On Tue, 24 Jun 2008, John Holmblad wrote: > recently I obtained a Garmin nuvi 200w GPS^1,2 and I was surprised > (actually floored) by how easy it is to use and how accurate are the > maps and points of interest. This leads me to wonder how the quality of > this Garmin product compares with that of the Wayfinder Navigator^3 > software when used on the N810 with its built in GPS receiver. Does > anyone here have any experience with this software on the N810? And if > so, what are your impressions? I have used maemo-mapper, Nokia map-2.2.6 (the N810 bundled app), and a now somewhat dated Garmin GPSmap76. I haven't tried Wayfinder (the fee-based routing service). The first time I tried "map", I was floored (as you put it) by how bad it was compared to the Garmin. I was in Prince George, and when I zoomed out to see the whole city, it did not show the airport (kind of a major feature and one I was trying to get to). I have since revised my opinion upwards slightly. I haven't tried the newer Garmins, or anything with routing software except maemo-mapper, which uses the Google API online. I bought the GPSmap76 to use on a boat. It accepts Garmin's excellent range of BlueChart nautical charts - a bit pricey one might think at about $200/licence, but paper ones would cost 10x that. This (having nautical charts) is an overriding consideration if you actually have a boat rather than a car which stays on public roads. NMEA output to drive an autopilot is nice, too - not that I'd trust it to drive a car :-) except maybe a 4x4 in the Australian outback... The GPSmap has a small monochrome screen (which one can read in sunlight, though prolonged exposure darkens the display). My N810 has a larger colour screen (nice), though somewhat hard to read in sunlight. When driving a vehicle, when you can't fiddle with the display, the large display and rather sparse detail on the Nokia map is an advantage. When parked, or when you can give the thing more attention, the lack of detail is frustrating. With the GPSmap, the small screen size and slow redraw time makes it hard to get the "big picture" - I still have paper charts for that. The GPSmap (OK, it's old) uses RS232 to upload maps from CD using Garmin software running under Windows. It takes forever (well, 20 minutes) and you can't add just one map, you have to build a new set on the PC and upload the whole thing. My unit came with a "basemap" (coarse street map). Nautical charts, topo, city maps I had to buy (some can be had on P2P). Newer units use USB. Maemo-mapper downloads maps in realtime from the Internet (it also caches tiles for offline use). Nokia map will download new map packages from the Internet, but the coverage outside North America and Europe is not so good I hear. The Garmin uses object-oriented vector-based maps. Map objects (roads, rivers, lakes, cities, parks...) can be individually set to low/med/high detail or turned off. Text can be scaled or turned off. Kind of like drawings in AutoCAD or XFig. Maemo-mapper uses image-tile-based maps (exactly like Google maps). Markup such as labels are part of the image and if they happen to cover what you are looking at, too bad. You can't change the amount of detail except by zooming in and loading a higher-resolution image. Nokia map behaves the same way; I believe it is also an image-based system. There is some software to create Garmin maps; it's somewhat complicated. I made one by tracing over a satellite photo. I haven't looked at making maps for maemo-mapper; it ought to be pretty simple in comparison. Garmin supports multiple concurrent maps. Normally, one wins out at a particular scale so that e.g. the topo map has precedence over the street map. But the standard supports transparency, so that a transparent map may be overlaid on top of a regular one. So you can overlay ski runs over a topo map, or a race route over a street map. This is really nice; pity it's so hard... Nokia map supports only one family of maps. I hear that it won't allow US-West and US-East at the same time so if you live along the Mississipi you have to keep switching. Maemo-mapper supports multiple families, but not concurrently. You choose between open-street, Google, Yahoo, Google satellite etc. There is no overlay capability (someone should add it!) On my Garmin I never tried loading points-of-interest. The software knows about waypoints, routes (straight lines between waypoints), and tracks (a log of where you've been). Usually the idea in a boat is to set a course for a waypoint like a harbour entrance or some turning point off a headland, and go straight there. On Nokia map I've used the POI database successfully to find a motel, and on maemo-mapper I've downloaded Google (highway) routes. I have heard of Navit to view Garmin maps on the tablet. I have not yet tried it. I believe it supports only the "open" maps, not the licenced BlueChart ones. I just looked at the Garmin FAQ re. Bluechart on the Nuvi. It says it works, so I presume my comments about vector-based maps, transparency, etc. on Garmin are still valid. The GPSmap is waterproof, the Nuvi is not. (or the tablet..) There is a whole other thread about time-to-first-fix in the N810 - in brief, it can be very long compared to other devices. www.garmin.com/products/gpsmap76 Can't get the "compare" feature to do marine vs. automobile :-( -- Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada _______________________________________________ maemo-users mailing list maemo-users@xxxxxxxxx https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users
