GPS V and 19meg..

[fig]

I love my GPS V, and am using the City Select that came with it. Since I live in the L.A. area, I have found I am a couple meg short of being able to load all the city information for all of the areas I would like. The kicker is, in one of the sections, I just need the very left corner of the section, and the section is 4mb. Is there a way to load partial sections, or am I just out of luck?

 

Or is there another map that could be loaded with smaller sections? Am I dreaming here, and just should have waited for a unit with the navigation capability and removable memory? It fits perfectly on my motorcycle though..

Fig

[+ZachNLiam]

A couple things: Are you using the autorouting on the GPSV? Or are you just using it for info and mapping? If you don't need routing, or create a route ahead of time in MapSource, you can reduce the map size by not including routing into. It's in the preferences. Of course autorouting is one of the coolest things about the V, so you probably don't want to do that.

 

Also, the V will route on its basemap. If you know you're going to a specific place you only need to load the detailed maps for that area. It will route you over major interstates, highways and larger local roads WITHOUT the detail loaded.

 

As an example, if you were driving (motorcycling) to San Francisco, you don't need to load ANY maps other than San Francisco. You won't have services info and such on the way, but it WILL route you to an address of POI there, without the detail on the way. I use mine this way when I GO to LA. I just load the LA section I need, and continue up my route until I hit 19MB.

 

It would be really nice to have more memory than that, but it would also take forever to load. Mine takes about an hour to load completely. And the removable memory units (like Street Pilot III) take special (expensive) cards, and the fast card-writer is another $80.

 

Hope some of that helps.

 

PS. MetroGuide maps seem to be somewhat smaller, but they don't tend to route quite as well.

[fig]

Definitely using the autorouting. It's the reason I settled on the V. I used it to ride up to Monterey a weekend ago, and just loaded in the Montery area, and my base L.A. area. The thing I have noticed is that it seems the base map has some inaccuracies. Either the 101 has moved a couple hundred feet to the right in places like Santa Barbara since the map was created, or it's just plain wrong. As I left L.A., I did the autoroute to the hotel I needed to be at in Monterey. As I got closer, the roadsigns were saying Monterey was 30 miles, but the V was telling me I was still 100 miles out. As I got closer, I stopped and told the V to recalculate. That was a wise move as I realized later, since it then stated that I was the correct distance, and navigated me correctly to my destination.

 

When you are in an area you have loaded, the navigation works like a charm. Unfortunately, without having more memory, I have been leaving out a section between mine and my girlfriends house. When auto-navigating, you can definitely tell when you get out of the loaded areas, because for instance, going down I5, the gps tells you to take the next exit, then promptly tells you to turn right and re-enter the freeway. Well, if that had been my first time, I would have been off the freeway, looking for a way to get back on. Minor glitch, but had something like that happened in Monterey, I would have been totally lost. The one key thing for me to note here is that when this happens on my drive to my girlfriends, you can see that you are navigating out in the middle of nowhere, and the I5 is a couple hundred feet off to the side. This is how I recognize that there's a problem.

 

Based on my experience with going to Monterey, and having absolutely no clue where anything was, and my V getting me to every place I wanted to go, without a hitch, I love the thing. I just wish I could load a partial section of the City Select predefined sections, since one I would like to have, I just need the "corner". If that was possible, I could have everything I wanted loaded in. You think 19mb, no problem, till you start loading it up, and the L.A. area must have a million POI's. I am sure that's chewing up some space there. I wonder in Garmin compresses the information? I wouldn't mind being able to unload some of the phone number and other information to make room for more street info.

Either way, my V is just the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Fig

[ccougar]

fig: Funny you should mention what happens when you leave a detailed region and ride into the hinterlands covered only by the base map. I have only had my GPS V for a few days and am still learning how it thinks. Yesterday while returning to Ventura County from LA on the 101, I apparently reached the edge of a detailed region. I have traveled this route hundreds of times and was just keeping an eye on the GPS to see how it was working. Approaching the intersection of the 101 and the 405, I was surprised when my GPS V told me to exit the freeway onto Van Nuys Blvd. Of course I ignored this stupid instruction and continued westbound on the 101. In a couple of minutes, the GPS realized it had screwed up and pretended like it had never said anything. It re-acquired it's computed route and began displaying correct nav data once again.

 

This is a bug that anyone using this GPS in unfamiliar areas should be aware of. Had I not known where I was, I might have ended up in an area during rush hour which would have taken considerable time to get back on course. Perhaps Garmin should address this in a future firmware release.

 

----------------------

Chuck Raines

chuck459@earthlink.net

[SergZak]

I also live in So Cal and find the memory to be a bit tight. I live within about 100 ft of the border of two regions (Los Angeles, CA and Ontario, CA) and it's a bit tricky getting my needed regions loaded in for auto-routing. On longer future trips, I may bring along my notebook and swap regions during a rest stop. So far though, it's been tight but doable without the notebook.

[+ZachNLiam]

The answer I've found to the basemap problem is this:

 

I always check (on a long trip) what MapSource says is the best route, and then keep this in mind. I turn OFF the autorouting feature of the GPSV to "prompt." This way it will ASK you if you want it to autoroute.

 

On the basemap it almost always gets 'off' the road because the basemap has simplified roads to save memory (the internal non-changeable part). Then, when the GPSV thinks I'm off the road, it will prompt me if I want to autoroute. I simply click on "NO" and it just waits to catch up. This has worked well for me.

 

this also works well when you simply take a one-block detour to get out of the way of something. I already KNOW how to get 'back on track' and don't want to wait for the GPS to recalculate just one block away, so I say "NO" and get back to the track myself.

 

If I DO miss a turn however, I'll definitely say "YES" to the autorouting prompt and have it get me back!

[bwiebe]

Chuck, you mentioned that the GPS V gives you some bad directions when you move from the detailed area to the non-detailed area (or was it vice-versa?).

 

Well, you've stumbled onto the same bug I did and I had it confirmed by Garmin. I live in Edmonton Alberta which is not part of the detailed area in City Select. Calgary, Alberta, 300km south, *is* part of the detailed area. So, when I have the GPS V do the autorouting from Edmonton to Calgary, it comes up with trip of about 1600km! Seems that it wants me to go past Calgary, drive a few hours into Montana, pull a U-Turn, head for the Canadian Rockies, amble through the Crowsnest Pass, and finally get to Calgary.

 

Here's what Garmin told me the problem was. The routes in the base map don't always align with those same routes in the detailed section, so, the unit gets confused and comes up with the wacky route. The same issue is what you're experiencing. Garmin did not have a solution to fix this other than realize it happens and use the unit accordingly. It sounds like a big problem but I've found it very easy to work around.