OT - GPS navigation

The garmin 76 76cs has the capability but no voice feature, also I doubt maps for european use are much cop, there is talk that a program being developed allows upload of user maps.

I think it can use a correction signal from trinity house by the coast but unlike inbuilt units will not correct from the odometer output when out of coverage.

This has usb connection as well as rs232 and outputs nmea and garmin protocols.

What report back a location via telemetry at no addition cost to a cellphone owner? ;-).

AJH

Aah, the holy grail...

No, this isn't what I'm after. The navigation is a 'nice to have' - my application can work with just a dumb £100 GPS receiver (and indeed we will start developing using my eTrex and serial cable). It will sell much better, however, with the navigation as part of the offering.

Is it? Seems eminently doable.

What the 76cs or remote monitoring?

AJH

How? You have 'data' in the vehicle and you want to report it to a remote location. How can you transmit this data free of charges? You could dial up and collect it, but either way somebody pays. For a commercial user it doesn't much matter whether the costs are assigned to the individual mobile or the corporate switchboard.

BTW, it isn't just location data I want to send.

It's all academic for my application - at close of play the vehicles all go back to the depot so 802.11 at the weighbridge will do nicely... Not real time, but very cheap!

The remote monitoring...

So what is it you're actually looking for here? Just a GPS device, or a full nav system?

I may be misunderstanding but you seem to be asking for two and a half things here. If it's a straight GPS you're looking for then you could do a lot worse than the Sirtek GPS mice that go for less than £70.

As for the reporting back its location - what's the problem with that? I used to be the product manager for something that would do that itself.

Oh yes - little cautious word - be *very* careful in the Location Based Services space - a certain employer of mine has a hell of a lot of broadly worded patents it likes to enforce. Drop me a mail offline for any detail you want.

P.

I'm pretty clear what I want in my mind, but probably haven't spelled it out very well.

I want a TomTom Go with a serial output, which spews NMEA data simultaneous to the normal nav functions.

This is not a location-based service. It is pure data collection (at least for the moment). We do have other projects however...

Cheers

Seeing as Paul has flagged up a conflict I'd best watch my Ps and Qs. I wonder if he works for June at Box telematics.

Anyway suffice to say that there is access available to the control channels in gsm which enables transmission of certain data without any handshaking protocol, it's all beyond my knowledge of how and why but it is being done. I wonder if it does constitute an unlawful act but doubt it. I looked into it after being trapped in a vehicle with a broken pelvis some years back, I dropped my phone and could not reach it. E-mail is valid if you need more but it's not my field by a long shot.

OK

fairy nuff but real time tracking costs the same ;-)

Leaving aside what your main reason for the gps unit is, you said it may be an additional attraction to offer route planning. I have been in posh cars with sat nav and apart from the annoyance of the voice prompts the only thing they offer over my personal navigation software is re routing if the road ahead is blocked.

With these little hand held things offering auto routing it looks like all the functionality but re routing is now in the hand held unit.

In fact I seldom connect the garmin 12xl into the laptop and normally plot a route on my desktop, upload it to the garmin as waypoints at major intersections, becoming more frequent as I near my destination. It is quite interesting how close the actual roads/track are to the plotted course and how near to a straight line a journey usually is.

My last trip to Gt Yarmouth was upset by the M11 being closed at stansted, I did need to look at a map but a diversion up the A120 soon had me back on track, until I met a 5 car pile up just south of norwich :-(. I was only 20mins late overall though.

AJH

Nope - for a rather large ex-monopoly who generally provide dialtone to people. They just happen to be big in LBS as well.

I can more or less guarantee you that any network finding you doing this would shoot you. Free data transfer is highly frowned upon.

Not really - Tim's talking about bulk dumping data over a genuinely cost free datalink at a known point rather than trying to do a continuous update which would really incur a cost unless you do something that would be frowned upon by the infrastructure owners.

Tim - I've done quite a bit of work in the LBS and telematics space of late

- I was an infrastructure and application type before I got shunted to marketing and have done some work on some of the big national telematics programmes of late. Drop me a line if you want any wierdass ideas :@)

P.

I believe you.

I realise this, that's not to say it won't work, I bow to your superior knowledge though.

AJH