Evolution Mappy AP7
Nov 6, 2009 gps navigation
South Koreans love adding fancy GUIs to their portable media players. This one you see is quite new on the market and it is called Evolution Mappy AP7. It does a lot for its size. It is a digital TV player, movie player, audio player, FM radio, and of course a GPS navigation system. It is capable of receiving live traffic data via TPEG, and it can render amazing 3D graphics of your environment while driving.
It runs on a SiRF Prima processor at 600Mhz, supports SD cards, and even USB memory sticks. The OS in the back is WinCE which uses some of the 256MB RAM. We don’t know how much Evolution Mappy AP7 costs but it is only available for South Korea anyways…
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Garmin EcoRoutes ESP
Nov 5, 2009 garmin, gps navigation
By next year Garmin nuvi’s will be able to get diagnostic data from your vehicle with the EcoRoutes ESP module. This module will be a small unit that can fit somewhere behind your dashboard if necessary and talk to your nuvi via Bluetooth so you don’t have to worry about too much wiring.
The ESP module connects to and is powered by your vehicle’s OBD-II diagnostics port.
The new nuvi’s will have the software to let you customize which gauges you want to see and even set alerts for each one. Things you can keep track of are things like check engine light, real-time fuel economy, emissions, intake air temperature, coolant temperature, RPM, throttle position, and more…
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Garmins between $100 and $120 for Black Friday
Nov 5, 2009 garmin, gps navigation
Garmin is expected to have a few models specially designed for the American Black Friday madness. These GPS navigation systems will cost somewhere between $100 and $120 according to Twice. Also according to Cliff Pemble who is the president and COO of Garmin the sales of nuviphone were “slow” so a TV ad campaign was just launched. Reporting on the Android based nuviphone – he said it is slated for 2010.
Garmin doesn’t sound like they are too concerned about this new generation of competitors coming from GPS enabled smart phones. These new navigation apps still require a costly data plan and usually a higher end phone.
Sony Xperia X10
Nov 4, 2009 gps navigation, phones, sony
Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 was just made official yesterday. The new X10 has a 4″ capacitive touch screen and runs on a flavor of Android 1.6. It carries an 8.1MP digital camera with auto focus but there’s no flash. The processor buzzes at 1Ghz and it may likely come to T-Mobile as supports the 1700Mhz frequency for HSPA.
There’s of course an integrated GPS receiver and as soon as you can upgrade the Xperia X10 to Android 2.0 you can start using Google Maps Navigation.
Other features of the Xperia include WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, standard 3.5mm audio jack, gesture controls, 1GB of internal memory, and a microUSB port.
Expect to meet the new Sony Xperia X10 by first half of 2010.
See the video:
lockheed martin GPS satellites built to last
Nov 3, 2009 gps navigation, misc news
This month marks the 10th year anniversary of Lockheed Martin-Built GPS Satellites’ on orbit operation.
This specific satellite was the third of GPS Block IIR which was launched in October 7th 1999. There are 29 more of these on orbit providing situational awareness and weapon guidance for the military, as well as support for civil, scientific and commercial functions – including air traffic control, ATM banking, and the Internet.
Next generation GPS satellites are called GPS III block and these will support anti-jam capabilities. The first of these new GPS satellites is supposed to launch in 2014.
Affective Intelligent Driving Agent
Nov 3, 2009 gps navigation, misc news
AIDA is Affective Intelligent Driving Agent. It is designed as a collaboration between MIT and Audi. In the near future you may see this little robot sitting in the dashboard of your Audi and learning where you work, live, shop, and party.
Aida learns from sensors inside your vehicle such as camera, windshield wipers, galvanic skin response, braking pressure, seat position, and also from sensor outside your vehicle such as vehicle ahead detection, fuel gauge, and more.
Aida is a context aware, socially perceptive, intuitively responsive digital driver assistant.
Must see video:
TomTom car kit review
Nov 3, 2009 gps navigation, phones, reviews
Engadget has a decent review of the TomTom’s car kit for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. What they did was to use the iPhone 3GS with a regular car kit and let it use its own GPS receiver, and an iPhone 3G with the TomTom car kit.
In the end both iPhone’s performed very similarly suggesting it may not be a great idea to spend an $120 on the car kit on top of the $100 app…
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Garmin Aera
Nov 3, 2009 garmin, gps navigation
Garmin Aera is the new GPS navigation system from the company for those who own both an aircraft and a car. It runs in two modes, so you can easily switch between air, and road.
The new Garmin Aera series will have a 4.3″ screen, much like the nuvis, but when in air mode it will provide the pilots with map, weather, terrain, direct to, HSI/panel, active FPL, numbers, nearest, WPT info, position, XM radio, and tools.
There will be four new models:
- aera 500: base model
- aera 510: add XM WX capable and GXM™ 40 antenna
- aera 550: add high resolution 9 arc second terrain/obstacle data, SafeTaxi, AOPA
- aera 560: add XM WX capable and GXM™ 40 antenna
Here is how much they’ll cost you – yes a bit too much – but you own a plane after all, you can afford it:
- aera 500: $800
- aera 510: $1300
- aera 550: $1500
- aera 560: $2000
Magellan SE4
Nov 2, 2009 gps navigation, magellan
We’re not used to this naming convention from Magellan. Their newest model that showed up on Best Buy’s website is called Magellan SE4.
Magellan SE4 is a GPS navigation system with a 4.3″ screen, preloaded with Navteq maps that includes 48 contiguous states, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, text-to-speech, 6 million points of interests, and multidestination routing.
How much? $180.
Google Maps Navigation reviews
Nov 2, 2009 gps navigation, reviews, software
Google – master of the universe – as you know came up with their own, completely free GPS navigation program, Google Maps Navigation. There are a few reviews around and we thought we could share them with you:
gadgeteer: Mostly positive review but the down sides are screen size, voice quality, and of course data access…
A nice fix would be for the navigation to load in all the maps for the route, so I don’t need to sweat the connectivity. Every network has holes, I assume Verizon has far fewer, but it is still annoying.
pocketnow has an 8 minute video review:
gizmodo loves the voice search, and text-to-speech, but not that impressed with regular text search or the street view:
It’s an extremely powerful program, but the execution isn’t the best. Not by a stretch.
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