OT: using tablet as a Sat nav

[Chris J Dixon]

Doh! Just Googled, and it seems that facility was there all along. I'll get my coat.

Chris

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well no, not at all. My tomtom GO takes me radically different ways depending on the time of day.

On different motorways/A roads, even.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I took it down to Germany OK. Ive deleted that map though. Works in S africa too.

My phone at £60 a year is way better than updating the maps in the car (£180)

[Jethro_uk]

I never really noticed. As I said elsewhere, for 90% of the journey the sat nav may as well not be there ..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Absolutely not in my case. Either I don?t take it at all, or I use it to tell me every single speed limit, speed camera, congested carriageway and route possibility.

[Jethro_uk]

Ah ! I correct myself (blush). I *do* use the speed limit display. Even when not being guided.

[Bob Eager]

I've found that quite a bit.

Classic case was going to a school reunion in Brighton. THe satnav wanted to take me right into the city, then out again. I chose the A27 and then dropped down a different road to land outside the school directly. The satnav kept whingeing, then suddenly locked onto the new route and revised the ETA to 15 minutes sooner.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It is making use of traffic information at that time. If the roads are clear, it should show the same route every time.

[Jethro_uk]

The flip side is the sat nav taking you down a really shitty route for the sake of 5s. Visitors to ours have experienced this. It takes them off the 2-leg main road road, and onto a backroads single carriageway steep hill with blind bend and no streetlights. To be honest I had never once taken that route until I saw it on a friends satnav.

[Jethro_uk]

Unless it can compensate for time of day. The logistics software I worked on in the 90s could. But it was for commercial use.

[Ray]

That doesn?t happen when the congestion is due to a major traffic accident or the road closed due to that.

[Tim Streater]

Yes, similar here. We've to some extent given up on the SatNav except for the last 5%, since if we select the "fast" route, it'll have us driving up cart tracks and across fields to get to the motorway sooner. OTOH, if we select "short" it'll have us doing the whole journey on cart tracks and across fields.

Well now there's posh.

[Ray]

The best systems like google maps allow you to specify that you want the quickest route and will route you the way you chose to go right from the start. And include the latest traffic data when deciding which will be quickest too.

[T i m]

I think you have done the right thing as it sounds like you have a TomTom or some unbranded cheap s*1t?

Brilliant, see above.

Oh well, 'a fool and his money' ...

No wait, you are a fanatic Brexiteer so want us to go back 100 years so *are* probably driving a horse a cart ... so your sun-nav is probably right re the cart tracks and doesn't know you aren't allowed on motorways!

Cheers, T i m

[Ray]

But a better designed system wouldn?t use the time alone, it would also allow for the downsides of that single carriageway steep hill and the risk of some glitch that way.

[DJC]

OSMand+ is good, uses open street map data, and you can download maps if offline.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Tomtom is traffic/roadworks aware - once it took me through bits of coventry because there were roadworks and congestion on the main road. It costs money to be that up to date. Money I am happy to pay. It also allows you to report mobile speed cameras. And asks you if they are 'still there'.

All done via I assume some sort of 'call home' feature.

It's worth paying for.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have been utterly impressed with te up to dateness of the roadwarks, traffic and speed cam information. as well as the competence of the route planning algorithm.

If it says the journey will be 2hrs 50m, it generally is. within a couple of minutes

[Jethro_uk]

I don't know if any routing software is able to factor gradients into routes. I don't think the raw data is available in the right form - it certainly never used to be.

[Jethro_uk]

Google Maps lacks the ability to display the current speed limit. YMMV but for me that is a key requirement. So "best" ? Nowhere near.