680 + TomTom6 - is it really this bad?

[BaggieBoy]

I recently installed TT6 Navigator on my 680 (using a 3rd party BT GPS receiver) and have been totally underwhelmed by the experience so far. My previous GPS/Traffic solution (Via Michelin s/w on a Palm Tungsten E plus a Trafficmaster Freeway) worked very well but was getting outdated and I thought having a single device to do SatNav, traffic info and phone would be a good idea.

Initiating a route seems to work well but then things go downhill. The screen updates are anything from 5 seconds to minutes apart. The spoken directions seem to be in the right place, which suggests the GPS side is working OK, the the on-screen info just doesn't reflect where I am (mostly where I was a couple of minutes ago). However after a while (10 minutes or so) it stops updating the screen completely and the spoken directions cease too. The application is still alive, as I can use the menus normally. A couple of times today the 680 crashed and rebooted too.

I'd appreciate anyone elses experience of this combination, and any thoughts on what the problem might be.

Steve

[vince1969]

treo 680 with tomtom 6 and 3rd party reciever installed yesterday with patch from palm.com works aMAZING went on a 3 hour drive and worked like a charm and even got lost and led me the right way so did you install the patch

[BaggieBoy]

I did install a patch, TT6 wouldn't even recognise the 680 as a valid device without it.

I'm wondering if I have a free RAM issue. When running TT6 it is down to around 6MB, I read somewhere else that you need around 10MB.

Anyway I have switched from using the huge Western Europe map to just the smaller UK and Ireland map. I'll give that a go tomorrow and see if it is more responsive.

Steve

[BaggieBoy]

Things were better but still far from perfect. My morning journey takes me up the M3 from Basingstoke towards London. The screen was updating pretty fast for most of the journey, however as I got to within 3 miles of the M25 junction all activity stopped. I left it like this and just as I turned for the M25 I noticed that the screen had gone dark. So I pressed the power button and TomTom then spoke the direction it should have done before the turn off. The screen came to life and it then worked normally all the way up the M25, M40, A40 until I reached work.

I'm wondering if I have a dodgy BT GPS receiver. The other thing I did was to turn off the BT "Visible" setting on the phone, which I assume will stop the phone from broadcasting it's presence all the time; possibly confusing the BT receiver.

[thecount]

I Have Globalsat bt-359 and I have problems with my 680. basically, it loses the connection with the 680 all the time, I have to end up swicthing off bluetooth and switching it on again. sometimes having to re-pair. - what a pain if you in the middle of a drive! not impressed

[BaggieBoy]

Turns out the problem was the memory card I was using. To allow me to carry around a fair chunk of music I had installed TT6 onto to 4GB SD card, last night I switched to a 512MB card and today it performed flawlessly. The 4GB card works fine when connected to a PC so I suspect that the Treo 680 may have some issue with high capacity cards.

[palmferek]

What about the voice in 680 and TT6.
I found the the voice is slow and sometimes seriously delayed.I got TT6 on Nokia where there is no problem with vocals - smooth ,just in time.There is a significant difference between these two devices.
Do you think that this is typical for all 680s,otherwise all works fine and i have no probs with updating the map.

cheers
lukas

[thecount]

no problem with the voice on mine. 680 & TT6

[BaggieBoy]

I also find the voicing a bit disjointed. There appears to be 1 or 2 second gaps between segments of the audio, such as "In.....200 yards.........turn right". It seems even worse when TT is busy getting traffic information. It spoke the "In 200 yards" part and then paused for at least 20 seconds. My the time it started to voice again, I had already made the turn!