Quest –power issues & early impressions

[Mister G]

Bought a Quest ‘motorcycle bundle’ last week from GPSW in Feltham. Took one look at it compared to some of the other systems and it was much more ‘tidy’. With the extra value of city select v.6 thrown in I couldn’t say no – SOLD.

A couple of problems though. The young chap in the shop couldn’t tell me if the internal battery could be replaced or the approx. number of charges I might get out of it. Nothing is in the manual about it either. I’m no electrician but presumably it will only charge so many times before needing replacing.

The Ram motorcycle mount is a nice bit of kit and ,by necessity , a stronger and more robust bit of engineering than the provided car mount (which I find good too - even if the speaker could do with being a little louder ). The Ram bracket also has a reassuring extra moulding that grips the unit at the top and should make it pothole proof.
My problems with the Ram mount is that while the gap for the fold out aerial is good, I’ve found that the aperture for the power connection completely obscures one of the 6 gold contact studs on the back of the unit (this is illustrated by one of the pictures on an earlier thread on this GPS forum). This would, I imagine, mean that I will need to buy yet another motorcycle bracket if I want to power the unit from the bike’s electrical system in the future (the cable for which is as yet unavailable I was told) or Dremel it out a bit – not a problem. If your out there Ram Man – any ETA on a bare wire power cable to accompany the bracket?)

I can’t yet comment on the routing performance as I haven’t been able to get out properly with it yet but even a little wandering round the Barbican in central London in conditions I would expect any device of this nature to struggle with (tall , tightly packed buildings etc. , has proven to be better than expected). The screen is clear and it’s a great gadget even setting aside it’s functionality (the satellite page is fascinating)

The manual is another matter. I know that this is not a particularly well specified unit and it’s dominant function is just to tell you what road you are near and how to get you about a bit, but that doesn’t mean Garmin has to dumb down the manual. At almost every turn (pardon the pun) it is under-informative , lacking in detail and explanation. Judge for yourself, the manual is available for free download at the Garmin site. Now compare it with the parts of say , the 60cs that cover THE SAME functions.

Early conclusion:

When the idea of getting a GPS first struck me and I had no idea what was out there I made a rough list of all the facilities I would want . I then went ‘to the marketplace’ and did my research on what was out there (including looking at this ever useful site).

The truth is , what I wanted is not for sale yet and depending on rollout , market demand and sheer guesswork I would estimate it’s at least another three to four years away (and maybe more). I decided to jump on board with the nearest ‘best fit’ and that is without a doubt - The Quest.

If ,as someone suggested on another thread ,the Garmin engineers are out there following this forum I would make one single request that would infinitely improve all of their units for us Brits (and Europeans, ex pats. Etc) in the short to medium term or until such time as both on-board memory and map detail are vastly improved…………

TOPO UK & IRELAND PLEASE!

Followed by….

TOPO WESTERN EUROPE PLEASE!

Spring is on the way,

g

 

[RAM-man]

If your out there Ram Man – any ETA on a bare wire power cable to accompany the bracket?)"

>> No still use same cradle .. as we understand only 4 pins are being used anyway - it remains unclear what the last two pins are for or if in fact they are used.

RAM cradle sent to GPSW cable guy who is on the case - when we know more will post a message. All feedback comments from a previous forum thread about cable spec (wish list) were passed on.

RAM-man

 

[Tomcat]

Mr. G - I'm tempted to buy a Quest too. Can you tell me if you can use it to plot a route along minor roads, preferably via specified locations? I don't want to plot the route on a PC and upload it (don't want to carry a PC whilst touring!), so would want to do the route plotting using the Quest itself.

Thanks
TC

 

[Mister G]

Tomcat,

I'm at work without it at the moment but one of my criteria was that I didn't have to have it constantly hooked up to a laptop on the road(I'm an Apple user which makes it nigh on impossible anyway) but if ive understood your enquiry correctly, the answer is yes. You do this by finding your destination (using find, by address, intersection, name etc), put it in your 'My Location' folder then create a route and insert 'via' points, for example points of interest you may want to visit on the way to your destination.
I think you can do this by planning in advance sitting in the pub with the handset or on the fly while on the bike , mid route.
You have the opportunity to save routes that you create provided you don't switch it off before saving!

As far as minor roads , I would check out the viewer on Garmin to see if the class of road your interested in is on there(most of the tidlers I could think of were there if you zoom in hard enough) bear in mind though that the viewer is showing Version 7 a(presumably) more intricate version. I'll be looking for this upgrade for free as it wasn't yet available when I got the package.

Like I say , I couldn't be definative about it but i'm sure it can be done. Finding the street can be tricky though, for example , Oxford St, WC1 does not appear on a name search per se but of course it is on the map and can be routed to. I'm sure there's knack to it but perhaps one of the more experienced Quest users can jump in at this point and put us straight.

I'll check that it can be done when I get home and if i'm profoundly wrong i'll post again.

To Ram Man. Does that mean that GPSW may be producing a cable to work with the Ram Motorcycle / Quest bracket that I got?

g

 

[Tomcat]

Thanks for the swift reply. My thought is that I'll sit in a cafe/bar in sunny France with a paper map, and pick out the nicest looking roads for the next section of a ride, then (this is the bit which led to my question) enter the route into the GPS. The problem I have now is that I can't (safely) read a map whilst riding (can't even find a decent way of holding one of the bike!) and I'm not good at navigating with TL, TR sort of route directions. So either I try to memorise the route (not good if in an unfamiliar area) or stop to look at a map (PITA, ruins the flow of a ride) or get rather lost. I don't mind getting a bit lost if I'm riding by myself but if I'm allegedly leading others on a run it can be embarrassing.

It sounds as though the Quest will do what I want of it, particularly if I can rig the audio directions into my helmet. Do you mostly use the on-screen directions or do you have an audio link? Does the backlight need to be on to make the screen readable in daylight?

TC

 

[RAM-man]

To Ram Man. Does that mean that GPSW may be producing a cable to work with the Ram Motorcycle / Quest bracket that I got?

YES - I ask a few weeks back for some input as to what was wanted. Suggest a trawl through other quest related threads in this forum to see the replies. Its believed only 4 pins are used (eg 2 pairs, power and audio), the thinking is the latter pair of pins is serial port connection (but this speculative and must treated as such).

update .. the Garmin Motorcycle Cradle (010-10610-00) has a cradle to adapt from car to bike use with a bare wire cable lets you connect the your unit to direct power, and the 2.5mm audio jack. The Garmin Motorcycle Cradle Kit DOES NOT include any mounting so anyone going down this route will need to use something such as a RAM-B-149Z mount, but until I see one or images of one, I reserve making the call. If anyone gets one in the next few weeks from USA - then let me know.


RAM-man

 

[schnauzer]

point on battery life on my quest.... switched it on at 09:00 Sunday morning at the start of a mountain bike ride, forgot to swith it off at the end of the ride, drove home, finally switched it off at around 08:00 monday morning and it was still ok........

 

[Mister G]

Tomcat,

have had a look at manual and can confirm my comments from work yesterday. Suggest you download electronic version of manual for Quest from Garmin website , you'll find the bit your after starting on page 24 of the manual (not page 28 of the whole PDF).
Page starts- 'planning and modifying routes' . - I bought my Quest with partly the same idea in mind.

For the record I don't use a headset/speaker arrangement so cannot bring anything to the table on it.

I do use the backlight - about 50 to 60% luminosity seems to be sufficient.
In a sunnier country or in on a clear day it may be different although when you first boot it up and get the warning message along the lines of 'fiddling with gadgets while trying drive/ride is not something we at Garmin can seriously endorse and therefore don't sue us if you crash -do you agree?(press ok)'- it IS hard to see.
One more point - it changes colour mode on the map after what it estimates to be nightfall in order to produce more visable lines and graphics in low light conditions . It's very clever and bases this decision on what time zone your in(although you can disable it if you don't like it).Oddly though ive never set the time on it , nor can I ,and yet it's almost always bang on. I guess it does this by using some the satelite data that it gets when triangulating your position - clever though.

Good luck with your decision making (and the minor roads in France.)

Ram Man - thanks again. I'll stick with the Ram bracket and carry on with the internal batteries for now. I'll keep an eye on this forum and will be in touch for a cable when it comes out.

Spring is one day closer !

g

 

[BurnieM]

It sets the screen colour based on the sunrise and sunset times (which it calculates).
You need to have the correct local time zone set first.

A lot of dealers will power the unit up, let it get a fix and set the timezone before they ship it out to you.
I work part time for a dealer in Oz and we do this (and also set metric units).

We used to get a calls about 'why does it think it is in Taiwan and why did it take so long to get a position ?' (because the factory tested them in Taiwan and it has moved more than a couple of hundred miles).
It used to take 20 minutes on the phone so now we just spend 5 minutes setting them up and they work as expected out of the box !
(Now we just get the odd call - 'why was the box opened?' DOH!)

 

[RAM-man]

Ram Man - thanks again. I'll stick with the Ram bracket and carry on with the internal batteries for now. I'll keep an eye on this forum and will be in touch for a cable when it comes out ".

I spoke to the GPSW cable maker guy yesterday who has now married it to the RAM GA15 cradle and can be used 'electrically' with an existing connector but it shall need a new connector casing. Its still some weeks away and I shall start a new forum thread on this subject when exacting details are known. The previous replies to the cable wish list have been considered and with V2.9 firmware shall remove the need of a volume control. A voltage regulator is needed and will be incorporated as an inline device unlike the Garmin bike mount kit where the cable is part of their kit (not a separate item) and the voltage regulator is in the holder casing.

RAM-man

 

[alecmuffett]

Bought a Quest ‘motorcycle bundle’ last week from GPSW in Feltham. Took one look at it compared to some of the other systems and it was much more ‘tidy’. With the extra value of city select v.6 thrown in I couldn’t say no – SOLD.

Can I ask how much?

 

[BurnieM]

http://www.gpsw.co.uk/details/prod2504.html