoidance settings.

Other thing is plan your trip in Mapsource or Basecamp, use the RV vehicle setting, upload the trip to the GPS and manage your route that way.

Hope this helps...

[Colo_Native]

I bought a Rand McNally 7725 from CW only because you can set them up with Rv info. I have a Garmin for the car.

[Jim-Linda]

We also plan routes in Streets & Trips where you can grab a section of route and move it where you want. When all is well with that route, we EXPORT to the Garmin for trouble free driving. Then follow the highlighted route.

Jim

[docj]

Everything you're asking for is reasonable, but most of it is beyond the capabilities of a typical GPS device, even the RV/trucker ones. We have a Garmin 465T which is a trucker GPS that was the predecessor to today's Garmin RV ones. It steers us around towns using the "truck routes" which is part of what you are asking for. It also allows us to define the physical dimensions of our RV so we don't get directed to bridges that are too low, etc.

However, it announces roads in exactly the same way that all Garmin's announce them and most other attributes are the same as any other Garmin GPS. It has the ability to plan out routes in advance of being at a location but it is far easier to use Microsoft Streets & Trips on my laptop (or Google Maps) to do the same thing. It used to be possible to download Google routes to the Garmin, but I don't think the new Google Maps version has this feature.

For long trips I find it easier to plan the route using Microsoft Streets and Trips and then take "chunks" of it and transfer it to the Garmin. I can force the Garmin to take the route I want by putting in waypoints. As we get to one of my false waypoints (an arbitrary address in a town along the way) I skip over that location and proceed to the next waypoint. That way I still get the advantage of the Garmin's ability to use truck routes while being able to specify the particular choice of route.

For the trip we took yesterday I looked at Google's choices of route and compared them to what the Garmin had selected. In at least one case I noticed it had made a selection because it took us on a truck bypass around a small town. The Garmin's route looked reasonable so I didn't bother to change it.