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Navigation Systems, Other and Volvo V70-XC70 2001

I posted this by mistake to the C70 board. Here is where I think it belongs. If the moderator wishes it can be removed from the C70 area.

21 Nov 00

Navigation Systems, other and Volvo.

I have read a number of posts, here and elsewhere, from Volvo owners regarding the Volvo Navigation System (vns). I have been trying, in vain, since the vns was first announced for the S80, to get some serious user information, ie an operator's manual. Volvo would appear to be not interested in marketing the vns given their ridiculous price and the complete ignorance of their personnel about the vns. A few days ago, as we were walking out to an S60 that I was going to test drive, the salesperson had no idea what a GPS is and did not realize that there was a vns in the car; non-functioning of course, no software, no manual!

The purpose of this post is to try to shed some light on this subject, Volvo non-support notwithstanding. I first installed an aviation GPS in my 1989 740 Turbo+ in 1992. Despite its bulk, cost and awkwardness of use I was sold on the potential value of GPS for car navigation systems. Since then I have had a number of different civilian GPS systems in a number of different cars and motorbikes, and I use the GPS routinely on all long trips and short trips to unfamiliar locations, especially at night or in bad weather. I have used the GPS across North America, from Halifax to Victoria and north to NWT and the Yukon. A long time ago I was an airforce navigator and I still have a commercial pilot's license.

Car navigation systems need three things, a functioning 12 channel GPS receiver, a user friendly display/control system and finally the software to make it all work. If the latter two requirements are not there, or are poorly designed, then the car navigation system becomes very difficult to operate, or may be quite useless, especially for people who are not trained to navigate with raw data. More on raw data later.

I will deal with the easiest first. The complete 12 channel GPS receiver and the computational power to solve the spherical trigonometry to compute your position from US Government satellite data is available on a chip, from a number of sources and its price, in volume numbers, is in the range of 10 to 20 dollars. Delorme supplies a GPS receiver, no display, with their mapping software, for less than $200. Can. So you can see that Volvo's price for their vns is really quite absurd, and we have not talked about Volvo software yet. More on this later.

My latest GPS is a Garmin GPS 12XL, available in Toronto for a street price of less than $300. (I am not pushing this particualr GPS; there are several others of equivalent price and utility.) This is a complete machine, 12 channel receiver, moving map display and rudimentary (no geographical data, just position data) North American data base. All you have to do is install it in your car and turn it on. In a minute or so it will give you all the navigation information you need to go anywhere you wish, providing that you understand how to work with raw data and that you know a few 12XL commands/operations. More on this later. However, the real utility of the 12XL is that it has personal computer/palm computer interface. It will accept data from a pc to update its database and it will transmit position information to a pc for obvious uses. The GPS receiver supplied by Delorme does this as well. (Standard public domain RS 232 interface for all to use; no proprietary garbage like the car manufacturers.) Sorry folks, I just had to stick that in there!

When the 12XL is connected to a laptop computer in my car, I can tell at a glance if my destination is in this block or the next block; if I am on the left side or the right side of the street or how fast I am travelling, just to give you an example of its accuracy and some functions. There are a number of moving map software packages for the pc from Microsoft, Delorme, National Geographic and others. They are all weak outside of built up areas, but in cities like Toronto they are very good indeed. Right now I use Microsoft's Streets and Trips 2001, which covers all of North America and has a street price in Toronto of less than $30. Upgrades cost less than that. None of this software will talk to you and give you directions, but if you can read a street map/roadmap you will have no trouble using it and if you have old eyes like me it is a lot easier to see. If we are using the laptop with the 12XL in the car, my wife and I will take turns driving, although I can and do use the 12XL alone, in the car and on the motorcycles, with no difficulties; its controls and interface are that good.

What does navigating with raw data mean? In simple terms it means computing the direction of where you want to go from where you are now. If you start moving in and maintain that direction you will get there eventually. Refinements include the computation of where you are at any time, how fast you are going and when you will arrive at your destination. Simple GPS systems use a coordinate system, normally latitrude and longitude and place names, to indicate position and the GPS computer computes all else that you need. I will not go into that here. So what I am saying is that if you know what a compass tells you, what velocity is and that you understand the computation of distance from velocity and time, then you understand almost enough about raw data to use the GPS effectively. You will not have to do any computation, the GPS machine will do that. You will also have to learn a few GPS commands and operations. What the GPS and vns also gives you is steering information; what direction should I travel and when should I turn to get to my destination in the best fashion possible. In sophisticated car systems the steering info is given verbally in a form such as, "turn right at X street". Obviously, this software is very expensive and complicated and most importantly it does not exist for most of the world, and probably will never exist. And , even worse, if the sophisticated car system does not have raw data outputs, then when you get out of the area of software coverage your nav system is not very useful.

From what I saw in the S60 the vns does not appear to be designed to be versatile, although I could be mistaken on this. I have not seen the remote control so I cannot tell you what vns controls it has. The factory installed vns has two buttons and a four direction cursor control, ie analagous to the pc mouse control, mounted on the right, front of the steering wheel, for operation by your right hand fore and index fingers. The buttons were unlabelled although one of them caused the vns to pop out of the dash. That is all I can tell you about the vns. If someone can locate an operator's manual I would sure like to see it. I cannot get one from Volvo at any price. The price for the vns, uninstalled in Toronto, no software, is $4152.67 Can, including taxes. They have not given me a price for installation. I offered to install it myself and to teach them how to do it if they gave me the unit for free; they did not think that was funny. The thought of them digging into my new V70 2001 T5, with their greasy paws was not very funny to me either. Volvo does not know what the software coverage is or who produces it. They only know that they are charging a small fortune for it and for its updates.

Where does this leave us? For all I know the vns maybe a great tool if very much over-priced. I would never buy a product where the seller is so reluctant to give you any kind of information about it. Originally, here in Toronto, the vns was going to be a $2500. item if factory ordered. What happened to nearly double this price? What should people do who want/need a navigation system? Wait and see! In a year or two or three, Volvo and the other manufacturers will decide that they want do do this or they will abandon it altogether. I think that they are terrified of the legal implications and now wish that they had never heard of navigation systems. It cannot be the cost! Almost all of the technology is in the public domain. The US government has paid 100% of the cost of the satellite system. The GPS chips are nearly a dime a dozen and there are tons of cheap mapping sofware available. The pc industry has given us every possible kind of display for very low prices. (Did anybody look at Comdex last week.) The only thing that the car companies are going to have to spend serious money on is the talking software for the car drivers who cannot understand or learn anything else.

Incidentally, the entire world owes the US government a debt of gratitude for the complete GPS system, all funded by US taxpayers and free to use by all of us around the world. Last May the US removed the selective availability feature (this feature made it less accurate for non-US military users) from the GPS system which made it much more accurate for civilian use; now almost anywhere at any time it is accurate to about 10 meters. Its vertical accuracy is not quite as good. The Russians have a similar system which as far as I know is operational now.

In the meantime, buy an off the shelf unit such as the one described here. Use it as a stand alone or hook it up to a lap/palm top computer, with some commercial GIS/mapping software. If you want to pay the money there is some very nice, if limited coverage software available. If you are interested in more comprehensive moving map data bases GPS's, off the shelf, Garmin has two beauties, the Street Pilot and the Street Pilot Colour Map. Both have a pc interface, although you will probably not need to hook either of these to your laptop.

Finally, there are hundreds of GPS sites on the internet. You can learn everything you need to know and then some.

I hope this will be of some use. I have tried to condense a very large and detailed subject into a few hundred words. If anyone wishes clarification or amplification on any part of the above I will be glad to oblige; just remember that the airforce navigation course of long ago took almost a year and we did over 200 hours of flying.

All the best.

Robert A. Froebel






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New Navigation Systems, Other and Volvo [V70-XC70][2001]
posted by  someone claiming to be Robert A. Froebel  on Tue Nov 21 11:59 CST 2000 >


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