hema navigator

Welcome to the Hema hate club.

I too am VERY unimpressed. Mine runs R66 what software is in yours, I heard they changed it.

Regards

Derek

wish you had of posted earlier bought mine friday, read the instructions we haven't asked it to tell us where to go yet but seemed to know where on the road.hope it works i'm a map man but swmbo likes the idea of getting lost buy electronics ( she says she feels safer ). guess we'll find out in a few days when we leave for the corner country, birdsville. Incidently bought the hema cause its meant to be the best.
Cheers warren

A good mate here in Forbes bought one about 10 months ago. It has never worked as claimed, won't connect to his computer. The only bit that ever worked was the rear vision camera.. It's been back to the Service mob, and he currently has it in his vehicle heading to the place in QLD that handles em to try to get his money back!

Forget that 66 thing we have a navman for city . We use Ozi Explorer as a moving map. Its great. Easter in a 4x4 park I tried the Topo memory map. Thing I found with this device is the more you use it the more you realise what it can do. It has all the little off road tracks we like.

Santa got me one for XMAS....... I dont like Santa anymore

Rick,

Don't blame the Hema for one of the dodgy applications on it.

I gave a review on the Hema when I first bought one and Route 66 was very ordinary.

Well guess what. Route 66 is not alone.

I have just gone through a navigation exercise where I am giving routing instructions to a group of friends to a holiday home on the Murray River.
I drove the route in daylight last weekend.
After recording the co-ordinates, I have since tried creating a route on my trusty TomTom. No bloody go. It told me I had to use the ferry at Morgan which put me on the other side of the river from where the holiday home is. If I chose not to use the ferry it directed me towards Blanchtown, then a 30 kilometre trek on an unsealed road.

I gave the co-ordinates to my mate who has a Garmin and who came up with a similar result.

I then dusted off my Dell Axim PDA and fired up CoPilot Live 8.
The lovely Jessica (CoPilot's Aussie voice) told me the correct route along the Morgan Road, then turning off to the right along the river to our exact destination.

I have not used the PDA for a couple of years due to the purchase of the Hema (for remote navigation using OziExplorer) and the TomTom Go 720 which until now has been great.

The result: CoPilot Live was the only one out of the three that gave the correct, accurate result, even though the software and maps are over two years old.
The TomTom has the latest maps for Australia loaded and my mate's Garmin is about two months old.

So, it is the crummy application (Route 66) on the Hema Navigator, rather than the unit itself that is the problem. It is more than likely the "mapsource" that each device employs to calculate the route.

What can be derived out of this?
Do not trust your navigation device to necessarily give you the correct routing information.
If the result doesn't "look" right, it probably isn't.

I have previously praised CoPilot Live for it's intuitive navigation capabilities and only upgraded to another device due to the PDA not having a built-in GPS and the small display screen for OziExplorer use.
Unfortunately, CoPilot is now only available for use on smart phones.
Having said that and as a result of the exercise explained above, I have now installed CoPilot 8 on my iPhone as a "backup" to my previously capable TomTom Go.
Oh, and I have renewed my love affair with the PDA running both OziExplorer and CoPilot Live. (Or maybe it was just Jessica that I have missed).

Bill.


Another point I will make is in folk choosing a device (like the Hema) for both country navigation (aka OziExplorer) and City navigation (Route 66) and expecting the world from both.
Both applications can only be run separately. You must shut down OziExplorer if you wish to run Route 66 (or its more recent replacement).

My PDA can run both applications concurrently, with the ability to swap back between applications without closing one or the other and losing track data. This is achieved via GPSGate which allows the GPS input to be shared amongst multiple applications.

In my opinion, folk will be better served by having two different devices.
One for voice guided city navigation.
One for country wide moving map navigation.


Bill.

g'day
route 66 really sux like i said this is my fourth unit replaced as all previous ones failed in think the guys name is graham he has been helpful but he was away when i rang about this unit, i didn't get a chance to use it at cape york as it had already failed, i am interested in other types if someone can guide me to better systems, i have a garmin gps and am getting a navman with hema maps
hopefully i get to where i want to go in the best/shortest poss route
rick

This might be an option:

Uniden 5" Navigator

OziExplorer

Street Nav

Good price

Route 66 is totally useless, the real downfall of the Hema Navigator.
That is why it is far better to buy a no name GPS with screen size of your choice that runs Windows CE as the operating system and Igo 8 as the turn by turn nav program. Very user friendly and in over five years ours has only led us astray once and that was partly due to a new road being constructed. Typical prices start from around $100 and go up to under $300 for a 7" screen.
If you then buy the Hema DVD with all their maps on it, copies of Oziexplorer and Ozi CE you then have the equivalent to a HN for far less outlay.

Mate apart from Route 66 being hopelessly out of date by about 2 years - my major issue is the HN5 dies on me. Started off brand new last year, and just a few months old on the Holland Track the battery or charging system failed and that was that - not exactly dependable !! The support people were very helpful and swapped unit for a nice new one. NOW here we go again - the new HN5 has just experienced power fail too and is now DEAD (in a different car too so can't blame the vehicle).
So Monday I will be sending it back AGAIN. As I say, NOT dependable, and I bought the thing to do desert treks. Obviously i won't be forgetting the good ol paper maps !!