TomTom Rider - how to disable 'Drive Mode'

Phase 1:

Get some sticky tape (use your teeth or get some scissors for cutting said tape - totally up to you)

Phase 2:

Cover the 4 little pins that are part of the wiring system that would provide power from the motorbike battery.

Phase 3:

Put up with having to recharge the TomTom between journeys until such time as somebody comes up with a way of wiring the TomTom Rider to the motorbike battery while still disabling the mount sensor.


Drive mode is probably a good idea for those people who are still learning how to ride their motorcycles, or those that only ride for the sake of trying to get their pegs on the ground. From a commuting point of view, Drive Mode is the stupidest thing that TomTom could possibly have come up with as a 'mandatory' feature.

The mount that comes with the TomTom Rider has some electronics in it which when the Rider is placed into the mount lets the Rider know that it is in the 'motorcycle' mount and thereby goes into 'Drive Mode' whenever the Rider either a) hasn't got a satellite fix, or b) has a fix and knows the bike is moving.

Personally I haven't got around to pulling either the Rider or the mount apart, as I'm sure that will void my warranty. I'm sure either myself or somebody else will eventually get a round tuit and come up with a better plan that will allow the motorbike battery to power/recharge the Rider whilst still disabling Drive Mode until such time as TomTom get the clue they are missing and give us the option to disable Drive Mode if we so wish to.

If anybody else does feel like giving the electronics side (of the mount preferably - I'd rather not touch the Rider itself) a looksie at and can tell us how to disable the sensor properly, please do tell! I'm more than willing to follow instructions and then get myself one of the aforementioned round tuits and then wire in the battery cable....

It turns out its a good thing the Rider has a battery afterall

Apologies if you are reading this message on multiple different TomTom sites - not everybody reads every sites forums, and this is information that I know a lot of TomTom Rider users want to know...

Keba

You mention how the Rider goes into Drive Mode, but what is Drive Mode ?? What does it do ??

Mike Werner said:

Keba

You mention how the Rider goes into Drive Mode, but what is Drive Mode ?? What does it do ??

Click to expand...

Drive Mode is probably better named 'Dummy Mode'.

You get four really big buttons (for gloved fingers of course!). It dumbs down the Rider to the point where unless you have already put in your destination (and won't change it), don't want to switch between day and night colours and don't want to make outgoing calls, its probably great.

That said, its a totally stupid idea to make it compulsory.

The 'car mount' will use the charger point that you have to break the waterproof seal flap on the bottom of the unit to access, so thats how they are getting around the whole 'detect that its in a car' by just making it look like its not on the motorbike mount. The electronics in the mount are the key to how it knows that its on the motorbike.

Hope that helps!

Keba said:

Drive Mode is probably better named 'Dummy Mode'.

You get four really big buttons (for gloved fingers of course!). It dumbs down the Rider to the point where unless you have already put in your destination (and won't change it), don't want to switch between day and night colours and don't want to make outgoing calls, its probably great.

That said, its a totally stupid idea to make it compulsory.

The 'car mount' will use the charger point that you have to break the waterproof seal flap on the bottom of the unit to access, so thats how they are getting around the whole 'detect that its in a car' by just making it look like its not on the motorbike mount. The electronics in the mount are the key to how it knows that its on the motorbike.

Hope that helps!

Click to expand...

Thanks. Doesn't it change automatically between day and night depending on the time of day ???

Mike Werner said:

Thanks. Doesn't it change automatically between day and night depending on the time of day ???

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There is a third party app that does that, but its not compatible with the firmware on the Rider yet - it will be eventually, but not just yet.

I'm riding everywhere in the dark at the minute - no daylight for me given my current working hours :/

... all pointing to the question - Why didn't Garmin think of this?

Not sure what you mean there.

Garmin GPS units have a "safe mode" which is enabled when the unit detects that it is moving. But, it's easily disabled via a menu option (complete with a disclaimer). This seems to me to be a highly superior alternative to the TomTom method.

Mouse said:

Not sure what you mean there.

Garmin GPS units have a "safe mode" which is enabled when the unit detects that it is moving.

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Where's this? And how do I disable it on my 276C?

The 276C is a marine unit, I think, so maybe it doesn't have "safe mode". On the automotive units that I have used (for example Streetpilot 3, 2610) there is a tab in the setup menu called "Safe mode" and a simple on/off control.

Mouse said:

TOn the automotive units that I have used (for example Streetpilot 3, 2610) there is a tab in the setup menu called "Safe mode" and a simple on/off control.

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Ditto on the Quest

Ta Mouse!

I was just pointing out that you don't need to fanny about covering pins on a proper gps unit with mature firmware and decent beta test programs.

Oh I see - very true

Same applies to a lot of things, early adopters get more hassles, I suppose.

ianf said:

I was just pointing out that you don't need to fanny about covering pins on a proper gps unit with mature firmware and decent beta test programs.

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'proper' and 'mature' are points of view....

Garmin vs TomTom isn't the point of this topic - I'd suggest starting one in 'The BeakChat and Bollox (the Virtual Pub)' forum if you really want to

On a serious note, they do have a point about the size of the buttons on the normal mode screens - they take a bit more effort to try and use and given all I wanted to do was change between day and night colours, thats all I'll be attempting to do in any case! Otherwise I'd stay with the Drive Mode - but then I'm not changing destinations on the fly (not that it would be easy given the size of the destinations in the list view when you go to choose them).

Horses sure are for courses...

Gentlemen, you are loosers.

Buy a Garmin as the rest of us did!

HMR said:

Gentlemen, you are loosers.

Buy a Garmin as the rest of us did!

Click to expand...

The rider is fast, its screen is fine, the sound in my helmet is good enough at normal speed, I can take calls, well, so far it is a winner. Except for the mounts...

It won't be long at all until you can get a patch to do this through software...the TOM TOM range all use a version of the Linux kernal and you can get into it, re-write it and assemble it again (though you'll shag your warrenty obviously)

There are some good sites that provide all sorts of hacks for systems, but I haven't been able to find one specifically for this ride function.

This may be of interest though;
http://www.opentom.org/index.php/Main_Page#The_OpenTom_Software

guys, what is your average battery life with the rider ?

battery life

around 5 hours..

I remember reading on some web site that you can do this by just covering pin 2 on the back of the tom tom (from the left as you look at it) I think.

HTH,
Derek.