I’m doing a tour of Spain in August and I’d like to sort out some sat nav. I’d love to be able to spend a good whack and get a proper bike system but I don’t have the funds at the moment!
I’m interested to hear if someone has done sat nav on the cheap… for example hooking up a car sat nav to a bike. There are some pretty cheap car sat nav’s around at the moment. Possibly I don’t need to hook it up to my battery if I could find one that had battery life of say 8 - 10 hours as I could recharge it at night.
I bought a second hand Garmin streetpilot 3 , its not as fast as newer models but as long as you get the activation codes and the maps it will do what you want (may need to be selective about detail maps as the memory sticks are small) but for £35 who am I to complain
I’ve got:
TomTome One £60
Ram-Mount[1] cradle ~£30
For power I use the cigarette lighter - usb lead that came with the satnav.
I’ve added to the complexity slightly since, though, since I got an aquabox and devised a way of making it removable.
Ram-mount are the guys that do the mounts for the TomTom Rider and the Garmin Zumo, and from what experience I’ve had it seems to be well-made and designed, if a touch expensive, kit. It takes a while to get all the right bits off their website which is ironically incredibly difficult to navigate. I bought all the bits from http://www.gpsw.co.uk and they got it all correct and very quick.
It’s not that cheap, and it’s a lot more hassle than the normal satnavs to get, and a bit more to use. Though with the Aquabox I’ve got used to having my phone on and charging on the bike, too and I find it much easier to trust the waterproofing of that simple box than a satnav. If you come to BM it’ll be on my bike if you want to have a look at it.
I bought the previous version of this for the car http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146673 and then downloaded Tom Tom software with North America and European maps which are available free on http://www.thepctailor.com/index.htm Loads of forums tell you how to do it - took me 10 mins once I had downloaded all the files. It’s taken me faultlessly around the USA and Portugal for the sum total of £55 including buying a new SD card for the maps!!
I use one of these, strapped to my arm. Pretty good. I can’t see a GPS bettery lasting 8 hours though, apart from with an external battery pack and even still you’re pushing it.
Loads of forums tell you how to do it - took me 10 mins once I had downloaded all the files. It’s taken me faultlessly around the USA and Portugal for the sum total of £55 including buying a new SD card for the maps!!