GPS with my iPad and iPod Touch

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marcfj60

marcfj60

Joined
Oct 1, 2006
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Location
Sandia Park, NM
Has anyone in the club looked into or purchased a GPS receiver for their Wi-Fi iPad or iPod Touch? My Garmin for the car is having issues and I thought rather than buy another one, maybe I could buy something like a Bad-Elf receiver and then just buy various apps depending on my intended use.

The "big" screen on the iPad would be great for on or off-road navigtion and there's bound to be some good map apps out there for it.
 
I thought tablets had GPS built in. My Nexus 7 does.
 
IIRC the 3G ipads have GPS, the wi-fi only do not.

marc there is lots of ipad for offroad nav discussion in the electronics section fo rmaps etc talk. no idea what your options are for aftermarket gps receivers for ipad, likely limited since you don't have bluetooth in it either.
 
I've looked in some of the tech sections a little. Bad Elf that makes an external receiver that plugs right in to the unit (ipad or ipod) Then they list the apps that supposedly work with the external unit. I'm not going to shell out the cash for the 3G iPad.
 
I believe Mike uses an iPad for Nav...
 
As a professional mapper guy of sorts I've struggled for years with in-vehicle GPS starting with a dash-mounted iPaq (remember those?), a first generation tablet PC, then a bulky Panasonic touch screen PC with integrated GPS and various Trimble rigs including a $5000 unit with a screen that you could not read in the sun. None of this hardware worked that great and then there was the software - the GPS and mapping apps were a real PITA.

Looking back at it, I was probably overdoing it as a "professional." I shoulda just bought a Garmin!

These days, the world is different. I have a first gen iPad with 3G - the best navigation tool ever. The GPS (in conjunction with the cell system) gets a fix immediately, the screen is big and bright and I have at least half a dozen feature-rich mapping applications each of would stand alone for anyone's needs and none of which cost more than a couple of bucks. And of course this navigation system plays music!

However, my eyesight has gotten so bad that I can't read a screen anyway.
So I just stay at home and don't go anywhere....
 
Last edited:
The unit that is giving me grief is a Garmin Nuvi about 3 years old. In general, it works well. But it likes to shut itself off/reboot multiple times an hour. I don't really use it to get me where I'm going as much as to remind me of how fast I'm going, tell me about when I'll arrive and help me to know when I missed the turn I was supposed to take. The constant reboot is just getting frustrating. And I'm concerned one of these times it shuts off it won't come back on ever again. The iPad seems like it is a good platform for ever-improving software, has a nice big screen and has the potential to be a good unit for nav and mapping. Plus, if I get an external GPS that works on it, I can potentially use that same GPS unit on one of the 4 iPod Touch units we have in my household. You would never know that I'm not a fan of Apple.
 
Marc, Garmin is a great company. Have you talked with them? They might fix it, or exchange.
 
marcfj60 said:
The unit that is giving me grief is a Garmin Nuvi about 3 years old. In general, it works well. But it likes to shut itself off/reboot multiple times an hour. I don't really use it to get me where I'm going as much as to remind me of how fast I'm going, tell me about when I'll arrive and help me to know when I missed the turn I was supposed to take. The constant reboot is just getting frustrating. And I'm concerned one of these times it shuts off it won't come back on ever again. The iPad seems like it is a good platform for ever-improving software, has a nice big screen and has the potential to be a good unit for nav and mapping. Plus, if I get an external GPS that works on it, I can potentially use that same GPS unit on one of the 4 iPod Touch units we have in my household. You would never know that I'm not a fan of Apple.
Click to expand...

I used to run a Sonar system in the Navy that had over 40 refrigerator sized cabinets full of circuit boards. (currently replaced by a laptop, I'm sure...) In my experience the most common cause of that is intermittent conductivity, usually caused by surface coating of contacts from natural oil on fingers. Does it use batteries as backup? At any rate the cure is to use a pencil eraser to clean the contacts (battery and cig lighter) and don't touch them any more. Second most common cause was a cracked circuit board....
 
It has internal batteries and when I'm in the car it's plugged in to the 12V port. It never indicates that the power is low. You're just driving along and the screen goes blank. Then it reboots. It remembers where I was going so at least I don't have to input my destination again. It's just annoying and I suspect a sign of worse things to come. I have not attempted to contact Garmin about it so maybe I'll do that. I just assumed they probably had a 90-day or 12-month warranty and I've had it longer than that.
 
lurch said:
I believe Mike uses an iPad for Nav...
Click to expand...

I have a 3G iPad1. I wouldn't waste money on a wifi iPad. The built-in GPS is the only way to go. The iPad is a closed system; HW and SW. Any add-on device to get a GPS signal will ultimately cause you grief; charging, wires, battery replacement, vendor support, and applications. The next Apple update will kill your NAV; count on it. The SW market for the iPad is and will always be for the models with built-in GPS (AFAIK only the 3G models.)

I like the iPad when I'm in the Cruiser. Audio goes back through the truck speakers and I rigged up a USB charging slot. I listened to audiobooks all day, every driving day in Baja while the GPS app was also running. Nifty. There are several iPad Apps but I don't have a lot of experience with all of them. For GPS replacement (not turn-by-turn NAV) I have been using the MotionX products. They use public domain maps and you can download before a trip. The bad news is that they take a lot of space at high zoom levels and increase backup time if you choose to backup maps to iTunes (recommended unless you like downloading.)

For turn-by-turn I've used Waze and the MotionX Drive products. I prefer using the iPhone5 for NAV because you can't drive and watch the screen so getting voice commands is necessary. Waze has free voice; MotionX charges in-app upgrade fees. The MotionX products are feature rich compared to Waze. The current turn-by-turn products are quite good and you can find yourself depending on them when driving in unfamiliar towns.

There are some maps (e.g. Baja back roads) that are only available for Garmin. We would have been lost if depending on my iPad in Baja. That was 2 years ago but the MotionX maps did not have most of the roads we were using. I could see the terrain, but not the trail. Thank goodness Jon had a Garmin with the appropriate maps because my setup was of no use other than for the glitz factor.

My 2 pesos.

-Mike-
 
I would give my .02 cents about GPS, but I still use something like this:

compass.jpg
 
I still prefer paper maps for planning routes and I never go somewhere relying solely on the GPS because it usually takes me routes I don't want to go. But I still like the GPS for knowing exactly where I am when I don't want to take the time to triangulate my location with a compass.
 
Marc, I was being sarcastic. There was no need to exlpain. What happened to a bit of levity in this group?
 
Your sarcasm was understood. I just wasn't interested in responding to it.
 
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