….. and a first go with a TFT screen.
First off, I like the TFT screen on my 850 GSA. It has its faults but on the whole it’s not bad.
My bike also has the mount for my Navigator VI, so I have the option of using the Connected app or the Navigstor VI or both, made easier as I discovered that by holding the TFT screen’s toggle switch ‘up’ I can switch the whirly wheel controller to control either the TFT screen or the device or visa-versa. That alone is quite neat.
I loaded the Connected app onto my iPhone and then synced the phone to the TFT screen, via Bluetooth. That was fairly seamless. Noticing that my phone battery was nearly flat, I took the opportunity to connect the phone to a charging brick and dumped the pair of them in the top box. Normally I would have put them both in my tank bag but was unable to…. But that’s another story. The beginner’s mistake was to assume that the Bluetooth would penetrate the metal top box. After 100 hards, the TFT screen lost contact with the phone, so that was the end of that idea, it seems. I do have a soft tail bag, so I’ll give it a go in that at some point.
Having stopped to then put the phone and brick into me jacket, contact between the phone and the TFT screen was re-established in seconds. As I had stopped, I thought I might as well see how the navigation worked. The app is reasonably intuitive, once you discover that you have to download the detailed maps onto the phone. My corner of SE England downloaded via 4G in about three minutes. I then just put Chelmsford into the app as a destination, fastest route, allowing motorways. Not surprisingly, it routed me out to The Highway, then down the A13, then anti-clockwise on the M25, then up the A12 to Chelmsford. Just as an experiment I went off route deliberately a couple of times; each time the app recalculated the route very quickly. Having got to Chelmsford, I stopped the route on the app but left it recording my onwards progress. I then navigated myself from Chelmsford, up the B roads to Walkers cafe at Mildenhall in Suffolk. The app recorded the track of my journey perfectly.
At Walkers, I mucked around in the app a bit more, by giving it access to my phone’s camera. I snapped a couple of pictures, which all but instantly appeared in the app, embedded into the recording. Again, pretty neat.
My next stop was going to be in Kimbolton, about 50 miles away. I know the way on the B roads, so I decided to ask the app to take me from Walkers to Kinbolton, avoiding motorways (there aren’t any, unless the A1(m) counts) avoiding any unmade roads and reasonably ‘twisty’. The app very quickly offered up a route, which wasn’t bad. I then asked it to take me to Kimbolton but this time putting the slider of the ‘wiggly roads’ setting to maximum. Again, the app calculated the route very fast. I decided to give it a go. Bar a couple of silly debtors where the algorithm did a ‘wiggle’ for the sake of doing a ‘wiggle’, it was pretty good, taking me down some Suffolk roads past Ely, scarcely a car and a half wide. Again I went off route a couple of times; each time the recalculation was very fast.
I don’t have earphones in my helmet, so I didn’t have any voice commands, only the simple direction of travel and turn-by-turn symbols displayed (very clearly) on the TFT screen. Here, there is a bit of an issue:
1. If you run the TFT screen in full view navigation mode, the current speed shown is reduced to quite modestly sized numbers. That is no big issue. What though you do lose is the rev counter. I like the rev counter. You can get around this by switching to full instrument mode, where the turn by turn is shrunk. I didn’t like this quite so much, though I might just need to get used to it. What I think is that the entire system is built around the assumption that the rider will also have the voice prompts running.
2. The direction of travel at a roundabout is a bit odd but OK when you get used to it. The classic roundabout symbol is very clear but it always shows ‘straight on’. What you have to look at is the little number next to the symbol, giving you the number for the exit road. For example, a roundabout with three exits at 9, 12 and 3 pm (with you entering at 6) will be numbered by the app, 1, 2, 3. Again, it’s quite possible that a voice command would say ‘Take the third exit’, I guess?
3. The turn instructions are very clear with the road numbers or names, very well displayed. Where it sometimes falls down, at least without the voice commands is, for example:
Imagine coming up a B road, to a T junction with a fast A road, running at right angles. The screen shows turn right onto the A road, which is fine. What it doesn’t tell you is that after say 20 yards, you have to turn left off the A road, onto another B road. This can create a problem, especially if you have cracked the throttle open on the A road! Had a map been displayed, or even a symbol that it was a direction of travel across a staggered junction, it would be much better. Again, a voice command might say, “At the junction turn right, then immediately turn left”, I guess? That way at least you’d be ready for it. I use my Nav VI without sound, relying on the map (and a bit of zooming) to show me the direction of travel. I suppose the new 1600 with its larger split-screen TFT, is able to show a map and the routing directions at the same time? I guess as well I could double up with phone’s screen if I mounted that on the bars…. But I am no big fan of stuff bolted on.
I haven’t yet tried to create a route in BaseCamp on my Mac and send it to the Connected app, though I see no reason why it shouldn’t work smoothly. Similarly, I haven’t yet tried downloading the recording of my day’s travels from the app onto my Mac and into BaseCamp. Again, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. Whether the pictures come across as some sort of ‘Favourite’ or Waypoint, I’ll have to see, too.
Conclusions:
The app and my first experience of a TFT screen was overall, positive.
The routing algorithm seems pretty good. I have never asked a device to give me a ‘twisty route’ before, so I had no idea what to expect. The sliding scale, so that you can emphasise or not the level of twisties seems to work, the offered up routes changing quite significantly.
Marks so far: 7.5 / 8 out of 10. That may well get better as I get more used to it all. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised.
If you rely entirely on your phone and the app, you’d be buggered if your phone went flat or it broke or you lost it down the bog. That being said, modern phones are pretty reliable, providing they do not get jolted to death.
PS I have a big iPhone, so I’ll download the full set of European maps, over the internet. I wonder how often they update? The map structure and download looks very similar to that of Pocket Earth Pro on my iPad, which update quite regularly.
First off, I like the TFT screen on my 850 GSA. It has its faults but on the whole it’s not bad.
My bike also has the mount for my Navigator VI, so I have the option of using the Connected app or the Navigstor VI or both, made easier as I discovered that by holding the TFT screen’s toggle switch ‘up’ I can switch the whirly wheel controller to control either the TFT screen or the device or visa-versa. That alone is quite neat.
I loaded the Connected app onto my iPhone and then synced the phone to the TFT screen, via Bluetooth. That was fairly seamless. Noticing that my phone battery was nearly flat, I took the opportunity to connect the phone to a charging brick and dumped the pair of them in the top box. Normally I would have put them both in my tank bag but was unable to…. But that’s another story. The beginner’s mistake was to assume that the Bluetooth would penetrate the metal top box. After 100 hards, the TFT screen lost contact with the phone, so that was the end of that idea, it seems. I do have a soft tail bag, so I’ll give it a go in that at some point.
Having stopped to then put the phone and brick into me jacket, contact between the phone and the TFT screen was re-established in seconds. As I had stopped, I thought I might as well see how the navigation worked. The app is reasonably intuitive, once you discover that you have to download the detailed maps onto the phone. My corner of SE England downloaded via 4G in about three minutes. I then just put Chelmsford into the app as a destination, fastest route, allowing motorways. Not surprisingly, it routed me out to The Highway, then down the A13, then anti-clockwise on the M25, then up the A12 to Chelmsford. Just as an experiment I went off route deliberately a couple of times; each time the app recalculated the route very quickly. Having got to Chelmsford, I stopped the route on the app but left it recording my onwards progress. I then navigated myself from Chelmsford, up the B roads to Walkers cafe at Mildenhall in Suffolk. The app recorded the track of my journey perfectly.
At Walkers, I mucked around in the app a bit more, by giving it access to my phone’s camera. I snapped a couple of pictures, which all but instantly appeared in the app, embedded into the recording. Again, pretty neat.
My next stop was going to be in Kimbolton, about 50 miles away. I know the way on the B roads, so I decided to ask the app to take me from Walkers to Kinbolton, avoiding motorways (there aren’t any, unless the A1(m) counts) avoiding any unmade roads and reasonably ‘twisty’. The app very quickly offered up a route, which wasn’t bad. I then asked it to take me to Kimbolton but this time putting the slider of the ‘wiggly roads’ setting to maximum. Again, the app calculated the route very fast. I decided to give it a go. Bar a couple of silly debtors where the algorithm did a ‘wiggle’ for the sake of doing a ‘wiggle’, it was pretty good, taking me down some Suffolk roads past Ely, scarcely a car and a half wide. Again I went off route a couple of times; each time the recalculation was very fast.
I don’t have earphones in my helmet, so I didn’t have any voice commands, only the simple direction of travel and turn-by-turn symbols displayed (very clearly) on the TFT screen. Here, there is a bit of an issue:
1. If you run the TFT screen in full view navigation mode, the current speed shown is reduced to quite modestly sized numbers. That is no big issue. What though you do lose is the rev counter. I like the rev counter. You can get around this by switching to full instrument mode, where the turn by turn is shrunk. I didn’t like this quite so much, though I might just need to get used to it. What I think is that the entire system is built around the assumption that the rider will also have the voice prompts running.
2. The direction of travel at a roundabout is a bit odd but OK when you get used to it. The classic roundabout symbol is very clear but it always shows ‘straight on’. What you have to look at is the little number next to the symbol, giving you the number for the exit road. For example, a roundabout with three exits at 9, 12 and 3 pm (with you entering at 6) will be numbered by the app, 1, 2, 3. Again, it’s quite possible that a voice command would say ‘Take the third exit’, I guess?
3. The turn instructions are very clear with the road numbers or names, very well displayed. Where it sometimes falls down, at least without the voice commands is, for example:
Imagine coming up a B road, to a T junction with a fast A road, running at right angles. The screen shows turn right onto the A road, which is fine. What it doesn’t tell you is that after say 20 yards, you have to turn left off the A road, onto another B road. This can create a problem, especially if you have cracked the throttle open on the A road! Had a map been displayed, or even a symbol that it was a direction of travel across a staggered junction, it would be much better. Again, a voice command might say, “At the junction turn right, then immediately turn left”, I guess? That way at least you’d be ready for it. I use my Nav VI without sound, relying on the map (and a bit of zooming) to show me the direction of travel. I suppose the new 1600 with its larger split-screen TFT, is able to show a map and the routing directions at the same time? I guess as well I could double up with phone’s screen if I mounted that on the bars…. But I am no big fan of stuff bolted on.
I haven’t yet tried to create a route in BaseCamp on my Mac and send it to the Connected app, though I see no reason why it shouldn’t work smoothly. Similarly, I haven’t yet tried downloading the recording of my day’s travels from the app onto my Mac and into BaseCamp. Again, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. Whether the pictures come across as some sort of ‘Favourite’ or Waypoint, I’ll have to see, too.
Conclusions:
The app and my first experience of a TFT screen was overall, positive.
The routing algorithm seems pretty good. I have never asked a device to give me a ‘twisty route’ before, so I had no idea what to expect. The sliding scale, so that you can emphasise or not the level of twisties seems to work, the offered up routes changing quite significantly.
Marks so far: 7.5 / 8 out of 10. That may well get better as I get more used to it all. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised.
If you rely entirely on your phone and the app, you’d be buggered if your phone went flat or it broke or you lost it down the bog. That being said, modern phones are pretty reliable, providing they do not get jolted to death.
PS I have a big iPhone, so I’ll download the full set of European maps, over the internet. I wonder how often they update? The map structure and download looks very similar to that of Pocket Earth Pro on my iPad, which update quite regularly.