fred_jb
Registered user
I thought I would post this in case it is of any interest to others. I know most people prefer to stick with standard BMW accessories, but I don't think BMW's satnavs represent their finest hour in terms of functionality and usability. I like to pre-plan routes, normally with a separate route for each day of a trip, and I found this a real trial with the Garmin based Nav V. As well as the BMW satnav, I also strongly dislike the wonderwheel which on non-TFT bikes is mainly used to control the satnav, as I think it ruins the left bar ergonomics and drove me mad being accidentally knocked almost every time I used the indicators on recent long trips, so much so that I went to the considerable effort of modifying a spare wheel to fit on the right side of the switch cluster, but without the Garmin it has little other purpose in life so I've now removed it entirely. I can turn the aux lights connected to my EZCan on and off with the indicator switch and don't feel the need to vary the brightness with the wheel.
The other problem with Garmin satnavs for me is that I hate the Basecamp software with its (to me) tortured inside out logic. Instead, I had been using the Tyre route planning software I got with a TomTom 400 I used on a previous bike. When the makers of this came out with its replacement, the excellent cloud based MyRoute route planning software, I moved to that. The only problem is that although you can export in GPX format the Garmin seems to have a not invented here attitude to imported routes and invariably screws up with them in some way. This required the extra step of running the routes through Basecamp to make them totally acceptable to the Nav, which was a right faff. While this was doable for a couple of guided tours I went on where the routes were completely pre-determined, it is not something I wanted to be doing while away on less pre-planned touring trips where I want the flexibility to generate the next days route the night before after booking the next hotel on booking.com.
When MyRoute came out with their own Navigation app for Android and IOS I decided to try that as it is totally integrated with their route planning software. It is still being (rapidly) developed, but is already a very usable package, and I left the Garmin at home and used the app on my phone on a recent tour around Andalusia where we were totally flexible on stopovers and routes, apart from tickets to the Alhambra in Granada, so it was essential to be able to easily generate routes in the evening for the next day after we had decided where we were going next. Although it is possible to generate routes on the phone I always take a small laptop for backing up photos and videos so used that for route planning. The software is web based, so all the routes are held in your MyRoute cloud account and are immediately accessible to the Navigation app on the phone, and can also be downloaded to the phone so they can be used offline. The Navigation app also allows you to pre-download all the maps of any country you are visiting in advance, limited only by the storage on your phone, so the app can be completely independent of internet access while riding.
I also run a GPS speedo app called SpeedOverlay, which can be set to appear as an overlay on any other app, as I like a reasonably big digital speedo which can be easily switched between mph and km/h which the bike lacks, and the one on the nav app is a bit small. You can see this as the black square on the top right of the display in the picture below.
Following the trip I've now sold the Nav V and made a couple of improvements to the phone setup. I got rid of the RAM X mount as it is too fiddly and tends to hit the phone buttons if not precisely placed, and also allows the phone to rotate a bit so it can go out of vertical/horizontal with vibration. I've replace it with a QuadLock mount which is excellent. I used their mirror mount which is the right size to clamp to the satnav mounting bar on the bike, though I have a Touratech extension on mine which mounts the satnav higher. This allows it to be fitted almost vertical whereas when fitted lower down it has to be angled up to be seen if you are quite tall, and then catches the light much more.
The other upgrade I've made is to buy a bigger phone. After much deliberation and research I decided on a Google Nexus 6 which has a great spec and is pretty much the biggest screened phone made in recent years. They have stopped making them now but I got an as new 64 GB version for only £165, and slightly more used looking examples are available for less. I'm really pleased with this and put it in a sturdy tight fitting case for mounting on the bike. This phone was made by Motorola so it works with the fast car charger I fitted to the bike to power my previous Motorola Moto X play phone which is a consideration as with a standard charger a long day on the bike could see the phone run out of charge as location services use a lot of power. One benefit of the big screen was that I was able to fit a clip on sunshade (intended for a tablet) which fits it and will help keep the sun off the screen. I've posted a couple of pics below.
The only serious outstanding problem with the app for me is a problem whereby Bluetooth instructions are not currently on a channel with sufficient priority to temporarily and automatically interrupt intercom communication between me and my wife on our Sena headsets. The developers are working on a fix for this but it was not fixed before we left on the last trip so we used a strategy of manually turning off the intercom whenever I really needed audio input from the app, such as finding hotels in town centres.
Fred
The other problem with Garmin satnavs for me is that I hate the Basecamp software with its (to me) tortured inside out logic. Instead, I had been using the Tyre route planning software I got with a TomTom 400 I used on a previous bike. When the makers of this came out with its replacement, the excellent cloud based MyRoute route planning software, I moved to that. The only problem is that although you can export in GPX format the Garmin seems to have a not invented here attitude to imported routes and invariably screws up with them in some way. This required the extra step of running the routes through Basecamp to make them totally acceptable to the Nav, which was a right faff. While this was doable for a couple of guided tours I went on where the routes were completely pre-determined, it is not something I wanted to be doing while away on less pre-planned touring trips where I want the flexibility to generate the next days route the night before after booking the next hotel on booking.com.
When MyRoute came out with their own Navigation app for Android and IOS I decided to try that as it is totally integrated with their route planning software. It is still being (rapidly) developed, but is already a very usable package, and I left the Garmin at home and used the app on my phone on a recent tour around Andalusia where we were totally flexible on stopovers and routes, apart from tickets to the Alhambra in Granada, so it was essential to be able to easily generate routes in the evening for the next day after we had decided where we were going next. Although it is possible to generate routes on the phone I always take a small laptop for backing up photos and videos so used that for route planning. The software is web based, so all the routes are held in your MyRoute cloud account and are immediately accessible to the Navigation app on the phone, and can also be downloaded to the phone so they can be used offline. The Navigation app also allows you to pre-download all the maps of any country you are visiting in advance, limited only by the storage on your phone, so the app can be completely independent of internet access while riding.
I also run a GPS speedo app called SpeedOverlay, which can be set to appear as an overlay on any other app, as I like a reasonably big digital speedo which can be easily switched between mph and km/h which the bike lacks, and the one on the nav app is a bit small. You can see this as the black square on the top right of the display in the picture below.
Following the trip I've now sold the Nav V and made a couple of improvements to the phone setup. I got rid of the RAM X mount as it is too fiddly and tends to hit the phone buttons if not precisely placed, and also allows the phone to rotate a bit so it can go out of vertical/horizontal with vibration. I've replace it with a QuadLock mount which is excellent. I used their mirror mount which is the right size to clamp to the satnav mounting bar on the bike, though I have a Touratech extension on mine which mounts the satnav higher. This allows it to be fitted almost vertical whereas when fitted lower down it has to be angled up to be seen if you are quite tall, and then catches the light much more.
The other upgrade I've made is to buy a bigger phone. After much deliberation and research I decided on a Google Nexus 6 which has a great spec and is pretty much the biggest screened phone made in recent years. They have stopped making them now but I got an as new 64 GB version for only £165, and slightly more used looking examples are available for less. I'm really pleased with this and put it in a sturdy tight fitting case for mounting on the bike. This phone was made by Motorola so it works with the fast car charger I fitted to the bike to power my previous Motorola Moto X play phone which is a consideration as with a standard charger a long day on the bike could see the phone run out of charge as location services use a lot of power. One benefit of the big screen was that I was able to fit a clip on sunshade (intended for a tablet) which fits it and will help keep the sun off the screen. I've posted a couple of pics below.
The only serious outstanding problem with the app for me is a problem whereby Bluetooth instructions are not currently on a channel with sufficient priority to temporarily and automatically interrupt intercom communication between me and my wife on our Sena headsets. The developers are working on a fix for this but it was not fixed before we left on the last trip so we used a strategy of manually turning off the intercom whenever I really needed audio input from the app, such as finding hotels in town centres.
Fred