best sat nav for bicycles?
 

I am wanting to do a round the world bicycle trip and am looking at sat nav options. The problem is most of the bicycle specific sat nav options have many features I don't require. They tend to be marketed for health / fitness and include features such as calaries burned, training plans, heart rate, cadence etc. Also they tend to be marketed just for Europe / America. In my case I just want a simple sat nav for mapping / directions with world coverage. This is what I require:

1) GPS and Glonass support
2) Waterproof
3) Decent battery life and ability to charge from dynamo
4) World map coverage
5) Ability to load your own free maps such as OSM
6) support for offload use, such as mountain trails / canal paths
7) On the fly routing
8) easy read screen in sunlight

I have read other threads suggesting smartphones, however I have never owned a smartphone and have no desire to purchase one. Plus the majority of phones are not waterproof and are awkward to see in sunlight and often have poor battery life.

Nothing is waterproof (possibly other than skin) which is why manufacturers of all manner of things use the term "water resistance". It follows that you have to define what you mean by the word "waterproof" if you want to arrive at a decision that satisfies your wants.

It may be that you are not conversant with the characteristics of the current range of smart phones, especially as you have never owned one.
Mine has a 4000 mAHr battery (from memory) that lasts for a decent length of time and I back that up with a 20000 mAHr power bank that cost less than £10; both charge from a motorcycle battery: good luck with doing the equivalent from a cycle dynamo - is there a product on the market for that purpose?
(solar charging is common enough).

Dave, some fit front dynamo hubs - they are quite efficient. 3 to 6 watts. SON is one brand. Loved by longer distance touring bicycle riders.

chilswelluk -
You want a Garmin touring model .. don't worry about any cadence etc fittings - just don't use them. THe 'Edge' series ... I like a colour screen to aid map display .. B&W are better for battery life but it needs to be usable too.

Glonass support - improves accuracy and start up times. If it has it fine, if it does not also fine.

World map .. these have little detail and are useless when your trying to navigate in a city or out in the country, only usefull for a broad plan. Just use the county maps. If someone made a world map with all the detail .. the size would be huge - probably slowing the thing down, and making updates over wifi take days to download. Forget a world map.

You will need a way of changing the GPS map .. depends on what model you get - the worst ones will require a USB connection to something that can transfer maps. A smart phone with USB OTG will do that. The better ones use a memory card - you can then put different maps on different cards. Newer models have the ability to have different maps on the same card and can swap between what maps they use.

You will find a smart phone is very usefull .. get a cheap one. It has a bigger screen that your GPS, useful for phone, alarm clock, camera, wifi and another map to use with different routing that may be better to use than the GPS.

Back roads/paths will depend on what is in the map you have, OSM is fine is some places and lass so in others ... usually where OSM lacks this road detail .. so too do the commercial maps simply due to lack of demand.

Hope that helps.

I was looking at the Edge series and 2 that fit the bill are these models:

Edge Touring (£199)
microSD
GPS
17 hours battery life


Edge Explore 820 (£299)
microSD
Glonass and GPS
15 hours battery

Although the Edge explore mainly comes with unwanted features such as "group mode" it does support GPS and Glonass, although it has slightly worse battery life. But I don't suppose that matters if using a dynamo? Would Glonass and GPS not be useful in more remote parts of the world e.g. the stan countries.

One thing that makes me hesitate with the Edge series, is that I have heard they don't offer on the fly navigation and they don't recalculate your route if you miss a turn etc. Do you have any experience with this?

Is this not feasible now we have very large SD cards? For instance you can now get a 400gb micro SD card.




I will be carrying a laptop. So this is okay. Do you know if I can get an offline program to plan the routes for uploading. Would prefer offline than online.



Have to say I have never felt the need to have a smart phone. In any case I will carry a laptop and professional camera gear. I suppose in that regard I am unconventional. I am also one of those strange people that has never had a facebook account!

So what do I do when OSM is not fine? Will I be able to upload other types of maps to the Garmin Edge cycle units or make my own maps from google eath etc?

On a recent trip (not as big as the one you're planning) I used a Garmin Oregon with a touratech handlebar mount designed for a motorbike. It will run from a USB stem powered by a front dynamo but with the added benefit of using widely available AA batteries as well as a back up. I picked the complete set up for £50 from Ebay as it is an older model. You can plan routes offline using basecamp and maps can be put on SD cards. It also recalculates when a turn is missed as long as you are using routing and not following a track. It has a cycling mode as well for calculating cycle specific routes. Doubles as a handheld unit as well for when you are off the bike.

That's what I have noted about most systems. Do you know any systems that can recalculate to get you back on your track? For example I may leave the track for an unplanned visit to see something interesting. I then need a system that will get me back onto my pre planned track.

What I do in that instance is end my current navigation and leave a new track to where I am going. I then follow it back or put a new waypoint at a point on the original track and navigate to that if that makes sense.

One thing worth noting is that you can plan and save a route as a "route" using basecamp and follow that. This enables recalculating.

Both GPS (or more correctly the US GPS satellites .. I forget their name) and Glonass cover the world. The advantage of both is increased accuracy and probably switch on time. None of those things have much impact on the practical use.

None. RTFM?

World map..No one is offering this .. it would take a lot of computer time, and no one really wants it. Put it this way .. you start in country A .. by the time you get to country Z the map has changed and you want to update it .. the whole world at say 150 Gb .. over a Wifi network? How many days do you want to wait around while that happens? Much easier to take it country by country or continent by continent.

Garmins Mapsource or Basecamp will do that (avalible free from Garmin) - and you can get the same OSM maps onto the windows or mac laptop for free.

RTFM on the Garmin Edge cycle units for 'other types of map'.. I think they only take Garmin format maps. Garmin is probably the most popular brand around the world so you are well served with reasonable maps where ever you go. You can improve the OSM data .. but only when you know that it is wrong/missing and that may not be until after you are there. But it is a suitable pay back to them for the free service.

But my point is I would download this onto SD card before I go. The company where I currently work has an extremely fast all fiber commercial network. I could download 150GB at work without a problem.

Is it not better to do this now, as it would be very easy to do. Rather than mess about on the road?


Okay thanks for this. I am still weighing up whether to go for a dedicated unit or a smartphone. I have never really felt the need to have a smartphone before, but a user on another thread suggested the CAT phones which can be used in the rain / with wet hands. For instance the CAT S41 has the following specs:

5,000 mAh battery (38 hours talk time and 44 day standby time)
GLONASS, GPS, aGPS, Beidou
Waterproof Up to 2m for 60 mins
microSD (up to 2TB)

But then again I like to be able to plan my routes on a PC and like the idea of Basecamp for Garmin. But if I went the phone route, is there something like Basecamp I could use on a PC?

There are probably dozens of them nowadays, such as Motogoloco and Tyre to name two. A few years ago it was my impression that German software writers were very much engaged in developing such computer software.

ps
CAT stands for Caterpillar = the big USA company that makes earth moving equipment; it is a marketing/branding/copyright the name thing that you pay for within the asking price.
pps
JCB did much the same thing, for a while at least.

I also saw a lot, but the problem is they tend to be online rather than standalone programs.

Also I am looking for linux options and came across Viking GPS. So I may have to do some research into that. Although I do dual boot windows, so can always run a windows program if it really is the best solution. But these days 90% of what I do is on Linux.

Nice find.
Just one of the reviews from their website:
"Another example of open source software trumping expensive, buggy closed source alternatives in a niche market. Great job so far - very promising to be the mozilla of GPS editors."

I can't remember the last time I used MS operating systems - linux for me!

You can get all the maps you want now onto your PC. Get them as separate continents/countries so the GPS does not have to deal with a large file size. Change the map on the GPS as you cross boarders.

How long will your trip last? OSM maps are 'up to date' ... now, but in a years time there will be a more up to date version avalible. Generally the map makers update monthly. By the time you finish your trip the maps you have will be out of date.

South America has a number of free Garmin maps that are not OSM, some of these are better in some aspects than OSM. These two are frequently up dated.

I use an Etrex 20 bought specifically for cycle navigation, loaded with TalkyToaster maps.
I find the unit and setting up routes in Basecamp far from perfect, but from what I read it is the best of a bad bunch.

There are useful web sites for setting up the Etrex in the best way. For me the challenge is getting fully to grips with Basecamp. The other day roads I wanted to route over were not visible, I assumed a mapping error when in fact it was due to settings I had changed in the profile type ("Bicycling").

I persist with it as it does give me what I want, the ability to cycle without stopping for map checks every 5 minutes. The more frequently I use it the easier it becomes!