Who needs a BMW navigator.....

fred_jb said:

I think that would be technically and mechanically more complex, with possibly different operating systems for the different segments of the display to avoid unwanted interactions. It also means that the secondary display could not be sold separately as an upgrade. If you could buy the bike with just the current TFT instrument panel, then the only way to upgrade would be to remove that and replace with a combined unit rather than just add a secondary display.

Not making use of a phone and Apple Carplay or Google Auto to drive a secondary screen also has other drawbacks.

For a start it means BMW, who are not primarily a software house, if they are not going to piggyback off existing smartphone technology, are going to have to devise and maintain complex software to manage the required functionality for satnav, music playing, telephony, etc. Even if they do maintain the use of an app connected smartphone to drive these functions, we all know how poor they have been at making the current TFT work acceptably with many phones and headsets, so I wouldn't want to be an early adopter of such a system.

The other issue is that in this scenario the consumer only gets to use such functionality as BMW can either build into this mega display, or alternatively can get their in-house phone app to adequately support on that display - so don't expect to use your favourite satnav app on your phone, or your favourite music player app, etc, and have it passed through to the display by BMW's app.

In contrast, a separate secondary display dedicated to providing support for the automotive interfaces from Apple and Google would give consumers much more flexibility and choice in what they want to use, and these have massive resources behind their development and are likely to become the industry standards. I don't see BMW going it alone being able to compete with that, but I could be wrong - what do they use in their cars for this sort of thing?

Fred

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Lots of good points here.
In their cars BMW use their own software, but Auto Car play or Apples whatever play may be used.

I don't know what they will choose to do, but what ever it will be, I feel fairly certain that they will not call me for advice, so I am looking forward to see their choice.

knutk said:

Lots of good points here.
In their cars BMW use their own software, but Auto Car play or Apples whatever play may be used.

I don't know what they will choose to do, but what ever it will be, I feel fairly certain that they will not call me for advice, so I am looking forward to see their choice.

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Same here!

Been considering this myself for a few months. Thanks for sharing the setup pictures … I'm now convinced and have ordered the mirror mount (currently have a mount on my handlebars in the centre). My smartphone is waterproof and has been out in all weathers already. Just wish I could find a better charging lead to go with the Optimate power socket, but mustn't grumble (well not too much!).

fred_jb said:

For a start it means BMW, who are not primarily a software house,

Fred

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O they are a software house. Look at the current line up of cars. The amount of software and integration in all aspects of the car is incredible.
But even in the cars the type and size of your secondary display (even whether your main dash is analog or full digital) is all optional and an extra cost.
I would think they would like to keep this costly optional extra model of selling on the bikes as well.

The cars keep the infotainment separated from the canbus car controls so you don’t have those problems with a frozen Bluetooth connection stalling the engine. Though the wise and benevolent google is pushing hard for access to it but thankfully they are currently being refused (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/08/porsche_google_android_autho/)

I think it would only take a slightly bigger TFT with edge to edge display to provide a full nav screen and all of the other items. Like the cars if you want the bells and whistles you pay the for the subscriptions. Nice little extra yearly earner after you’ve paid top dollar for the bike.

Interesting, if rather scarey article! Thanks for the link.

I appreciate that lots of software/firmware goes into cars these days, but I don't think writing Android and IOS apps and dealing with the vagaries of Bluetooth are necessarily a core competence, at least not judging by efforts to date.

fred_jb said:

Interesting, if rather scarey article! Thanks for the link.

I appreciate that lots of software/firmware goes into cars these days, but I don't think writing Android and IOS apps and dealing with the vagaries of Bluetooth are necessarily a core competence, at least not judging by efforts to date.

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I work in IT so all of this interests me. Bluetooth has always been a problem. There are so many different standards of it and they need to be backwardly compatible with the older standards. On top of that some manufacturers seem to either do it a bit poorly or deliberately give it a little twist so it works better with their other kit.

I remember in one of my previous BMW cars my Nokia phone would not give any sound from the hands free kit, my Motorola phone would do calls but no phone book on the display. When I moved to iPhone it started to work more reliably. This current mess with some comms units not working with the TFT is exactly the same as ten years ago with the car and the phones.

Weird Bob said:

I work in IT so all of this interests me. Bluetooth has always been a problem. There are so many different standards of it and they need to be backwardly compatible with the older standards. On top of that some manufacturers seem to either do it a bit poorly or deliberately give it a little twist so it works better with their other kit.

I remember in one of my previous BMW cars my Nokia phone would not give any sound from the hands free kit, my Motorola phone would do calls but no phone book on the display. When I moved to iPhone it started to work more reliably. This current mess with some comms units not working with the TFT is exactly the same as ten years ago with the car and the phones.

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I work in IT too, though semi-retired now, so I know what you mean with Bluetooth. I think it has become grossly over-complicated with different profiles and data transmission channels. I think we need a general purpose short range connectivity protocol more like TCP/IP. Due to numerous problems I abandoned Bluetooth for a wired Autocom setup on my last GS, and this did exactly what I wanted in terms of allowing me and my wife to both hear GPS instructions as well as each other, but I have now decided to try Bluetooth again.

I bought some quite nice and inexpensive headsets, mainly on the basis that the manual indicated that anything paired with the rider headset would be automatically shared with the passenger once the intercom function was activated. Of course that was too good to be true, and didn't work. After getting in touch with the Chinese manufacturers, who to be fair have been very helpful and responsive, it turns out that only stuff the rider is hearing via an HFP profile will be shared so if you play music and run a GPS app on your phone which will pair using the A2DP profile, then you are out of luck, and in fact even the rider can't hear this stuff while the intercom is on. Once I explained what I wanted to do, to my surprise they have produced a beta firmware release which lets the rider and passenger hear A2DP sources while the intercom is active. Unfortunately although the rider audio is fine, the passenger gets a crackly and distorted version, so not there yet!

fred_jb said:

I work in IT too, though semi-retired now, so I know what you mean with Bluetooth. I think it has become grossly over-complicated with different profiles and data transmission channels. I think we need a general purpose short range connectivity protocol more like TCP/IP. Due to numerous problems I abandoned Bluetooth for a wired Autocom setup on my last GS, and this did exactly what I wanted in terms of allowing me and my wife to both hear GPS instructions as well as each other, but I have now decided to try Bluetooth again.

I bought some quite nice and inexpensive headsets, mainly on the basis that the manual indicated that anything paired with the rider headset would be automatically shared with the passenger once the intercom function was activated. Of course that was too good to be true, and didn't work. After getting in touch with the Chinese manufacturers, who to be fair have been very helpful and responsive, it turns out that only stuff the rider is hearing via an HFP profile will be shared so if you play music and run a GPS app on your phone which will pair using the A2DP profile, then you are out of luck, and in fact even the rider can't hear this stuff while the intercom is on. Once I explained what I wanted to do, to my surprise they have produced a beta firmware release which lets the rider and passenger hear A2DP sources while the intercom is active. Unfortunately although the rider audio is fine, the passenger gets a crackly and distorted version, so not there yet!

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The whole IT thing has gone mad if you ask me. This rush to have new features and a new UI every 4 months with out ever properly testing everything is driving me mad.
I got a new Arai RX7 lid to replace my Tour-x 3 (they currently don’t make the tour-x4 in a big enough shell for me - eek) and I’m on the hunt for a new comms unit as the cardo G9 I have doesn’t work for calls with the TFT so I’m trying to find which ones definitely work.

Weird Bob said:

The whole IT thing has gone mad if you ask me. This rush to have new features and a new UI every 4 months with out ever properly testing everything is driving me mad.
I got a new Arai RX7 lid to replace my Tour-x 3 (they currently don’t make the tour-x4 in a big enough shell for me - eek) and I’m on the hunt for a new comms unit as the cardo G9 I have doesn’t work for calls with the TFT so I’m trying to find which ones definitely work.

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I'm probably not even going to try interfacing with the TFT when I get my 1250GS! I will just keep it simple and use it purely as the bike's instrument panel and settings menu interface. I don't make or take calls while riding, and very rarely listen to music, even in the car, but if I want to I can get music off the phone I am using as a GPS in place of the BMW Nav. The MyRoute Navigation app I am running automatically mutes music when it outputs a navigation instruction, so that is all I need really.

However, I want to be able to hear the GPS instructions at the same time as having the intercom live to my wife. Ideally I also want her to hear the instructions too. That way, she can help with the navigation if I am unsure or was preoccupied with a traffic situation when the GPS instruction was given. I don't see that as an unusual or unreasonable requirement, yet the only thing I have found so far that can do this is the old style wired Autocom system.

My previous Sena units would just mute the intercom when a GPS instruction was received so my wife wouldn't hear the GPS instructions and would carry on talking to me, unaware that I was no longer hearing her due to the GPS, though strangely the Senas could share music from the rider's heatset to the passenger.

The beta software on the new headsets (Dimton M1-S) is getting close to what I want, but I'm not sure that the nature of the Bluetooth intercom link will ever let the Dimton engineers pass good quality stereo audio to the passenger as they are effectively taking an incoming A2DP stream and translating it to go over the link to the passenger which uses HFP. At the moment, with the beta software, what the passenger headset hears is intermittent and poor quality so we would be better off without it.

As an alternative, I am going to try using a walkie-talkie Bluetooth adapter which I am pretty sure uses the HFP profile. By plugging this into my phone's headphone/mic socket and pairing the headset to that rather than the phone, I should get music and GPS instructions sent over an HFP channel (albeit in glorious low bit rate mono) to the rider headset which I already know can share such streams reliably with the passenger headset.

The bluetooth standard was designed to be a straighforward way to allow devices to comminicate with each other.

Unfortunatly not everybody who has the standard followed it fully or correctly.

Look at how many devices, only used a mono audio channel or didnt impliment fully the correct profile for AD2P

Dont get me started on SW/HW willy waving lol

I commute to work on the bike and as I’m lucky enough to mostly choose my own hours I need to be able to hear and answer the phone in the event somethings gone Pete Tong

Weird Bob said:

I commute to work on the bike and as I’m lucky enough to mostly choose my own hours I need to be able to hear and answer the phone in the event somethings gone Pete Tong

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Yes I understand that - the dreaded IT support call which means they've probably already tried rebooting it but it's still broken!

Funnily enough taking phone calls from a paired phone is one thing my new headset does well, and it seems the phone uses the HFP profile when passing a call to a headset, as I found that if I accept the call on the screen of the phone it will share it with the passenger with no audio quality issues. I'm told that you have to answer with the headset button in order for it to be not shared. I've no idea what it would do with calls routed through the bike's TFT - I guess it depends how well the TFT can pretend to be a phone!

Ive got a Nav 6....its ace

I can see the buttons i am using to type...........Cant see a fecking thing on my phone

Santa-2512 said:

The bluetooth standard was designed to be a straighforward way to allow devices to comminicate with each other.

Unfortunatly not everybody who has the standard followed it fully or correctly.

Look at how many devices, only used a mono audio channel or didnt impliment fully the correct profile for AD2P

Dont get me started on SW/HW willy waving lol

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For anyone who has been following this part of the discussion and has had similar problems to me in getting instructions from a phone based GPS app into their BT headset, while also using it as an intercom, I've now found an excellent Android app called Dynamic Media BT Mono Router which can be found here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/...koch.dynamicmediabtrouter&showAllReviews=true

This app can be switched on manually or can be set to switch on when it detects a headset connecting. I've have tried a few similar apps before, but none worked properly. What the app does is force any audio on the phone to be routed out using the hands free Bluetooth profile (HFP) in the same way that a phone call would be. The normal way phones would connect over Bluetooth to play media such as music or GPS instructions would be using the A2DP profile which requires more resources from the headset and is treated differently.

For example my Dimton M1-S headsets can pass HFP audio from rider to passenger at the same time as maintaining the intercom function between them, but if the incoming audio is in the A2DP profile it cannot be heard by rider or passenger while the intercom is active, and can only be heard by the rider when the intercom is off. This app now allows both rider and passenger to hear phone based GPS instructions while also keeping the intercom link open, which is exactly what I was after.

I can also play music through this link albeit in lower quality compared to the normal A2DP profile, and in mono. For some reason music quality seems a little better if I set the phone to output in mono itself via the accessibility settings.

Fred

Went out today in the peak district, had fog, and bright sunshine - Galaxy S9 running TomTom Go.

Even in winter sunshine the screen was readable, in fact it I would say it was better than any BMW Nav used to date.

Very pleased.

Interesting thread but I have to admit to losing the will to live with some of the techy stuff.

Me? I use an older dedicated sat nav but I'm not sure I would have bought it had it not come with the bike tbh.

I keep the maps up to date but it still gets confused, especially in cities and considers some very unsuitable tracks as decent routes. That said it basically does the job but annoyingly, tends to fail, in my eyes least near your destination when you're knackered already and just need a cold beer

Quite often I need to use Google maps to find my accommodation as my sat nav seems clueless.

I've always been interested in geography so aiming in the direction of a particular area or city has never really been a problem even sans sat nav however I tend to tote a general area paper map to back up my spidey senses.

I'm attracted to the idea of using phone only in future but looking at replacing bike with another fitted with the turn by turn nav app in the TFT.

Is it any good?

Not wanting to get into the debate of GPS unit vs. Phone......could the chaps with ram mount and/or quad lock set ups give me their thoughts on the following 2 set up options:

1. Quad lock (only) handle bar kit with extension arm

2. Ram mounts handlebar base + 3" double socket arm + quad lock 1" ball mount adaptor

I'm looking to attach this to my handlebars.

In addition, is there alot of vibration experienced?


Thx

i have a GS with quadlock attached to the sat nav bar using the mirror mount.

Also have a quadlock stuck to my car windscreen. Both rock solid.

Have used Ram mounts with satnavs and a again rock solid

hope it helps

malcopopolo said:

i have a GS with quadlock attached to the sat nav bar using the mirror mount.

Also have a quadlock stuck to my car windscreen. Both rock solid.

Have used Ram mounts with satnavs and a again rock solid

hope it helps

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Thanks for the reply....was a little unsure as to how 'robust' the quad lock plastic components are, hence why I'm considering the ram handlebar mount/socket arm.

What's your feedback of the quad lock phone case?

Very good quality..
It just does the job well

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