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Sat nav on your bike?

I've done a lot of riding with a GPS, Pocket PC phone and Memory Map - it all works really well and it's great how you can upload a track and follow it. but what about a 'proper' satnav for your bike - one that you can lob your route into, and then it shouts at you to turn left in 100m? anyone seen one? or anyone tried just using their car satnav on a ride and programmed in some complicated route with lots of vias?

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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DaSy | 15 years ago
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I've got a Garmin Edge 705 which will give full turn by turn navigation on the bike along with every concievable bike computer function. It works really well once you've mastered how to use it, Garmin's documentation does nothing whatsoever to assist in that!

Creating a route in bike route toaster and transfering it as a GPX file to the 705 will give full turn notification along with the name of the road your turning into etc.

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dave atkinson replied to DaSy | 15 years ago
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wonder i i'll be able to get it working with memory map?

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DaSy replied to dave atkinson | 15 years ago
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It really is the best site I know of for creating courses.

You can upload directly to the Edge from BRT using the Garmin plugin, and it will save either ,tcx or .gpx's to the correct location.

After a lot of playing about with the various setting options on BRT, I have had very good results with .gpx with full turn notifications on the 705, even despite it's desire to recalculate if you go off course. Once you've got the hang of it, that doesn't cause any real issues.

Apparently Tracklogs latest beta release will communicate directly with the edge 705, but I've tried it on 3 seperate installs and none of them can detect the 705 when connected.

To be honest I don't use Tracklogs anymore since finding BRT as it does all I need, and interfaces with the 705 easily.

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gandberg replied to DaSy | 15 years ago
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but is it possible to use these navigation devices in your car too? I mean, can you put a post code in? I much prefer to plan a route using a paper map book, but the final postcode finding would be good.

Cheers.

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Hammy replied to gandberg | 15 years ago
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Don't some of the satnav packages on phones allow you to do this. I thought one of the big selling points of the original phone packages was that you could use them in your car or for walking or cycling…

Not that I'd use one, all my routes tend to be circular

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DaSy replied to gandberg | 15 years ago
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On the Garmin Edges, but they do street level routing and you can enter a house number.

They are okay for in car navigation, but there is no voice prompting, just a warning beep when a turn is coming up. Also the screen is a bit small for the car, but great for walking.

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