Satellite navigation problems

I must say for me the sat nav works fine, the ETA is pretty accurate and the routing seems fine. Have u switched on the TMC option? That then shows little yellow arrows when congestion occurs on the map. If you touch the yellow areas it brings up a box on the right that shows the incident. When that happens it will offer to reroute you and that can happen a few times, unless you switch it off. If you switch off TMC then the reroute stops. The POI stuff is pretty good as well, found food and petrol when needed.

One option I am not sure many people find is that if you put your finger on the map a little circle appears and you can 'browse' the map by pushing the circle in the direction you want.

So if I want to check out congestion on my route, I scale the map right out, then browse my route and look for the little arrows that show congestion.

The display in the center console display shows turnings as you come up to them, otherwise there is no display of navigation.

When you select the route you get multiple options which you can switch between, if your settings are wrong, then it tries to route you off the motorways onto A roads, so just check all your navigation settings are right. It kept diverting me off until I sorted out the preferences, all under Navigation/settings.

I also use a backup by calling the Rac traffic line!

The best function is the 'take me home' button on the home screen, no matter where I am, it's sort of comforting to just press home, and get back.

(15-05-2012 10:15pm)Martynk Wrote:  I must say for me the sat nav works fine, the ETA is pretty accurate and the routing seems fine. Have u switched on the TMC option? That then shows little yellow arrows when congestion occurs on the map. If you touch the yellow areas it brings up a box on the right that shows the incident. When that happens it will offer to reroute you and that can happen a few times, unless you switch it off. If you switch off TMC then the reroute stops. The POI stuff is pretty good as well, found food and petrol when needed.

One option I am not sure many people find is that if you put your finger on the map a little circle appears and you can 'browse' the map by pushing the circle in the direction you want.

So if I want to check out congestion on my route, I scale the map right out, then browse my route and look for the little arrows that show congestion.

The display in the center console display shows turnings as you come up to them, otherwise there is no display of navigation.

When you select the route you get multiple options which you can switch between, if your settings are wrong, then it tries to route you off the motorways onto A roads, so just check all your navigation settings are right. It kept diverting me off until I sorted out the preferences, all under Navigation/settings.

I also use a backup by calling the Rac traffic line!

The best function is the 'take me home' button on the home screen, no matter where I am, it's sort of comforting to just press home, and get back.

Very helpful reply, thanks, but what settings do you use to avoid being diverted to 'A' roads - specifically!

As regards 'take me home', that's OK till someone pinches you car and/or keys, after which they also know where you live!

For that reason, Take Me Home should never be set to your home address - set it to the centre of town or somewhere nearby that you can get home from .... without the use of the satnav.

(15-05-2012 11:13pm)Donny Dog Wrote:  As regards 'take me home', that's OK till someone pinches you car and/or keys, after which they also know where you live!

I've set my "home" for about half a mile away ......... that should confuse the little tea leaves..........

I should have added - yes I set my 'take me home' to another location.

As for settings - What I have is on the Nav menu go to 'settings' - then at the bottom left it says 'more' press that and get 'Nav Setup' and then 'user settings' tick all the boxes you think are relevant. You can also look at the 'quick POI' button to see what POI's you want displayed on the map.

touch the 'return' arrow at the top left, and go to the 'TMC' menu, here you can switch on and off the displays for the TMC events, which are the little red and yellow arrows that show congestion. If you want to stop getting rerouting then switch off the 'Avoid TMC events'

Return to the main options and select 'Route Options' - I have 'learn route' and 'easy route' switched on, return and go to 'route preferences' . On my system I have everything ticked apart from 'ferry, car train' and that seems to work for me.

When you get multiple route options presented its quite confusing to to look at but there a couple of things you can do:

On the right you have Route Preferences displayed, these reflect your choices in setup, and if you press the little 'i' button, it will take you to the preferences screen.

When you press 'destination' it will take you to the summary route map, and present you with any route options. SO for example if it shows three routes, then you can press the '3 routes' button and it will show the three options on the right. You can then press the little 'i' button and it will summarise the three routes (although I am not sure that seems to work that well)

When you have the list of routes on the right, you can click each one and it will show on the map the chosen, but dont forget when you click it, it will show the route, then you will need to go back to the '3 routes' again to show the other routes.

On the left is the 'scale' - you can use this to zoom in on your chosen route, and then use your finger and the little circle that appears, to browse the route, moving around to see any congestion, and exactly where it is taking you.

It all sounds complex, but its pretty easy to zoom around when you know it - I only ever use the first route which is generally the fastest, and I think the problem with a route choosing A roads is just one of the setup options, as I had the same problem by default when I got the RR.

Sticking up for the RR sat nav, its as good as any I have had, and I like the TMC option, and I quite like when it tells me a problem is coming up and wants to re-route me, although at that point I call the RAC traffic (64644) and see what they say about any Jam, and pull out the paper map just to check a re-route. Well nothings perfect!

(16-05-2012 09:31am)Martynk Wrote:  As for settings - What I have is on the Nav menu go to 'settings' - then at the bottom left it says 'more' press that and get 'Nav Setup' and then 'user settings' tick all the boxes you think are relevant. You can also look at the 'quick POI' button to see what POI's you want displayed on the map.

touch the 'return' arrow at the top left, and go to the 'TMC' menu, here you can switch on and off the displays for the TMC events, which are the little red and yellow arrows that show congestion. If you want to stop getting rerouting then switch off the 'Avoid TMC events'

Return to the main options and select 'Route Options' - I have 'learn route' and 'easy route' switched on, return and go to 'route preferences' . On my system I have everything ticked apart from 'ferry, car train' and that seems to work for me.

Thanks for your help. I have my sat. nav. set up as you describe, but it still insists on taking me off the motorway (presumably - though I remain unconvinced - via a shorter route in distance regardless of the quality of the roads).

The 'Master Technician' at my dealership says that there is no way to force it to choose the motorway route, and has suggested that I include way points that are on the motorway en route.

The TMC appears to be active (and is also set as you describe) but still failed to advise me of a major (and long-standing, as it turned out) hold-up on the M1 even when I had reached the back of the (15 mile) queue.

Uh OK - shame, dunno why it will not give you the route you want as an option, I think the TMC is a bit hit and miss, so as I said I always check the traffic reports anyway.

I think the general advise from the police is to set 'home' as the nearest police station.
I do this, and then have my actual home set up as a favourite on my Tomtom (obviously not listed as home).

I'll be doing the same when the RRE arrives.

After a week with the Satnav and coming from a position of 'underwhelmed' because of several years of Audi MMI systems I have to grudgingly admit that the RRE's effort is actually rather good - it's a bit behind in the map graphical display department (but if you liked a TomTom then you will be happy) but beyond that it's very useable.

I find the daytime white backgrounds to the maps a bit unimaginative but poking around in the satnav settings I found an option to make it run in 'night mode' permanent - the maps have a grey back ground.

(16-05-2012 01:32pm)Donny Dog Wrote:  Thanks for your help. I have my sat. nav. set up as you describe, but it still insists on taking me off the motorway (presumably - though I remain unconvinced - via a shorter route in distance regardless of the quality of the roads).

The 'Master Technician' at my dealership says that there is no way to force it to choose the motorway route, and has suggested that I include way points that are on the motorway en route.

The TMC appears to be active (and is also set as you describe) but still failed to advise me of a major (and long-standing, as it turned out) hold-up on the M1 even when I had reached the back of the (15 mile) queue.

DDog, I live in Newcastle (North Tyneside) and often drive south for work (in fact its just about every week), on a a few occasions the Nav has sent me off down the A19 as opposed to the A1, on all of these occasions theier have been significant delays on the A1 around Newcaslte, for all intents and purposes I think the Navigation system is OK and is certainly a usable unit.

When people compare Tomtom and other PN Devices to the ICE OEM Navigration in RRE they should consider that these PN manfucturers often have a shorter development cycle, and they can easily ship a new more technologically advanced unit every few months (look at the Tomtom Live Series, new device every 6 months), these newer units will have better CPU, SAT Reciever, and Live Streaming Data, in the case of ICE OEM Units, these are not modular, the CPU/SAT Recievers cannot be easily replaced and oftern are integrated into the ICE systems, this implies that the developers of these systems (for LR it is Navman) have a finite system resource available this implies that ICE OEM Navigation systems will never be as up to date or as technologically advanced as the "Off the Shelf" Tomtom or Garmin's of this world, however they dont leave a sticky smudge on the windscreen.