Beeline navigation

[Guest Richzx6r]

@Fleck Good man

@Richzx6r you have to waste money on something, I have 4 welders are you suggesting I need another instead of a bike sat nav

 

4 welders....want to offload one?

 

Good God no, trying to give me the shakes or what, I'm getting a 32amp socket fitted outside so I can get a proper one lol

 

To be fair if I need to weld anything I'll just take it to work so don't really need to get one

[Michael P]

I didn't want to have my phone or a big sat nav on the handlebars. The small neat size of the beeline was what got me interested. I'll let you all know if it's any good

 

I got one of these - great bit of kit, looks good (I swapped for a silver one with the metal mount), absolute bare minimum information to avoid me getting lost without anything that can get me distracted. Fair play to anyone who can memorise maps or who can tune out incoming texts/calls/notifications etc., but I'd end up riding off the side of a hill if I tried to use my phone on the bike

[xMachina]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious if you need to plan the route on a smartphone why wouldn't you just use that? I have mine in my pocket and 1 earphone in so I get the audio directions and I can't say I've ever had an issue with that. I'd much rather have audio to follow than a tiny arrow on the bars.

[dern]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious if you need to plan the route on a smartphone why wouldn't you just use that? I have mine in my pocket and 1 earphone in so I get the audio directions and I can't say I've ever had an issue with that. I'd much rather have audio to follow than a tiny arrow on the bars.

 

It's fine in town but if you don't protect your hearing on long distances you'll damage it.

[Michael P]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious if you need to plan the route on a smartphone why wouldn't you just use that? I have mine in my pocket and 1 earphone in so I get the audio directions and I can't say I've ever had an issue with that. I'd much rather have audio to follow than a tiny arrow on the bars.

 

If that works for you then great, but I personally don't get on with audio navigation because it is constantly telling you even when you don't need the prompts 99% of the time, and it feels like an interruption to me too. I want to switch off as much as possible when I'm on the bike, but if I need a bit of guidance on which junction to take, or I'm wondering how long until the next turning etc., I can choose to look at the dial. I'm not using it for any complicated city navigation or anything though, so that is worth bearing in mind.

[S-Westerly]

I've tried various phone apps for navigation and I can't say I got on well with any of them. I then bought a TomTom sat nav designed for bikes and I love it. If I don't need it I ignore it but if I do need guidance it's excellent. It's also handy for telling me where fixed speed cameras are and what the speed limits are wherever I am. This has saved my license from acquiring points on more than one occasion. It's even more or less usable wearing my gloves which my phone is hopeless at due to the size of the screen.

[Fleck]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious if you need to plan the route on a smartphone why wouldn't you just use that? I have mine in my pocket and 1 earphone in so I get the audio directions and I can't say I've ever had an issue with that. I'd much rather have audio to follow than a tiny arrow on the bars.

 

If that works for you then great I do much prefer a screen to see the directions.

2 reasons why I like the beeline idea. 1 the phone is safely in my pocket with the screen off so the battery isn't going down as fast. And also I haven't got, and don't want a big bracket on the handlebars to hold the phone, or sat nav for that matter.

I think it's great how it uses Google maps so the maps never need updating, which is the ball ache of all sat nav systems. I always thought Google maps would be the end of the dedicated sat nav... This is another nail in their coffin

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious if you need to plan the route on a smartphone why wouldn't you just use that? I have mine in my pocket and 1 earphone in so I get the audio directions and I can't say I've ever had an issue with that. I'd much rather have audio to follow than a tiny arrow on the bars.

 

I tried that - got lost. I just can't follow audio instructions when I am driving or riding. I also like wearing ear plugs so found having the earpiece in for the phone was too noisy. And even with the volume on full I couldn't hear directions at higher speeds.

I tried having the phone in a mount on the handlebars - that didn't work either. The information on the screen wasn't clear enough at a glance. Which is why I don't think a sat nav would work for me.

In terms of speed cameras etc - the Beeline doesn't have them which might seem a disadvantage, but I've found that I turn that off on the sat nav because too often the information about speed limits is wrong and in North Wales (where I ride most) you just assume every village has a radar gun.

It's down to what works for different people.

[Michael P]

No idea if they are any good or not, but I've seen recommendations for this product that doubles up as an earplug and bluetooth earbud:

https://www.customfitguards.co.uk/cf-lite

[skyrider]

they should be ok at £190

[xMachina]

It's fine in town but if you don't protect your hearing on long distances you'll damage it.

 

You can get hearing protection ones like isotunes, etc.

Just seems like a redundant gadget to me, but then I spent years as a driver before sat navs were common and you actually had to use a map to find your drops so remembering routes is something I'm used to.

[elwon20]

Not for me, but I can see why others might like it.

Personally I use my phone mounted on my bars with audio instructions from the Packtalk intercom.

I use TomTom speed camera's app to alert me of cameras and mobile vans etc. It automatically starts whenever I turn my intercom on.

If I'm going from a2b quickly either Google Maps or Waze. If I need to re-route: "Hey Google, find me a McDonalds" or "Hey Google, tell Waze to find me a McDonalds".

If I'm in no hurry or riding purely for the fun of riding I use Kurviger app. It's a bit like Calimoto. But it has a much crappier interface and much better navigation for finding curvy routes.

The interface is difficult to use and unintuitive admittedly but once you get used to it, it's worth it.

It has an optional online route planner in case you want to plan a route in advance: https://kurviger.de/en This is also useful for figuring out what the various routing options do.

It allows you to select how curvy you want your roads. It has a cool option to create round trips of a specific length and direction. And once you know how to use it (and that does take some time and experience I'll admit!) It's a great app just for finding awesome roads wherever you are.

It's free, but I think you have to pay a small one-off fee for the maps.

I plan on using it for our trip across Spain next year. In that case, I'll pre-plan the route online and download it to my phone.

[Fleck]

It's heeeeeeere!

Looks good, nice screen, 4 sturdy buttons on the sides. Power at the top left-right selection buttons on the sides and a bottom one.

Just charging it up, battery is as flat as a flat thing

[Fleck]

Been out in the car with it this afternoon. It's going to take a bit of getting used to, it's so different to any other sat nav. The app seems straight forward, you can download that now and see what you think.

So first thoughts are I think I like it, but the proof will be when out on a ride and I genuinely am relying on it. Love it's dinky size.

The scooter mirror mount which I thought I'd get for when on the scoot is £29.99 so they can keep that, found something on ebay a lot cheaper (see link below) the standard mount with the 'o' ring bands will go on the Duke handlebars.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F362623440754

It's a bit industrial but good quality

[Fleck]

The case is good quality, (comes with it if you buy the adventure pack)

 

[Fleck]

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

Looking forward to hearing how this works on the road. I downloaded the app to see how that works and found it is not only very intuitive but also that it picked my favourite local route without me having to mess about with anything.

My Garmin by comparison refuses to accept that route as valid, always chooses routes I hate and is very difficult to set up before the ride. As a means of finding a destination it works, so long as you don't mind going a horrible way and having no say in the matter.

The TomTom I tried thought my home postcode was 5 miles away and tried sending me the wrong way down a one way street. When exiting a motorway junction with my destination clearly visible on the left it told me to turn right onto an A road with no junction for the next five miles. So I took it back before I stamped on it.

[Stu]

[mention]Mississippi Bullfrog[/mention] is that the garmin app or a dedicated sat nav?

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

@Mississippi Bullfrog is that the garmin app or a dedicated sat nav?

 

It's one of the sat navs I have. I have a Garmin in the car which works fine for making sure I can find places. But when I use it in areas I know it often selects a pretty silly route. It is set to choose the quickest route but will often select the shortest even when that is a single carriageway twisty road with grass growing down the middle - rather than the A road which is only marginally longer but infinitely quicker.

I've never tried the Garmin app. I tried Waze - didn't like that either. It finds a route to the destination, but often on the most horrible roads to ride and I can't see how you can choose an alternative route that is longer and slower but much nicer to ride.

I have a Garmin Edge as well for cycling. Absolutely useless bit of junk. If allowed to choose a route that includes off road cycle paths it will try to take me across a field where the Romans might once have marched but since then it has been used for the cultivation of brambles and stinging nettles. But it will then ignore the long established National Cycle Network routes and send me down a busy 60mph A road instead. The interface is totally unusable. There is a facility to pre-plan a route but it rarely manages to follow that without having a major meltdown somewhere. The one thing it does very well, though not always on the best roads, is to plan circular routes of varying distances.

[Stu]

@Mississippi Bullfrog is that the garmin app or a dedicated sat nav?

 

It's one of the sat navs I have. I have a Garmin in the car which works fine for making sure I can find places. But when I use it in areas I know it often selects a pretty silly route. It is set to choose the quickest route but will often select the shortest even when that is a single carriageway twisty road with grass growing down the middle - rather than the A road which is only marginally longer but infinitely quicker.

I've never tried the Garmin app. I tried Waze - didn't like that either. It finds a route to the destination, but often on the most horrible roads to ride and I can't see how you can choose an alternative route that is longer and slower but much nicer to ride.

I have a Garmin Edge as well for cycling. Absolutely useless bit of junk. If allowed to choose a route that includes off road cycle paths it will try to take me across a field where the Romans might once have marched but since then it has been used for the cultivation of brambles and stinging nettles. But it will then ignore the long established National Cycle Network routes and send me down a busy 60mph A road instead. The interface is totally unusable. There is a facility to pre-plan a route but it rarely manages to follow that without having a major meltdown somewhere. The one thing it does very well, though not always on the best roads, is to plan circular routes of varying distances.

 

I have found the routing on the Garmin zumo a bit hit and miss! I have also ended up down single track roads with grass growing in the middle! but a lot of that has always depended on settings!

As a general rule I do all my route planning on my computer and usually end up with a good route if I have to do a route on the sat nav then I tend to use fastest route and avoid motorways and that usually gives me good routes

I have a curvy route setting on the zumo but even then that is hit and miss!

My old TomTom riders routing was much better

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

As an aside - I decided to try a software and map update on the Garmin Edge to see it that would improve things. So factory reset - connect to PC - and it then tells me it needs a bigger SD card for the update.

By this time I'd got home, washed the bike down, got out of my wet gear - so off out again, buy the SD card, reconnect to the PC, and six hours later it's still got an hour to go!

[Stu]

As an aside - I decided to try a software and map update on the Garmin Edge to see it that would improve things. So factory reset - connect to PC - and it then tells me it needs a bigger SD card for the update.

By this time I'd got home, washed the bike down, got out of my wet gear - so off out again, buy the SD card, reconnect to the PC, and six hours later it's still got an hour to go!

 

Do you have slow internet

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

We live in a rural area so it's not lightning fast but usually things run pretty well. Every else is working ok online. Unless it's the Garmin site?

Hmm, just checked, it's running at 568.7 kB/s. Not exactly warp speed.

[Stu]

I have just updated mine and the file was around 6.5gb

[Mississippi Bullfrog]

I have just updated mine and the file was around 6.5gb