Best car navigation for geocaching

[+elmuyloco5]

Ugh, well this has been a long journey, and quite frankly we're sick of buying units and taking them back.

 

We have our handheld for the caching itself, but we want car navigation to the caches. We don't want to spend more than $400 and HAVE to have the following abilities:

 

1. Itinerary planning (must have the ability to plan a multi-point trip)

 

2. It's own sound capabilities (don't want anything that requires the radio to emit sound as it will conflict with our sat radio).

 

3. Ability to enter coordinates on the unit itself for POIs (don't just want the ability to do this within the software).

 

So far we tried the TomTom One and weren't overly thrilled with the unit itself, but may go back to a higher end option if we have no other choice. We also tried the HP Travel Companion and as it has the TomTom Navigator software, we were also not too thrilled. For other reasons we took it back as we were having a lot of issues with it. We've also tried the Magellan Maestro 4250 and found that we couldn't input coords on the unit itself. The Garmins appear to have to be in the 700 series to have itinerary planning and that makes them too pricey. The Pioneer seems to have some of things that we want, but didn't appear to accept coordinates not on a road. Which could have been an issue because we were in a store and not where it could get a signal, but we don't know.

 

We would appreciate any input you all could offer up and any suggestions for units that might fit our criteria. Thanks!!!

[Motorcycle_Mama]

The only current Garmin units with multi-point routing are the Zumo series, the nuvi 7xx series, and the Street Pilots 2820, 7200, and 7500. All of which are beyond your price range.

 

Multi-point routing is actually a very complicated algorithm for the unit to calculate which is why it isn't available on most units.

[+elmuyloco5]

It can't be that hard as it's available on the TomTom One, the entry level unit. We just don't care for the rest of their software on the units, but will go back to them if we have to.

[+embra]

By multi-point routing, are you guys talking about "the traveling salesman problem?" (route optimization for a number of designated waypoints)

 

If so, the Garmin Quest actually does that. I think it would fulfill the other criteria you specified, too. It's an older model, and the chief drawback in that regard is that I lose signal under foliage. That's not usually a problem in a car, but on occasion it is. I suppose the other drawback is that it doesn't have an internal speaker, so to get voice directions you have to clip it into its mount or otherwise plug an external speaker into it.

 

As an autorouter, I'm quite impressed with the little thing. The Quest 2 looks out of your price range, but I see the original Quest at Comp-U-Plus for $300, which includes detail map software, mount, pretty much everything. The only thing I added was a little $6 carrying case.

[+Chuy!]

My wife's StreetPilot 2610 can do all that. It's a discontinued GPS, but you should be able to find it used. That goes for the other SP 26XX units as well.

 

The aforementioned Quest is a good option. It has tracks, rechargeable battery, and it has been out a while you can find used ones. The only thing I don't like about it is the battery can only be serviced by Garmin. But, if you're going to use it mostly on the dash, that shouldn't be a big negative.

[+elmuyloco5]

No, I guess I didn't use the right term, I meant multi-destination planning. In other words, I want to be able to input geocache coords. and then plan them all in a trip so that I can figure out what the best way to drive to them would be.

 

I can look on my handheld GPS and find out which cache is the next closest as the crow flies, but sometimes it's not the next cache that you would reach while driving to the cache that the handheld says is the closest. So you end up passing a cache on the way to one the handheld says is closer and you then have to backtrack. It's an issue for us as we cache frequently in a city 2 hours from our home (small town, not too many caches). While we know our way around the city for the most part, we don't know it well enough to recognize little inconsistencies like this and end up wasting a lot of time and gas driving in circles. We also would like it for when we travel.

 

We looked at the Quest 2, but from what we understand, you have to have a speaker kit, is that right?

 

Right now we're looking at the Pioneer Avic-s2. Anyone happen to have one?

[+embra]

I *think* we're talking about the same thing (though I'm not yet certain). You want the GPS to figure out the best (most efficient) route, right? As opposed to you sitting down at the computer and planning manually what the most efficient route would be.

 

I went and looked in my Quest manual, and now I'm not so certain that it does that in any elegant manner. It notes under Vias:

A list of via points can also be sorted by their closest distance from you, creating an optimal route that visits all vias.

That seems a little more simplistic that the complicated algorithm Motorcycle Mama alluded to. I'll put it to a few tests tomorrow...it's getting late in the East.

 

The Quest (1 & 2) do require a mount with an external speaker for voice directions. It comes in the package. The speaker is actually on the plug that goes into the 12v power source; the power cord to the GPS doubles as the speaker wire.

[iviountainman]

My Wife and i use the Garmin Nuvi 200w. It has the ability to add cords with ease which seeems to be something the Tom-Tom left out. I could be wrong. Its cheap won't set you back too much. I got mine brand new for $200 with the 2008NT maps loaded. Although you don't really want to use this for walking in the woods with the lack of routes. it does allow you to get very close with your vehical and you can zoom and get your bearings and approx distance in mind prior to pulling out the handheld. We have infact found a few cache's with the nuvi alone without leaving the vehical. Its accuracy appears to be using the WAAS <10' as with the handhelds. But the goto feature does not allow off street routing and has a snap to street feature built in.

[+embra]

OK, I have learned that the Quest is a little less of a GPS than I had thought it to be. It *can* attempt to plot the most efficient route for whatever vias are in the route, but it does it really fast (i.e., not thinking about it very long) and only fairly well.

 

I created a route from home to home with a lot of my regular waypoints (e.g., relatives' homes) and recent destinations as vias. The optimize sort yielded a figure 8 route that covered 358 miles. I manually resorted the last 3 or 4 vias to make it more of a circle, cutting the distance down to 320 miles. So it wasn't stupid in what it was trying to do, but it wasn't highly intelligent about it, either. It only got things down to two circles.

 

It just occurred that I had it preselect the fastest time calculation rather than the shortest distance, so I might try it again to see if that makes a difference. The other caveat that may be obvious: I have no idea if the other GPS units mentioned in this thread as capable of doing multi-point routing would do any better or not.

[+elmuyloco5]

I *think* we're talking about the same thing (though I'm not yet certain). You want the GPS to figure out the best (most efficient) route, right? As opposed to you sitting down at the computer and planning manually what the most efficient route would be.

 

 

Yeah, that's part of it. Some units, such as the TomTom One 3rd edition don't allow you to put in more than one place per route (although you can fix the unit to do this with a small adjustment of it's software because the orginal and 2nd edition used to let you do this. You have to "hack" to get it back....sort of). You can only put in the next destination that you want to travel to. I want to be able to plan my trip ahead of time with all of the places that I want to go. Some units call them vias, some call them waypoints, some you enter as extra POIs. Then I want the unit to determine what the best way would be to go to all of those points (which brings in the aspect you're talking about).

 

The next issue we've found is that some units might allow for this "trip planning", but they won't allow you to enter these "vias" using coordinates. You can enter them as addresses, installed POIs (some allow you to make your POIs with the coords. on their computer software, but we want it "on the fly" so that we can enter it if we need to while we're out and about), favorites, or intersections. Only a small few seem to allow the lat and long (weird to me since we are talking about a GPS for goodness sake).

 

We were able to alter the files in the TomTom we tried out to make the itinerary planning work. You can enter coords. with it too, so it performed the functions we needed. We just don't really like the smoothness of it and would prefer something better....if it's out there.

 

The Magellan 4250 won't allow for coords to be entered "on the fly", so that just won't work for us. And honestly, that thing was telling us all sorts of weird directions and that stores were in places they weren't. It was kinda a mess.

 

The HP looked like it would be perfect. It's navigation was with TomTom software so that part was less than stellar. We were just going to use it for the whole geocaching deal since it's capable of that. Our issue started with the geocaching software. BeelineGPS and GPSTuner had terrible mapping, or required map cutting, neither of which we wanted. The HP was also horrifically slow and would jam. I think it was due to the GPS software not playing well with it.

 

So, we ended up upgrading our GPSr to the Delorme PN-20 and it's on it's way. We plan to continue to use our PDA for the moment, but do want to upgrade in the future with that as well. Now, we still need to solve our car navigation. The problem we're running into is the city we have to shop in doesn't have alot of the units available to really look at. So, we're stuck just reading about them online and some reviews don't cover whether or not the unit has the capabilities we're interested in.

[+elmuyloco5]

OK, I have learned that the Quest is a little less of a GPS than I had thought it to be. It *can* attempt to plot the most efficient route for whatever vias are in the route, but it does it really fast (i.e., not thinking about it very long) and only fairly well.

 

I created a route from home to home with a lot of my regular waypoints (e.g., relatives' homes) and recent destinations as vias. The optimize sort yielded a figure 8 route that covered 358 miles. I manually resorted the last 3 or 4 vias to make it more of a circle, cutting the distance down to 320 miles. So it wasn't stupid in what it was trying to do, but it wasn't highly intelligent about it, either. It only got things down to two circles.

 

It just occurred that I had it preselect the fastest time calculation rather than the shortest distance, so I might try it again to see if that makes a difference. The other caveat that may be obvious: I have no idea if the other GPS units mentioned in this thread as capable of doing multi-point routing would do any better or not.

 

We found the TomTom software (both from the limited 3rd edition unit we tried, and the full software that came on the HP) to have issues with that as well. The fastest route would take us right through the city instead of using the byway (which is for cutting out traffic), and the shortest route would take us down dirt roads. If we told it to ignore dirt roads, it would send us some crazy way that added two hours onto our "fastest" route. The problem with some units is they can only see "fastest" by speed limits and not the best route. Some other units have software to help work around that a bit. It also had some issues in town and had a hard time reseting the route if we traveled by a different path than it suggested.

 

The Pioneer we're thinking about allows you to ignore both a maneuver and a road within the planning, which could be helpful. It is also supposed to perform better at rerouting. We had difficulty at the store with it accepting coords. though. It had a place to enter them, but didn't want to map it because it said it was not on a road, which could be a huge issue for geocaching. We don't know if this issue is due to being in the store and not having a signal, or not. We're going to have to buy the unit to try it out. It's so hard to figure out which is best for our needs when there aren't any close to us to look at. And unfortunately, being in NM, the next really large city is 8 hours away one direction. The city we're having to shop in is already a 2 hour drive. So that's why we posted on here. Hoping to save a bit of gas

Edited January 21, 2008 by elmuyloco5

[+Team CowboyPapa]

EML5, I would be happy if you find that for which are looking, but I'm not that hopeful. From the little that I know, the handheld, outdoor type units and the in car, driving type units are two different genres at opposite ends of the spectrum, with little, if any, middle in between.

 

I, fourtunately, have both, a DeLorme PN-20 of which you are somewhat familiar. Additionally, I have a factory installed, in-dash GPS/NAV unit in my Jeep Grand Cherokee, which unit is useless for geocaching. Some features:

1. It will make a route based on an intinerary of up to 11 points.

2. All destinations and POIs are street address based, there is no input provision for coordinates.

3. Current location coordinates are not displayed as default, one must go through a several step menu-selection process to see them, the display reverts to the previous map (coordinateless) when resumption of motion is detected (I presume that this is a safety based design feature).

4. In order to reduce aural clutter, the driver's side stereo speaker is muted when the electronic lady comes forth with her turn-by-turn voice guidance.

 

I can't speak to other in car, driving type units, but I would expect them to all have similar design features.

 

OTOH, my in-dash OEM GPS/NAV unit would be just perfect for geocaching in cache placement were limited by decree to within 10 feet of the front doors of all Holiday Inns and McDonalds.

[+fegan]

Well, I'm a complete newbie and I've been using a Garmin nuvi 200W for my geocaching (1 week, 14 finds).

 

price ~$250

 

1. you can enter a final destination and one via point. After you've reached the first via point, you can add a new one. So, it's not a full itinerary entered in advance, but you can keep adding new stops along the way (e.g. taking a long trip and entering a hotel or restuarant along the way). I wouldn't recommend using this via feature for geocaching, as I often have to re-select my cache after switching between Automobile and Pedestrian modes.

2. yes, it has sound

3. you can enter coordinates (in multiple formats: d m s, d m.mmm, d.dddd)

 

I'm also able to download my geocaching coordinates using the button provided (I had to install an update for it to work).

 

Somebody mentioned that they only route on streets...well, I guess they're correct that it can't give directions when you're off-road, but I don't know how many units can route you if you're off-road/trail, as many caches are...so I don't understand their complaint? When I drive to my destination (e.g. with-in 100ft of the cache) I switch the unti to pedestrian mode and zoom in, then start walking in the general direction of the cache, adjusting my angle left/right as I guide myself to the cache. Sometimes I have to back up 100ft or so as, just like all GPS units, they're not dead accurate and sometimes approaching the cache a second time puts me closer (often less than 10ft).

 

Older auto GPS units weren't able to do this...was just talking with a fellow geocacher today, their 3yr old unit won't do what the nuvi does, and while I was talking with them another geocacher showed up also using a nuvi (he had the 350).

 

Good luck!

 

We have our handheld for the caching itself, but we want car navigation to the caches. We don't want to spend more than $400 and HAVE to have the following abilities:

1. Itinerary planning (must have the ability to plan a multi-point trip)

2. It's own sound capabilities (don't want anything that requires the radio to emit sound as it will conflict with our sat radio).

3. Ability to enter coordinates on the unit itself for POIs (don't just want the ability to do this within the software).

...

We would appreciate any input you all could offer up and any suggestions for units that might fit our criteria. Thanks!!!

[+Team CowboyPapa]

Looks like Fegan has that unit in the middle of the spectrum of which I doubted its existance. Very interesting!

[+Chuy!]

No, I guess I didn't use the right term, I meant multi-destination planning. In other words, I want to be able to input geocache coords. and then plan them all in a trip so that I can figure out what the best way to drive to them would be...

Garmin calls it Routing. Except it does not sort coordinates - it sorts waypoints. You select the waypoints and the GPS creates a route for you. I've only used this feature a couple of times; so, I couldn't provide more details about how it works as I always create my routes on the laptop where it's easier to view the caches on the map.

 

My work's Nuvi 660 can route two waypoints. First you select the destination waypoint, then add an intermediate waypoint. I don't know why they didn't just add the full route capability.

[cowboyshootist]

If you want simple Route from A to B, get a Garmin Nuvi 200W. It will get you there and back.

 

With respect to Magellan units, you could download Geocache coordinates and covert them for use on the 4250. I have a Crossover and simply convert the .loc files from Geocacheing.com into .wpt files using GPSBabel. Works great.

 

One problem is that if you convert them into Waypoints you cannot easily add them to a Trip. They must be POIs and there is a way to convert the .loc files into POI files as well.

 

On the other hand, the Crossover will give you pretty much the same Vehicle routing as the 4250 (but with older maps) and will give you an Outdoor nav mode that has Topo maps installed. The Crossover is far from perfect but it's about the best multi-purpose unit out there. The Vehicle Nav is about as good as the Garmin Nuvis I tried and the Outdoor Nav is far superior to what you can get on most Automotive navigation systems (but perhaps not nearly as good for Geocaching as other Garmin/Magellan units).

 

My complaints on the Crossover are mostly that I wished Magellan would provide the same updated maps as come on the 4250 and also provide the AAA POI database as well. Everything else I can live with for now although there is plenty of room for improvement.

[+elmuyloco5]

If you want simple Route from A to B, get a Garmin Nuvi 200W. It will get you there and back.

 

With respect to Magellan units, you could download Geocache coordinates and covert them for use on the 4250. I have a Crossover and simply convert the .loc files from Geocacheing.com into .wpt files using GPSBabel. Works great.

 

One problem is that if you convert them into Waypoints you cannot easily add them to a Trip. They must be POIs and there is a way to convert the .loc files into POI files as well.

 

On the other hand, the Crossover will give you pretty much the same Vehicle routing as the 4250 (but with older maps) and will give you an Outdoor nav mode that has Topo maps installed. The Crossover is far from perfect but it's about the best multi-purpose unit out there. The Vehicle Nav is about as good as the Garmin Nuvis I tried and the Outdoor Nav is far superior to what you can get on most Automotive navigation systems (but perhaps not nearly as good for Geocaching as other Garmin/Magellan units).

 

My complaints on the Crossover are mostly that I wished Magellan would provide the same updated maps as come on the 4250 and also provide the AAA POI database as well. Everything else I can live with for now although there is plenty of room for improvement.

 

The problem with the Garmins is that they don't allow for true multi-destination routing until you reach the 700 level or above, which puts it out of our price range. I can't just enter the next one I want to go to, unless I know which point is the next closest. I could map it all on Google maps before I go, but then there's no reason to spend $400 on a unit, I can just print out my google itinerary. Maybe it's me being picky, but if I'm spending that kind of money, I want it to map it all. Like I said, the TomTom will do everything I want, I just don't the software. I'm not willing to work around other unit limitations....I'll just suck it up and get the TomTom again so I can have it without the work arounds.

 

I won't do a Magellan again because the mapping was so poor. It had no idea where I was and where the stores were that I was trying to find. It kept telling me that they were in areas they just simply weren't. Now maybe that store was there years ago.....but I should hope their maps would be updated since then. Again, that kind of money, you just expect more.

 

I think we've decided to try the Pioneer next. We talked to their techs today and were assured that you can both input coords and perform multi-destination itineraries.....so here's to hoping! If not, I guess it's back to TomTom....ugh.