oilburner
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The Garmin Glo is so much better than my smartphone's inbuilt GPS that I now can't imagine being without it.
For those who don't know: the Garmin Glo is a Remote GPS receiver that can be positioned anywhere in the vehicle, and then simply uses Bluetooth to connect to your smartphone or tablet (up to 10 devices simultaneously in fact) and a free Bluetooth GPS app to provide a location signal to mapping software. It can stay permanently connected to power via a USB cable, or have its internal battery charged and run for about 12 hours afterwards (so you can even carry it about in your pocket if you like).
If you are struggling to get a signal you can easily stick the Glo in a skylight at the rear of your motorhome if you want, and the Bluetooth will still happily connect with your phone in the cab. But the GPS receiver is so much more powerful than the phone's inbuilt GPS that I simply stuck it in the glovebox, with sundry things piled on top, and it never once missed a beat It's designed for marine or aviation use, so is much more powerful than any phone or tablet's inbuilt GPS. And because that can then be left switched off permanently, it's doesn't risk overheating the phone's battery, another bonus.
When switched on the Glo reliably and consistently finds satellites and location in 2 or 3 seconds, rather than the minutes my Android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Note) sometimes takes.
When driving it has never lost our location irrespective of trees, buildings, cloud whatever (unlike the phone's inbuilt GPS which would often struggle and drop out, usually at the most inconvenient moments)!
The only problem is that not all mapping software is mature enough to be happy with the Bluetooth Mock GPS that the phone then uses, meaning I now don't want any mapping app that only uses the device's inbuilt GPS because I don't want to bother turning that back on again. My own preferred navigation app is Copilot Caravan which works perfectly with Mock GPS, as also does OsmAnd which I also have installed, so I'm happy.
The only problems I have encountered are with the WildCamping app, which doesn't use Mock GPS (although Phil promised me in a support ticket that the next version will). This means I can't auto-locate my position on the WildCamping app without switching the phone's old and slow internal GPS back on again :-( In practice that's not a problem though, because I generally know roughly where I am anyway so when I find a POI I want to go to I just copy the lat-long coordinates across into CoPilot Caravan (and at some point I'll install them all on that, as I already have on OsmAnd). And this coordinate copying is necessary even if I do switch the phone's internal GPS back on, because the WildCamping app can't send the coordinates to CoPilot for routing anyway (only to Google Maps & Osmand on my phone). So the only new problem Mock GPS causes in practice is that I can't easily contribute new POIs should I wish to, because of the way the WildCamping app goes about this! Getting to existing ones isn't really a problem, or at least no more than it was before
If you shop around a little you should be able to get a Garmin Glo, complete with cables etc., delivered to you (in UK) for under £90. And based on the 4 week trip I've just returned from, that's £90 very well spent indeed
For those who don't know: the Garmin Glo is a Remote GPS receiver that can be positioned anywhere in the vehicle, and then simply uses Bluetooth to connect to your smartphone or tablet (up to 10 devices simultaneously in fact) and a free Bluetooth GPS app to provide a location signal to mapping software. It can stay permanently connected to power via a USB cable, or have its internal battery charged and run for about 12 hours afterwards (so you can even carry it about in your pocket if you like).
If you are struggling to get a signal you can easily stick the Glo in a skylight at the rear of your motorhome if you want, and the Bluetooth will still happily connect with your phone in the cab. But the GPS receiver is so much more powerful than the phone's inbuilt GPS that I simply stuck it in the glovebox, with sundry things piled on top, and it never once missed a beat It's designed for marine or aviation use, so is much more powerful than any phone or tablet's inbuilt GPS. And because that can then be left switched off permanently, it's doesn't risk overheating the phone's battery, another bonus.
When switched on the Glo reliably and consistently finds satellites and location in 2 or 3 seconds, rather than the minutes my Android smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Note) sometimes takes.
When driving it has never lost our location irrespective of trees, buildings, cloud whatever (unlike the phone's inbuilt GPS which would often struggle and drop out, usually at the most inconvenient moments)!
The only problem is that not all mapping software is mature enough to be happy with the Bluetooth Mock GPS that the phone then uses, meaning I now don't want any mapping app that only uses the device's inbuilt GPS because I don't want to bother turning that back on again. My own preferred navigation app is Copilot Caravan which works perfectly with Mock GPS, as also does OsmAnd which I also have installed, so I'm happy.
The only problems I have encountered are with the WildCamping app, which doesn't use Mock GPS (although Phil promised me in a support ticket that the next version will). This means I can't auto-locate my position on the WildCamping app without switching the phone's old and slow internal GPS back on again :-( In practice that's not a problem though, because I generally know roughly where I am anyway so when I find a POI I want to go to I just copy the lat-long coordinates across into CoPilot Caravan (and at some point I'll install them all on that, as I already have on OsmAnd). And this coordinate copying is necessary even if I do switch the phone's internal GPS back on, because the WildCamping app can't send the coordinates to CoPilot for routing anyway (only to Google Maps & Osmand on my phone). So the only new problem Mock GPS causes in practice is that I can't easily contribute new POIs should I wish to, because of the way the WildCamping app goes about this! Getting to existing ones isn't really a problem, or at least no more than it was before
If you shop around a little you should be able to get a Garmin Glo, complete with cables etc., delivered to you (in UK) for under £90. And based on the 4 week trip I've just returned from, that's £90 very well spent indeed