Navigation Novice Needs Ideas on Setup

[UHAULER]

OK , here's the deal, I'm looking to finally use a gps in a vehicle. I have a handheld Garmin 60csx that I use on my dirtbike. After the ride I will download the track onto my desktop and look at/ study on expert gps topo maps. Of course i'm trying to stay as low budget as possible, so is there any decent auto gps with both street maps and topo maps already loaded or do I use my 60csx and a tablet for the screen ? Any help or suggestions welcome.
I'm not anti tech but it has never been a priority for me. I usually learn just enough to get by.

 

[deserteagle56]

If by "Auto GPS" you mean the automotive series like the Nuvi - they all come with street maps. If you want topo maps you'll have to add them yourself. My automotive units all have several different topo mapsets loaded on them on the SD card and I just choose the one I want to use that day. But none of the automotive units that I know of will allow you to download a track to them.
Here's a shot of my Garmin RV760LMT (7" screen) using the free topo map of Nevada available from gpsfiledepot.com. White lines are dirt roads, blue are waterways and brown the topo lines. Green is public land, yellow is private land.

 

[UHAULER]

Deserteagle, yes automotive series. The one you have is out of my price range. I'm trying to do some searching to see if I can use my 60csx and use a tablet for a bigger screen or get a lower end automotive style and load topo maps on it.

 

[snare]

use a tablet, load maps on it. android tablets (and some apple ones, i just dont pay attention to which ones doa nd which ones dont) have gps units in them, and yes they work without cell service. Use an app on he tablet.

Done

 

[Frdmskr]

What snare said. Basically, use your mobile device du jour (whether tablet or smart phone) load an app such as Gaia on it. Get a mount and pay for a subscription and off you go. Just make sure whatever mobile device you use is cellular capable. You do not need to be on a cell network but the cell capable devices have the GPS chip you need. At least iphones (and I assume Android) will allow the GPS chip to work perfectly fine without a cell carrier signal.

 

[snare]

Android tablets DO NOT need to be cellular capable for GPS to work.

i wish the Apple thing with this inaccurate info would just die. It keeps getting repeated and repeated and repeated. Misinformation is not helpful to people learning, and then the misinformation gets.....repeated....again.

 

[UHAULER]

Well , this is how much i'm into electronics. About 4 years ago I bought a used asus transformer tablet and keyboard from a co worker. I used it at home for a short while and then retired early and moved. It has been sitting in a box in the garage for 2 years. This is the reason I was thinking of using the tablet for a screen and hooking up the gargim hand held gps to it. It turns out the tablet has gps. I messed around and downloaded some google maps for offline use for now but will look into better maps.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Android tablets DO NOT need to be cellular capable for GPS to work.

i wish the Apple thing with this inaccurate info would just die. It keeps getting repeated and repeated and repeated. Misinformation is not helpful to people learning, and then the misinformation gets.....repeated....again.

The chipset they (Apple at least) were using integrated satellite GPS into the cell radio chip. So the WiFi/WLAN-only models only could do location based on the hotspot databases. It's absolutely true smart phones and all (perhaps "most", I dunno if *all*) cellular-capable tablets have been able to do real, satellite GPS for a long time.

However, AFAIK Apple still only lists WiFi+Cellular models as doing Assisted GPS and GLONASS. Assisted GPS in Apple speak is satellite GPS, not to be confused with actual assisted GPS, e.g. A-GPS, used for speeding up time to first fix.

Of course what Apple does doesn't mean it's the same for all tablets. It's certainly plausible others do integrate satellite GPS without tying that to cellular. The coexistence features for WLAN chips don't require the companion to be a cellular. It could be WiMax, UWB, GPS-only in theory. There's scores of components they could be using, too. So what Broadcom did isn't what Cypress will continue to do or Qualcomm or TI or Marvell either.

If the WLAN dependency is misinformation it would indeed be good to put to bed once and for all. But it's still true I believe for Apple and therefore the confusion remains. To know *for sure* you very likely need an LTE device or expect to use a standalone Bluetooth GPS receiver.

 

[snare]

Absolutely untrue for android devices.

Zero need to have a tablet be cellular capable to use the GPS.

...and the confusion continues....will it ever die !

 

[DaveInDenver]

So you're absolutely sure about *all* Android tablets? I was pretty sure most (I guess all?) Snapdragons had built-in GPS/GLONASS/Galileo so good to know that it's a common feature. The only experience I have is with a low end Fire and it loses itself with no WiFi, but it's probably 6 years old now.