superczar
Keymaster
Considering that at least a few if not quite a few of us have been using GPS devices in Indian cities for a while now, I thought it may be a good idea to start a thread where we could post and get some feedback on the different maps available for the country
Here is a quick and dirty primer if you just joined the party...This however is by no means a guide and is meant for soliciting feedback on other hardware/map options available in India:
Digital Maps & Application
Three options available
Multiple options available:
The very basics
Edited and added this later to avoid any inane comments coming in
From Wikipedia:
And please, GPS has nothing to do with GPRS (not all similar sounding acronyms need to be related), and you do not have to pay to use locational GPS service - period -
You may need to pay for the hardware, application and maps though (unless you decide to act cheap and pilfer the hardware/ *ahem* the software
To put GPS to a practical navigation use, you need a combination of the following three things:
Here is a quick and dirty primer if you just joined the party...This however is by no means a guide and is meant for soliciting feedback on other hardware/map options available in India:
Digital Maps & Application
Three options available
- Mapking - By far, the worst of the lot. The on-map accuracy is atrocious to say the least. Stay Away from this POS the way you would from a rat carrying the bubonic plague
- SatGuide Maps: They have an all India map, street level City maps for major cities as well as a consolidated All India Map. The POI (Points of interest) listing leaves a lot to be desired and the routing calulations are rather weird so the bird's eye view with plain routing is best avoided on this.
However, the positional accuracy is fairly good and using a combination of your common sense and your position on the 2 dimensional map displayed, it does serve as a fairly usable solution (At least in Chennai and Bangalore - Can't say much about other cities)
The Satguide maps are in the destinator format , i.e. they use the Destinator API and even though the Destinator API is technically not free, there are several freeeware apps (with a bit of a quasi legal status) that can be used in conjunction with Satguide maps
- Map My India Maps - No first hand experience. Perhaps others could provide some feedback. They do not use the Destinator API however.
Anyone with any feedback on mapmyIndia maps and the specific format they are in?
From the website, it seems they use the wayfinder API, but perhaps someone could help understand more.
Hardware (receiver & Processing device)
Multiple options available:
- Buying a standalone personal navigation device from Satguide or mapmyIndia: Standalone navigation devices ranging between 13K to 20K available through the respective websites. No first hand experience with any of these in India.
- Using a standalone personal device like the Mio C520 and hacking it to add your own maps: Will wait for Rave to give us some feedback on this
- Using a combination of a Bluetooth/USB GPS device and a PC: I use a combination of a Bluetooth GPS device talking to a car PC mounted under the passenger seat and a 7" Touchscreen LCD mounted on the car dash.
I find the 7" TS a huge improvement over the 3.5/4.3 screens on a PND
Especially considering that a Bird's eye view (that requires less screen space) is far less suitable for the rather hit & miss routing on India maps
GPS navigation in India fares a lot better with a complete 2D view (like a regular map), but a complete 2D view requires more real estate on the screen
Happy with the hardware so far though this kind of a setup is not for the faint hearted (not to mention it will cost close to 2X a regular PND).
If you want a simple GPS solution, you are better off with a PND than this.
Especially considering that a Bird's eye view (that requires less screen space) is far less suitable for the rather hit & miss routing on India maps
GPS navigation in India fares a lot better with a complete 2D view (like a regular map), but a complete 2D view requires more real estate on the screen
Happy with the hardware so far though this kind of a setup is not for the faint hearted (not to mention it will cost close to 2X a regular PND).
If you want a simple GPS solution, you are better off with a PND than this.
- Using a combination of a Bluetooth/USB GPS device and a phone: Again, a fairly usable combination, especially if you have a touchscreen phone. No first hand experience on this though except a trial run on a HP ipaq 6315.
The very basics
Edited and added this later to avoid any inane comments coming in
From Wikipedia:
And please, GPS has nothing to do with GPRS (not all similar sounding acronyms need to be related), and you do not have to pay to use locational GPS service - period -
You may need to pay for the hardware, application and maps though (unless you decide to act cheap and pilfer the hardware/ *ahem* the software
To put GPS to a practical navigation use, you need a combination of the following three things:
- A GPS receiver i.e. a device that can calculates its position by receiving and interpolating data from multiple GPS satellites.
- An application that can interpret the position provided by the receiver and overlay the position on a digital map (And also handle other User Interface aspects)
- A Digital map that the aforementioned application can use
- A processing device with a screen to run the application, render the data and handle the data processing e.g. a PC, a smartphone, A PDA or a dedciated navigation device
. Found that my speedo has around 5km/hr error when doing very high speeds.
