sat nav for pushbike

[ColinJ]

Cool. I can understand that but I'm not terribly tekky, I just want directions to my destination without thinking/looking at a map. You'd think with the thousands of cyclists there'd be a gap in the market for a user friendly sat nav at a reasonable price.

I prefer to decide where I go rather than being told where to go by a machine so I use a plain old GPS rather than a 'sat nav'. I work out my route at home and upload it to the GPS. All it does is show me where to turn to follow my own route. There are numerous cycling GPS models available for under £100 which do the job really well.

 

[Sale Madrid]

I prefer to decide where I go rather than being told where to go by a machine so I use a plain old GPS rather than a 'sat nav'. I work out my route at home and upload it to the GPS. All it does is show me where to turn to follow my own route. There are numerous cycling GPS models available for under £100 which do the job really well.

So all I do is find a destination on-line - plug the cycling GPS in and it downloads the route - I put the GPS on the bike and then it gives me directions. Is that right ?

 

[theloafer]

have the edge 800 ... dam fine bit of kit clever as eggs .. instructions are crap though you just have to fiddle with it to learn yourself .. battery life is ok even when used for 10+ hours you just have to turn things of that you do not use i just bought the base model and got the mapping else where.

 

[ColinJ]

So all I do is find a destination on-line - plug the cycling GPS in and it downloads the route - I put the GPS on the bike and then it gives me directions. Is that right ?

Yes, if someone happens to have plotted that particular journey already. If not, plot it yourself and share it online.

 

[defy-one]

Colin - will the edge 200 do that?

 

[ColinJ]

Colin - will the edge 200 do that?

A quick search online suggests that it would.

I'm still using a very old yellow Garmin Etrex, the bottom of the range model which was replaced by the Etrex H. They have been replaced by new models but you can still pick them up if you shop around and you can get them very cheap.

They are waterproof and very rugged, though a little old-fashioned-looking.

They use AA batteries and a decent pair of NiMH cells will last 24+ hours.

They don't have mapping capability so you are limited to following pre-planned routes, which suits me fine 99% of the time. Only once was that a problem when my route over Snake Pass was not possible due to a road closure. I improvised a detour before rejoining my original route further on.

My biggest gripes: you need to connect via a special cable and an old-fashioned RS232 serial port or buy an extra RS232-to-USB converter; you need to buy a separate handlebar mount which is expensive for a couple of bits of plastic, and my Etrex rattles a bit in the mount.

Total price of that lot would be about £70-75 if you shopped around.

 

[Svendo]

Tomtom is in the car market which has many competitors. How many are bike specific?

It also has much more functionality (ant+, cadence, etc. virtual partner and training stuff) much more battery life (as mentioned above) and is properly waterproof (there's youtube video of bike satnavs being put in the bath for 5 minutes and working fine throughout). My Garmin Edge 705 has also come off the bars (user related causes!) at speed, bounced down the road and survived. It's also been in many crashes and faithfully records the frightening deceleration! I reckon car satnavs wouldn't manage that. Or smart phones come to that.

 

[yello]

the best way is to throw hundreds and hundreds of pounds at it to see if that motivates me

It won't. And I'm sure there are owners of multi-thousand quid bikes up and down the land that'd agree with me.

As to which sat-nav, from what you've stated as your purpose, I'd suggest the Garmin Edge 705. It looks better with dust on it.

 

[tincaman]

Handtec has a NOH Garmin Edge 705 for £192
http://www.handtec.co.uk/product.php/6383/garmin-edge-705-heart-rate-monitor---speed-cadence---noh

 

[NotthatJasonKenny]

Cycling is about whatever you want it to be, don't feel the pressure to ride three times per week if you don't want to, if you want to spend £2k on kit and ride it twice a month then if that's what you enjoy it's fine!

All sat nav give you the option of avoiding motorways on a journey so just use whatever you are happy with/can afford. I use my iPhone and copilot which has car, cycle or walk journey settings. It does drain the battery tho, especially with cyclemeter running too! With just cyclemeter running my 1yr old iPhone managed for 6 hours during last years cat&fiddle.

 

[Sale Madrid]

Handtec has a NOH Garmin Edge 705 for £192
http://www.handtec.co.uk/product.php/6383/garmin-edge-705-heart-rate-monitor---speed-cadence---noh

Handtec also have the 800 for £245.99. Not knowing much about these things, is it worth paying an extra £50 for the 800 over the 705 or am I just being anal....again !

 

[antnee]

Hello all
Just in case I missed it somewhere on the forum. I am looking to buy a budget sat nav which I can upload my route from bikehike or opencyclemap.org which will just show me the OS map or the NCR's in some detail. though I would take a large scale map perhaps as well so I can look some considerable milage ahead
I think perhjaps this may have been covered before but I can't seem to find it now, and buy budget i really mean about £100
Many thanks for any replies. Cheers Antnee

Spelling is not my forte

 

[compo]

I have a slightly dated Binatone sat-nav in my rack pack. It runs for about 2.5 hours on it's battery and if I am going to need extended time I have an external battery pack I can plug into it which will give me another 4 hours. Mostly a sat-nav is only needed for the last mile or so of a journey when looking for the final destination. I can fix the unit to my bar extender as it is very small but mostly I just set it off and put it in my pocket and just use the voice directions.

It was useful once when I came on a nasty accident in an area where I wasn't familiar and I was able to give the emergency services a precise location. Maps are OK if you know where you are or have good identifiable landmarks but sat-navs come into their own if you don't know where you are.

 

[Cyclopathic]

Just get a local a to z and stick it to the handlebars. If you like you can draw a route on it in red pen and follow that. And give me hundreds of pounds...for motivation and the like.

 

[SomethingLikeThat]

I'd rather just use my phone.