GPS - best choice

Author

best choice

L.C.

2007-01-12, 10:33 am

I work with the local ambulance service in rural Saskatchewan, Canda). One
continual problem is finding accident scenes and rural homes. We have
decided it is time to spend money on a GPS that will help.

It needs to be able to use land locations (Range, Township, Section, quarter
section, etc.) and have the best chance of identifying addresses in small
town Saskatchewan. We want to be able to program specific locations, of
course, and voice assisted routing is a must. Is there any real difference
between systems regarding accurate and updateable maps?

I have lots of experience with hand held GPS for my own hunting, hiking,
canoeing and camping, but I have no experience with vehicle mounted GPS and
maps. What do you recommend?

L.C.

Jim Townsend

2007-01-12, 10:33 am

L.C. wrote:

> I work with the local ambulance service in rural Saskatchewan, Canda). One
> continual problem is finding accident scenes and rural homes. We have
> decided it is time to spend money on a GPS that will help.
>
> It needs to be able to use land locations (Range, Township, Section, quarter
> section, etc.) and have the best chance of identifying addresses in small
> town Saskatchewan. We want to be able to program specific locations, of
> course, and voice assisted routing is a must. Is there any real difference
> between systems regarding accurate and updateable maps?
>
> I have lots of experience with hand held GPS for my own hunting, hiking,
> canoeing and camping, but I have no experience with vehicle mounted GPS and
> maps. What do you recommend?
>
> L.C.

FWIW, none of the car GPS units recognize Range/Township/Sections. They are
street based only. They'll get you from a street address to a street address.

You'll need to get some custom application for your needs. Without that, the
best you can do is have a dispatcher look up the lat/long from a suitable
township map and then report them to you so you can enter the coordinates
on your vehicle GPS.

Also, most of the Car GPS units use Navteq maps. Navteq does a *horrible* job
of mapping rural Canada. For instance. I live in Manitoba near a tiny town
called Woodlands. (pop 250).

Below is a comparison of a Navteq map of Woodlands and a map from Magellan's
Mapsend Topo Canada that I have for my Magellan eXplorist. (This is created
by DTMI Spatial Inc not Navteq).

http://www.mts.net/~jwt/images/map-comp.jpg

AFAIK, you can't load anything other than Navteq maps on car GPS units. (If
you can load other maps, I'd really like to know about it :).

Roger Mills

2007-01-12, 12:33 pm

In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
L.C. <l.w.cooper@sasktel.net> wrote:

> I work with the local ambulance service in rural Saskatchewan,
> Canda). One continual problem is finding accident scenes and rural
> homes. We have decided it is time to spend money on a GPS that will
> help.
> It needs to be able to use land locations (Range, Township, Section,
> quarter section, etc.) and have the best chance of identifying
> addresses in small town Saskatchewan. We want to be able to program
> specific locations, of course, and voice assisted routing is a must. Is
> there any real difference between systems regarding accurate and
> updateable maps?
> I have lots of experience with hand held GPS for my own hunting,
> hiking, canoeing and camping, but I have no experience with vehicle
> mounted GPS and maps. What do you recommend?
>
> L.C.

Have you checked out the TomTom offerings. These will give voice commands to
get you from your current location to a different location - where the
destination can be specifed in a number of ways, including town/street and
lat/long.

TomTom uses a mixture of Tele Atlas and Navtec maps - depending on GPS model
and geographical region. I'm not sure which they use for Canada, or how good
the coverage is in rural areas - but it's worth checking out.
--
Cheers,
Roger
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Marc Brett

2007-01-12, 3:33 pm

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:26:25 -0600, Jim Townsend <jwt@nota.realaddress> wrote:

>L.C. wrote:
>
>
>FWIW, none of the car GPS units recognize Range/Township/Sections. They are
>street based only. They'll get you from a street address to a street address.
>
>You'll need to get some custom application for your needs. Without that, the
>best you can do is have a dispatcher look up the lat/long from a suitable
>township map and then report them to you so you can enter the coordinates
>on your vehicle GPS.

Would this do the job?

http://www.prairie.mb.ca/landtracker.htm

Rocanda Land Tracker software

* Converts section, township, range coorindates to Latitude longitute
coordinates
* Works in Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba

Rocanda Land Tracker software will allow you to convert any LSD location in
Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan or Manitoba into a corresponding
latitude/longitude coordinate. which you can then input into mapping software
such as Garmin's Mapsource products, or OziExplorer.

LinkBot