USING A TOMTOM FOR FULL GPS?

[Joe Dorn]

Those Car Navigation units have brought GPS to the masses, most of whom have absolutely no need for sending the GPS data to other devices.

Including the appropriate interface would mean higher productions costs; not worth it for something they figure so few people would use.

I have been playing with GPS for many years and was a bit surprised when I found out the newer units designed for automobile navigation do not have NMEA output. I recently purchased a Garman Nuvi and am disappointed in its lack of capability compared to the older units such as the Garmin GPS II, GPS III and GPS III+. It is designed for the masses without need for anything other than "how to get there" information and like a pretty display. I have a Garmin Nuvi 750 and it does a good job of getting you to the end point. I am amazed at the database that is in the unit. I dislike setting up the trip on the device and miss the sunset times available on the old units.

When you have 72 year old eyes night time and dim light (as in chasing) driving becomes a dangerous endeavor. We try to be near a motel by dark and use sunset as a guide to where we will be.

We have just returned from a 3500 mile trip that included 14 states and Canada. The Nuvi did an excellent job of road navigation, including our incursion into Canada, however we were running a Delorme BT-20 into a laptop thru GPS Gate to use the mapping programs and GRL3. The Bluetooth connection worked well. We used a cigarette lighter cord with mini USB connection to keep the BT-20 and cell phones charged.

I believe that you can connect a Garmin non-NMEA GPS device to the laptop programs via GPS gate bases on the following information from their WEB site:

"The USB version of Garmin GPS receivers (like Garmin 18) do not support NMEA, they only support Garmin's own protocol. Therefore very few GPS applications can use Garmin USB GPS receivers. GpsGate solves this problem! You can connect GpsGate to a Garmin USB GPS and GpsGate will make the Garmin GPS appear as a normal NMEA GPS connected to a serial port. And! You can connect any number of GPS applications to the GPS at the same time! Including nRoute!"

I will verify this the next time I am playing with the GPS units.

Our third GPS unit on this trip was a Byonics GPS 2 connected to my Kenwood D-710. This is a small mag mount unit that is very reasonably priced available from Byonics.com. It has a standard DB-9 connection. This unit is permanently installed in the vehicle.

BEWARE... The high dollar GPS units are a favorite target for thief. The suction cup mount or ring left on the windshield are invitations for a break-in. We removed as may of the toys as possible each night and during our prolonged stay at the Detroit hotel.

 

[John Erwin]

I have a Garmin Nuvi 750 and it does a good job of getting you to the end point....

...I believe that you can connect a Garmin non-NMEA GPS device to the laptop programs via GPS gate.

Hi Joe; I did a road test with the Garmin Nuvi 750 and was also impressed with it's performance and features. I really consider those "Car Nav" units a whole different category altogether, however I'm not surprised to see all the confusion here when people are trying to do different things with GPS.

I think Garmin might have released a firmware patch for those USB pucks of theirs to allow NMEA format out of them, but I'm not positive on that. I had forgotten that GPSgate will do the conversion anyways.

I have a Garmin 18 serial puck that I have permanently installed for use with my Kenwood TM-D700; it's been a pretty bulletproof setup. I also use the Pharos GPS unit that came with Microsoft S&T 2008 and it seems very solid too; very quick to lock on (SirF III chipset).