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OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders?OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders?Posted Feb 26, 2009 10:14 UTC (Thu) by debacle (subscriber, #7114)Parent article: Microsoft sues TomTom If any? (For environmental reasons I refuse to own or drive a car.)
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OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 11:33 UTC (Thu) by giggls (subscriber, #48434) [Link]
At the Moment tehre are two Options to use Data from Openstreetmap (http://www.oepnstreetmap.org):
1. Go for a Linux based device and Navit (http://navit.sf.net)
2. Any Garmin device, as their proprietary Map Format (.img) has been reverse engineered.
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 14:58 UTC (Thu) by gerv (subscriber, #3376) [Link]
Sadly, .img is not yet fully reverse-engineered. It's a compound format, and the sub-part which indexes street names is not yet fully known. So you can't search by street name or postcode, only POI.
It would be great if someone could look into this.
Gerv
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 11:36 UTC (Thu) by shane (subscriber, #3335) [Link]
Since the founders of the company are Dutch, and they have a big office in downtown Amsterdam, I would have been shocked if they did not have support for cyclists, since a typical Amsterdam street looks like this:
http://focused.nl/gallery/4958201_9Andv#271713147_3ZQa5
Googling for "tom-tom bicycle" turned up this as the first link:
http://www.tomtom.com/products/category.php?ID=1
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 14:14 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
The imagery at least suggests that they intend this range for motorcycles. It really wants an audio link to the helmet so that you can hear instructions, rather than constantly look at the screen (and get yourself killed). Most bicyclists don't wear a full crash helmet, and certainly not one expensive enough to justify adding a headphone connection.
For pedestrians software solutions on a handheld GPS or smartphone are probably more sensible than anything related to TomTom's technology. I don't know about cycling because I haven't done it in anger for years. If you like to support Free/Open things then look at OpenStreetmap.org and see what's available in the way of route-planning for the OSM platform.
TomTom is keyed around a motorist's needs. e.g. TomTom offers hundreds of meters of warning for a turn, an unnecessarily long warning for a pedestrian but just about right for a car or motorcycle; and it can re-plan a route very quickly after you miss a turn. But a pedestrian who misses a turn simply turns around and fixes their error, only motor vehicles on roads where U-turns are forbidden need this feature.
Also (and this a big win for OSM) most commercial devices including TomTom don't care about routes which aren't open to motor vehicles. So if you ride a horse, walk or even in some cases cycle, the TomTom dataset is missing your fastest and best options a lot of the time. A lot of OSM is compiled by hikers and cyclists so it has many of those routes even in built-up areas where they're not well reflected in official maps.
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 17:57 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] Actually, using TomTom I recently navigated through the center of Amsterdam by foot without any problems, eager to get some Indian food.Of course, it led me and my girlfriend straight into the Red Light district (the restaurant was called "Kamasutra", which we thought was funny), but technically it was a very good experience.
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 14:14 UTC (Thu) by klaasjan (guest, #5492) [Link]
You can put most navigation units into "cyclist mode" and there are lots of aftermarket mounts available to fix a nav unit to about any object. Availability of maps containing the smaller roads can be a problem though.
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 26, 2009 20:31 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] Probably any of them. My TomTom One supports walking routes, that's what you need.
OT: Which Tom-Tom for pedestrians/bicycle riders? Posted Feb 27, 2009 4:44 UTC (Fri) by Burgundavia (guest, #25172) [Link]
Except that most of the vehicle GPSes are not designed to get rained on or take any kind of shocks, which are key needs for a bicycle-based system. This is why I use my old Garmin 76Cs instead of my N810 on my bike.
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