More on Michaels last question..
You may not see the small roads in Balkan..at first.. but if expand the screen.. they will show up. Sygic also had frequent map updates free for life.
Sent from Sam Sung Galaxy Note 3

It's less necessary then it used to be but it's still handy if you:
-Go off-road
-Travel in areas with bad map-support
-Travel in areas with no map-support
-Ytavel a route which is not on the map
-Get waypoints from other sources

I would say that if you only go places which are supported by routable maps you don't need the navigation-functions. (That's why my Nokia fits when driving my car)

You still do that when you ride after an off-road route. (If there is a map for that area)

If you have a good topographic map there are no use in projecting waypoints, but features like off-road routes are still nice. I would say that a good navigation system, and the skill to use it, increases your safety a lot in rural places, it even makes it possible to stretch your limits a bit further.


As I said earlier all of this are software-issues and might be solved.
I briefly checked some of the links seouljoe posted, but most of the apps didn't fit my phone and there was hard/impossible to find any documentation concerning what the different apps can offer (beside fancy displays).
I can't see myself start to buy apps to find something that fits my need, unless I know that the products have the functions I want I will not be a customer.

Sorry for a late reply, the next will be even later because I'm going to a place where Nokia maps sucks and the price of an excellent map for garmin costs 300€....

Baba,, you have done some quality riding.
Take a close look at the backcountry navigator topo mentioned by tmotten.
I have downloaded very places of your travel and I can not imagine what more detail,, you want? This app will even show a pimple on the side of a sand dune in Gobi. Several choices of maps,, navigation ,, pois. Worldwide. Off Grid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OA2bZQ7vFk
http://backcountrynavigator.com/
BackCountry Navigator - YouTube

Yeah my favorite with a free trial. Decent price after that.
It can also use custom maps but I haven't had to do this yet. So if you have a paper map, get it scanned before you go, geo reference it and you should be good to go.
The developer has a weekly our monthly mailing list where he sends updates of features etc. So seems really approachable as well should you want to do something extraordinary.

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This may be useful so someone:





I know Joe likes his speakers but this would not be a great idea here abouts. Over the years I have spent an amount on intercoms and similar that could make a chap quite miffed that a he'd found the £24 solution last of all. This £6 set of earphones packed with epoxy foam stuff from a £12 make-your-own earplugs kit passes the Vaughn-Williams test * at speeds that are illegal in the UK. Just put the headphones in, roll the putty, wait 10 minutes and pop out the made to measure sound set-up. I am actually not that miffed as my test run was 120 miles of sunny Yorkshire in the company of said Vaughn-Williams, a bit of Shostakovich etc. (Plus some pop ditty about experimental lesbianism my wife must have downloaded).


* the speed at which you can hear the middle sections of say the English Folk song suite but not find the loud bits painful seems a fair test of sound quality. The helmet speakers supplied by the intercom people seem to pass up to about 50 mph while a unit I converted to ear buds is good for 60. Add the earplug stuff and you get more than another 10 mph.


My Galaxy Y, powered from the USB mounted on the Guzzi is passing the V-W test and mixing in very usable GPS commands.


Has anyone tried noise cancelling headphones? The sort that subtract noise a microphone on the cord picks up should work well, but are a very costly experiment.


Andy

Bit of thread drift here, but:

I don't think any manufacturer has developed a noise cancelling sound system specifically designed for a motorcycle helmet because the very nature of a helmet precludes the usual strategy of sensing unwanted sound at a central boom microphone, then cancelling it out at the speakers.

The nature of unwanted sound in a motorcycle helmet is quite different from the nature of unwanted sound in (for example) an aircraft. I specified and used a noise cancelling headset in the aircraft I was responsible for. The noise present at the boom microphone (engine sound, propeller thrumming, rain hitting the windshield, etc.) was pretty much identical to the noise present at the two earcups, hence, the boom microphone could be used to detect and identify the sounds to be cancelled.

In a motorcycle helmet, the unwanted sound present at the rider's ears is quite different from the unwanted sound present at the microphone (located near the rider's lips). Wind buffeting noises at the sides of the helmet will be different than wind buffeting at the lower front of the helmet where the microphone is. Likewise, engine noise sensed at the rider's lips will be different in both amplitude and frequency from the engine noise that makes its way up to the rider's ears, this due to the internal sound insulation properties of the helmet.

For a motorcycle helmet noise cancellation system to work, each earpiece (presumably an earplug, because over the ear cups used in most noise cancelling systems would not be possible in a motorcycle helmet without compromising head impact protection, the primary purpose of the helmet) would have to have its own microphone located very close to the outside of the earpiece. Two signal processing systems would be needed (one for each side) because ambient noise within the helmet will vary from side to side depending on how the rider turns his head, or what the crosswinds are, or where the big truck you are passing is relative to the motorcycle.

Such technology could be developed, but it would be both complex and expensive. It would also probably require a cable connection between the helmet and motorcycle to power it, because the electrical demands would be too great to permit the system to be powered by a battery small enough to be acceptable for mounting within the helmet.

The use of an earpiece to deliver sound, as opposed to small flat speakers mounted within the helmet, also presents problems. I'm opposed to the idea of using an earpiece (earplug) to deliver sound because it presents a very great risk of skull injury if I take a tumble off the moto and the side of my helmet has a hard impact with the ground. It is for this reason that all the aftermarket helmet sound systems use speakers and not earplugs. The designer of a motorcycle helmet noise cancelling system would have to find a way to effectively cancel sound without using either earcups (like an aircraft headset) or earplugs (like pedestrian systems that plug into phones, etc.), and that would present a major challenge.

Michael

Well Joe, that didn't last long - about 4 days.
You must have upset some Mod or other because your input has been relegated to the lower divisions , otherwise known as the hubb pubb for the derision of the masses.
(nothing serious intended in here or words to that effect).

After all, this thread has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Garmins, navigation, GPS blah, blah.

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Dave

[/QUOTE]....has been relegated to the lower divisions , otherwise known as the hubb pubb for the derision of the masses.
......

After all, this thread has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Garmins, navigation, GPS blah, blah.[/QUOTE]


Utterly bonkers!


All those links lost amongst threads of jokes and stuff better suited to ADVrider.


So, which Moderator owns a flat twin with two Garmins on the laser cut mount and a spare in the tin box?


Andy

I use a Garmin 60CSx unit (maps: OSM for most places (free and excellent), T4A (small cost) in southern Africa and Olaf (free and still v good) in Morocco) for navigating and a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini smartphone for everything else.

On a bike (particularly riding off pavement) a cell phone is useless IMHO for navigating for the following reasons:

• Screen glare
• Fiddly touch screen with gloves and virtually impossible to operate while riding
• Lack of ruggedness (My Garmin has survived some big bike crashes and being underwater for 10 minutes: We've all seem the infamous Mongolia video... My phone would be in a 1000 pieces/dead if it had been on the handlebars)
• Battery life and (particularly) ease and reliability of charging from the bike's 12v battery
• Possible lack of proximity to a cell-phone transmitter mast (I'll stand corrected if someone can prove to me that smart phones talk to satellites as well as cell phone transmitter masts: I could do the research, but need to get back to work )

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CURRENT RR WITH REGULAR UPDATES: The Wife Takes on Chlamydia: A South American Retrospective

Hi guys
Just gonna lock this thread TEMPORARILY while some PM traffic takes place to clarify why this thread was moved to the PUB.

I'm not involved in the PM traffic (nor do I wish to be invited!!), but I'm getting bored of constantly having to delete copy-posts by the same user that another mod had previously deleted.

Thanks for your undertanding

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CURRENT RR WITH REGULAR UPDATES: The Wife Takes on Chlamydia: A South American Retrospective

Thread opened and back in the GPS forum - there IS lots of good stuff and good discussion here. BUT if the religious zealotry returns and all the rest of the crap - and certain ones of you know what I mean - then it will be deleted. The thread, not the post...

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Really we ought to be talking about software, as that is the big differentiator. The hardware is all similar, bar little differences.

Garmin software hasn't been available on mobiles since 2007. Most poeple use garmin file types when sharing data, routes, waypoints etc.. So garmin devices have a big advantage there.

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My blog about touring and adv riding

I agree with you in principle, but don't discount the hardware differences between purpose-built navigation devices and smartphones.

One of the most significant hardware differences is the position update rate. Most dedicated navigation devices (aircraft, auto, or moto) update at 5 cycles per second. Most smartphones update at 1 cycle per second, primarily to save power.

At a steady speed on a steady course, the difference in update rates makes very little difference. When manouvering, especially when route recalculations are taking place, the difference in performance between the 5Hz and 1Hz update rates is very noticeable.

That's a good point.

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My blog about touring and adv riding

Just closing the loop from earlier times.

It seems to me that it remains a case of horses for courses.
Everyone owns a smart phone nowadays (don't they?) but not everyone needs a dedicated GPS unit, or even wants one.

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Dave