Tabnav 2

Santa-2512

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Following on from Tabnav1

I now give you Tabnav 2

Right following on from Tabnav1 back in 2018, I wanted to to try something else

Tabnav 1 worked, but failed at the last hurdle (battery life) and I wanted to see if I could improve upon it

For those who don’t know Tabnav 1 was using a Nexus 7 tablet as an on bike Satnav

So 2 years later I wanted to try something new - Tabnav 2

Why? Some of you bound to ask?

One of downsides of getting older is that at 20 odd, you can see the individual pixels on a phone / tablet screen , at double that age, and some, fonts 5mm high, are pretty much illegible without glasses, and for most its only age related vision problems, so whilst the near vision deteriorates, the long distance is fine

So what do you do? varifocals, bifocals , half frames - all work, but are another item to factor into the essential kit lol

The tablet covers a number of bases (Phone, camera, email, and if you get bored Netflix, Prime, etc) As well as providing an easily readable Satnav solution

So after amassing all the relevant parts, I assembled them into the Tabnav 2 package

Tablet - Samsung Galaxy tab active

This is a semi ruggedised tablet, big rubber bumper all round with stylus holder built In,

IP67 rated, so should be shower / rain proof ( I gambled this based on the location on bike )


Mount - Brodit T365 mount

For those of you who don’t know Brodit, they are the RAM equivalent for mounting sSolutions for cars & bikes

If you want a fit once and forget mount to fit your phone to your car- Brodit is the supplier of choice, all there stuff literally is seamless fit; rarely do you

need tape and Velcro lol

One thing to make you aware – if your buying Brodit stuff, Ebay isn’t always the cheapest by a country mile

The cheapest I could find the T365 mount on ebay was over £90. Direct from Brodit was £54 - I got it for about £23 using some Amazon vouchers ;)


Assembly

This is WIP so not perfected (waiting on parts )

The mount comes with a Brodit swivel mount fitted, perfectly ok for lightweight applications, so going on bike, I wanted sturdy

Luckily the bolt spacing is std, and will match a Ram ball mount, so Ram ball fitted and unit mounted on bike using a short arm to a bar mount ball on

the existing Nav bracket. I fitted the unit in the Landscape view to give me the most screen estate

Comparisons

I’ve compared the Nexus to the Samsung, so you can see the difference

Physically the unit’s aren’t to dissimilar, but the screen estate from 7” to 8” does give a huge benefit

Fitting to the bike was straightforward, with the whole assembly occupying the space in front of the OE nav mount (backup) ;)

As I have a Din power take off front right, running a short lead to a dual din USB plug was straight forward.

I checked the power draw using a dongle, and it was well within the capacity of the plug

So all assembled onto the bike it was time to test.

Known problems

One of the big problems with tft screens is visibility,

Unless you’re running an OLED screen, they do tend to get washed out in bright sunlight. So invariably a shade is required.

Not so much of a problem on a 7” tablet but an 8” is a different kettle of fish.

Very few dedicated 8” units around (I have an extendable on route from China arriving next month)

However with running this as a powered unit, you can whack the brightness to full, and it makes the screen visibility very good

Testing

I set a route of about 20 miles from home -

Up to to Goodwood racecourse and over the downs, to see how it would perform

I tried the following Nav packages for visibility, screen estate & audio feedback & interaction

I loaded Spottify & a playlist onto the Tab, and streamed from there.

I used my Sena 30k, and synced as follows

Connections


Sena to phone - for the phone side of things

Tab to headset as GPS unit

I ran spotty from the tab, and playback in the headset was fine as was gps audio from all of the software tried


Road trial


I also tried an app called digi HUD, which was meant to be a configurable full screen speedo , which can be resized, and overlaid over any nav package to give a more accessible speedo, however I couldn’t get it to work on first outing so this needs further work

Home to Goodwood using Waze

One of the std phone nav packages so that got first crack at the cherry

Screen estate – busy, too busy

Although the screen was great, there was too much onscreen, and 3D views of the buildings are pretty pointless, when all you want is navigation, and once out into less built up areas, the map zoomed out too far to give you an indication of where you were
Voice prompts were ok but again, slightly too much info provided. Almost spoon fed.

Goodwood to Chichester using HereWeGo

Screen estate – clean & clear
Compared to Waze it’s a revelation,

Not to cluttered, wide flat map, with the next route step discretely upper left corner
Speed bottom left and miles remaining

Voice prompts,
Oh god, it’s like having a posh Mrs Brown telling you where to go,
Apart from the distinct burr, it doesn’t shut up, it’s on something I swear, it doesn’t just give you next junction lol, you get chapter and verse

I was joining the A27, at Chichester -

I got “Take the next left, turn A27 to Chichichester, Petworth, Midhurst (say what!!)
Very detailed but grating.

I stopped at the Pass for a drink - for those who don’t know its gourmet food from a van ;)

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Resta...Food_Cafe-Chichester_West_Sussex_England.html

A quick drink and a change of software to

Home using -Co Pilot

I’ve used Co pilot before, so I like the screen layout it is a fairly clear screen with next direction located bottom left, voice prompts were clear and in
good time It’s a nice nav setup so I can’t complain


What’s next –

I still have the following packages to try

Tom Tom Go

Tom Tom Amigo (formally TomTom speed camera’s)

Mapfactor Navigator


Roll on tomorrow ;)

I also want to try running Spotty from the phone & making calls

I have some spare Giff Gaff Sims, I might try too to see what the phone side of things is like as well.
 

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