[OZAPRS] Navigator Updates and ZL2 Experience.

Dave Ingram bulk at ingramtech.com
Mon Feb 2 21:00:26 EST 2009


Dave Walmsley wrote:
> It's about time some of these companies were taken to task.
>
> Before navigators were a commodity I had a PDA with navigation
> software tell me every day to turn right then left to go round the
> Roundabout outside home, but they refused to admit that was a problem,
> or give me updated maps after I submitted several corrections. When
> they finally offered an update it was for the whole software package,
> at a cost about 2/3 of the original and I could not simply have the
> corrections. I 'respectfully' declined their offer!
I was talking about this problem with a developer of Tom Tom software (a
mate from uni that was working for them in Amsterdam). The best thing
they did was to record the middle of a drive (leaving start and finish
off for anonymity) and ask people to upload the data to TT when the
navigator was hooked up to a PC. Apparently 80% of users do share their
drives and the info is used to determine one way streets they didn't
know about, corner turn restrictions and to calculate average speeds.
Apparently it only took 6 months for all the roads in Australia to be
covered! I guess this is something to consider when buying a GPS. The
other thing to look at is whether it can receive waypoints from a
tracker like the Opentracker. Some Garmin units can receive info and
show APRS locations as a waypoint on the navigator, and use the
navigator as the GPS for the OT1+.

APRS might serve a similar function and perhaps the mobile data could be
'mined' to get some useful street stats?

I've just finished a bit of a drive around ZL2 and put the Opentracker
to work. It did quite well on a handheld on the backseat, but there is
basically no digipeater network like here. Where I did have coverage it
was through a data repeater and the IGATE was 120km+ away! ZL3TDI-9 is
the call I used over there.


Dave.

-- 
David Ingram (VK4TDI)
To avoid spam trap, send email to dave at ingramtech dot com
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
W: http://www.ingramtech.com/
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