VW mods - GPS for the Pocket PC
I wanted to get a GPS device to help us find campgrounds, museums, tricky downtown
areas, etc. Three major versions exist - stand alone devices, laptop plug-ins, and
handheld device plug-ins. Each have their advantages and disadvantages, and in my
opinion none have the best of everything.
I quickly eliminated the stand alone devices mainly because of their cost, which
is several hundred dollars. Deciding between the remaining two options was difficult,
since we had both a laptop and Pocket PC with us. I hoped I could find one device
that worked in both the laptop and Pocket PC, and I think I did find one,
but for reasons I can no longer remember it wasn't a viable option (cost? poor features?).
The laptop obviously has the larger screen, which is a real plus. But a laptop is
bulky. The Pocket PC's best feature - and also its worst - is it's small size. A
Pocket PC powers up instantly, runs for hours on a battery charge, can mount to
a ventilation duct, and is easily navigated by the passenger when changes are needed.
But the screen is only a few inches across, making it difficult to see the big picture.
In the end we went with the
Pharos PFD22 Pocket GPS Portable Navigator and plugged it in to our Dell Axim
X5 Pocket PC. This is one of the few Pocket PC's that come with both a CompactFlash
and Secure Digital (SD) slot. The GPS device plugs into the CompactFlash slot, so
there's no external device dangling by a wire - big plus! The SD slot is used to
hold the map data - more on that later. The GPS device has a built-in antenna, which
worked perfectly in our van. Pharos includes an external antenna if your vehicle
design interferes with reception, but we never used it. There is also a DC charger,
which conveniently allowed us to recharge the Pocket PC battery, since it originally
came only with a 110 volt charger. Finally, a nifty ventilation mount allowed us
to mount it to the center ventilation ducts.
The software is quite good, but it takes some getting used to. Margaret didn't like
to use the device at all the first few months because of it's difficult user interface.
I didn't have as hard of a time, but I have a knack for software. Your mileage may
vary, and by the time you read this there may be a newer, better version.
To get somewhere, first you need to load the relevant map data. This is the part
that is a hassle. Since the map for the entire United States takes up three CD-ROMs,
you have no hope of loading all of it. So you fire up the laptop or desktop and
start the Ostia MapFinder utlity. A big map of the United States appears (see the
screen shot), and you select sections of the map you want to download. Each section
is about 10-15 MB, so your Pocket PC memory fills up real quick if you haven't bought
extra memory. Fortunately, we have a 256 MB SD card, so we can fit a few states
at a time. Note that, due to the shape of the map, it's not easy to have the GPS
plot a cross country trip unless you first download all the map sections in a contiguous
line between your start and destination.
To get the data to the Pocket PC, either copy it through the USB cable between your
PC and Pocket PC, or, copy it directly to the SD card or other portable memory device
you might have, if your PC is so equipped. If you copy the map through the USB interface,
which - despite the theoretical speed allowed by USB - be prepared to wait. It takes
roughly a minute or more to copy 1 MB of map data, so each map section usually takes
10-15 minutes. Therefore, try to think ahead and get your map data downloaded
before you need it.
Now that your Pocket PC has the map data, you're ready to give it a destination
and have it plot a course. Fire it up and let the software get a lock on the GPS
satellites. Then you enter your destination, either by selecting a contact from
Outlook (yes, it integrates with your address book in Outlook), entering an address
manually, choosing the intersection of two cross streets, or selecting a "point
of interest", Pharos-speak for locations it already knows the names of. This includes
airports and city centers, but not much else.
It will assume your starting point is your current location, and it will plot a
course to your destination. I've noticed it tends to favor big roads over smaller
roads, so it sometimes won't take a shortcut that local people would. But that's
to be expected, and overall it did quite a good job. At first I would verify the
plotted route to make sure it was reasonable, but after a while we would just type
in an address and give it our complete trust.
When a turn is coming ahead, a voice prompt tells you "Right turn ahead", or whatever
it is. It times the announcement based on how fast you are going. At highway speeds,
you get the notice a third to half mile before the turn. In town the notice is about
a half block away. Sometimes it's a bit confusing, as a right turn according to
street and highway names might actually be straight ahead in real life, or vice
versa. If we ever miss a turn, we press the action button on the side of the Pocket
PC and it automatically calculates a new route, based on your new location.
Even if we didn't have a destination programmed in, we would often just have it
follow our driving on the map, so we could see the pattern of nearby roads. It was
kind of like being in an airplane flying over the van, and it told us interesting
things, like when the ocean was nearby even though we couldn't see it.
Was it worth $220? For us, it was, since we spent months in entirely new places
as we traveled the country.
If you don't have that kind of money, but you do already have a laptop, a close
second is using software like Microsoft's Streets and Trips. Without a GPS device,
it is mainly just a map reference, but even so it is much better than a printed
map, since you can zoom in and out as much as needed, going all the way down to
individual streets if necessary. I believe you can also have it plot courses for
you, so long as you enter both the start and finish points. If you have a passenger
to help navigate, this is almost as good as the GPS software.