cheap motorcycle gps - yay or nay
Discussion
For ad hoc use I just use my phone in ultimate add ons case, running google maps is fine. Wear bluetooth headset in cities so no need to look at phone all the time for directions.
When touring have a power lead and use tomtom software on phone, better than google maps when there is no internet connection. If you have a trickle charger lead on the bike you can get a USB convertor for it about £15, works fine but not so waterproof in heavy rain.
A real motorcycle sat nav has its plus points, but expensive to justify unless It was getting used daily to navigate to different places
When touring have a power lead and use tomtom software on phone, better than google maps when there is no internet connection. If you have a trickle charger lead on the bike you can get a USB convertor for it about £15, works fine but not so waterproof in heavy rain.
A real motorcycle sat nav has its plus points, but expensive to justify unless It was getting used daily to navigate to different places
Get a decent Garmin or similar. The cheaper units either have previous generation processors so are very slow, or are made from sub-standard materials with zero customer support, or suffer both these issues....
Smartphones are great, but generally are not nearly as robust/weatherproof as standalone GPS.
Do people really stream music while riding?? I thought the whole idea was to get away from all that & enjoy the smells, sounds of the ride, besides, it is chuffing dangerous if you can't hear what's around you.....
Smartphones are great, but generally are not nearly as robust/weatherproof as standalone GPS.
Do people really stream music while riding?? I thought the whole idea was to get away from all that & enjoy the smells, sounds of the ride, besides, it is chuffing dangerous if you can't hear what's around you.....
Biker 1 said:
Do people really stream music while riding?? I thought the whole idea was to get away from all that & enjoy the smells, sounds of the ride, besides, it is chuffing dangerous if you can't hear what's around you.....
In my case it's podcasts but yeah, I wouldn't be able to commute by bike otherwise, I'd die of boredom.As above, you shouldn't be riding (at any kind of speed) without earplugs anyway. And a good set of earplugs/headphones will still let you hear the important stuff like sirens, while reducing the likelihood of hearing loss.
Biker 1 said:
Get a decent Garmin or similar.
it is chuffing dangerous if you can't hear what's around you.....
I've been trying to follow my Garmin around the lanes today... very distracting looking at the screen all the timeit is chuffing dangerous if you can't hear what's around you.....
I don't listen to music but with helmet & earplugs I can barely hear my bike (with endcan) let alone anything else
Jazoli said:
I just use my phone in a quad lock case, then you can just use Waze and stream music to your headset.
Beware these - There has been some trouble reported with phones that use optical image stabilization (Notably the IphoneX) where after use, The camera will flicker in and out of focus.A friend used one for one journey on a CBF125, And the camera was busted - A large number of others have reported this too (motorcycles subreddit etc)
Whatever you do don't get the Garmin 595LM like I did.
The problem I have with it are:
The display is too dim to be easily seen.
It's a big heavy thing.
There are animal crossing warnings you can't switch off.
The routing is sketchy. It always seems to pick a worse route than Google maps.
The optional and expensive tyre pressure monitoring is totally useless. Its unreliable which is not what you want in a tpms. The sensors often loose connection with the nav unit.
I bought it to replace my old tontom rider which I'd used on European tours for many years. It had worked well for me but had a fairly small screen and there was a dodgy connection so sometimes it didn't charge.
I'd got used to using my nav as a kind of pace notes to spot possible hazards, sharp bends or straights up ahead. Really useful on roads you might not have ridden before.
The zooming on the rider worked well enough to make this a useful tool. With the Garmin it just doesn't.
The most recent Tom tom units look to have a brighter screen as well. My Garmin is impossible to see in bright sun.
I'm now tempted to get a waterproof case thing for my note 9 and use Waze or Tom tom on that.
Sorry for the rambling rant but I would under no circumstances get a Garmin again. They feel underdeveloped especially for the price they charge.
The problem I have with it are:
The display is too dim to be easily seen.
It's a big heavy thing.
There are animal crossing warnings you can't switch off.
The routing is sketchy. It always seems to pick a worse route than Google maps.
The optional and expensive tyre pressure monitoring is totally useless. Its unreliable which is not what you want in a tpms. The sensors often loose connection with the nav unit.
I bought it to replace my old tontom rider which I'd used on European tours for many years. It had worked well for me but had a fairly small screen and there was a dodgy connection so sometimes it didn't charge.
I'd got used to using my nav as a kind of pace notes to spot possible hazards, sharp bends or straights up ahead. Really useful on roads you might not have ridden before.
The zooming on the rider worked well enough to make this a useful tool. With the Garmin it just doesn't.
The most recent Tom tom units look to have a brighter screen as well. My Garmin is impossible to see in bright sun.
I'm now tempted to get a waterproof case thing for my note 9 and use Waze or Tom tom on that.
Sorry for the rambling rant but I would under no circumstances get a Garmin again. They feel underdeveloped especially for the price they charge.
Funny how often this topic comes up.
I used (or tried to use) a phone for the first couple of years of riding, and then I bought a Garmin (I think it's the one that one of the posters further up said he didn't like
anyway, my garmin was genius - I think its the best thing I've ever bought for the bike, I bought it 2nd hand on ebay for a little over £120.
The problem with the phone is that I couldn't ever find a decent solution for a holder. I tried various forms of the the ones that the delveroo riders use, but they all felt pretty clumsy to use, esp disconnecting/reconnecting the charging lead.
I used (or tried to use) a phone for the first couple of years of riding, and then I bought a Garmin (I think it's the one that one of the posters further up said he didn't like
anyway, my garmin was genius - I think its the best thing I've ever bought for the bike, I bought it 2nd hand on ebay for a little over £120.
The problem with the phone is that I couldn't ever find a decent solution for a holder. I tried various forms of the the ones that the delveroo riders use, but they all felt pretty clumsy to use, esp disconnecting/reconnecting the charging lead.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
GoPros use EIS (Electronic Image Stabilisation), I think they call it "Hypersmooth". Basically it uses a combo of under-sizing the output video from the sensor resolution (so they have a dead border they can move the frame around in to match the previous one when vibration moves it around) and clever software layering to counteract vibration.Anything optically stabilised will be damaged on a vibey bike, it's just a matter of time.
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