Polaris GPS

Do you need a built-in system?

You can buy a Hema Navigator for under $1000 which will do everything as good or better than the unit you have mentioned, including OziExplorer for country travel.

I looked at the Polaris site but could not find any technical information on adding extra functionality. It appears to be a Metropolitan voice guided navigation system only.

Bill

Hi.

I've had the VMS system for about a year. It has some issues but works well for me - and is a great improvement over my previous setup of a GPS and HP IPAQ on the windscreen. My priority was an integrated unit that did Oziexplorer, radio, iPod, and rear camera. Anything else was a bonus.

I've been looking at the Polaris at recent shows but have been unable to answer the questions you have - from a distance it looks as good as the VMS but much cheaper. The devil is in the detail!

Cheers

we have a kenwood that runs garmin and oztopo.It is ipod compatable and can play audio and video, so you dont need cds or dvds.the navagation overides all audio.We bought a GME electrophone digital tv box so it now get tv as well.
I looked at the polaris and the guys at the head office were very helpful,but it seamed a bit old school as if i remember rightly didnt have the ipod connection.
Summing up it works really well and looks good and contained in the dash without having brackets and cables everywhere.
Worked really well on the tanami track and on the tracks between yunta and hawker.
we paid about $1800. check the kenwood website .
cheers bruce

I have the Polaris in my 200 series cruiser and am very happy with it. I run Ozi Explorer on it on a seperate SD card. You have to rename the oziexlorer.exe file to Drive.exe and copy a few other files across (HBS.txt etc...) from the original SD card to the new SD card. There is a pic of the polaris in "my profile" below.

I looked at the VMS system but could not justify the extra $1,600 for it. The VMS does have a few advantages like;
*3 camera inputs
*copies phone contacts list to unit (touch screen to call contacts)
*uses HDSD cards (can use 32Gb cards, Polaris is limited to 4Gb - non-HD cards are hard to come by now)
*DVD is inserted at top of screen, not by motorised screen lift

The new model VMS has a few more nice things now (TV for one) but I am very happy with my Polaris and having the $1,600 in my pocket. Using HDSD cards is a big advantage, I have to swap my maps around for where I am driving to keep under the 4Gb limit.

I have fitted a reverse camera and it is great, would not be without one now. My main reason for this type of unit over a windscreen mount was the original factory look.

When navigating, the audio does cut out but the screen is so big that I have turned off the GPS sound and simply rely on checking the screen.

The screen does suffer when the sun directly shines on it, but no worse than any other LCD screen.

It runs a modified WindowsCE 5 version, not all the DLL files are loaded so you cannot rely on other programs to work (need to work out what dll need adding to get other programs to work).

My biggest complaint is that when navigating by GPS and the phone rings, 70% of the screen is blocked out (so you can answer/cancel call) and you cannot see any upcoming turns (phone takes priority over GPS voice). They could have so easily made the phone screen transparent so that you could still see the GPS directions - oh well, if thats my biggest gripe...

Hope this helps

Cheers

Captain