Sat Nav & GPS Blog

Every week we hear from customers whose sat-nav have been stolen, lost, stopped working or are corrupted and who are desperately looking for a way to get their ‘favourites’ back.
Unfortunately, up until now when they were gone they were gone forever.

What’s more this is happening a lot more often than you would think.

But now, we have the solution – Backup!

You can take a full backup of all your favourites on your sat-nav and store them on myPOIs.  We will keep your 3 most recent backups so if anything does ever go pear-shaped, you will be able to restore your backup to your sat-nav in a matter of seconds.

Backup is a doodle to use and only takes a few seconds. We will even remind you when you should backup.

Just yesterday, I met the National Sales Manager of a retail chain who had dropped his sat-nav.  He lost the locations of all the stores, supplier details and other client information he had painstakingly added to his device.  Last week, we were dealing with a doctor’s surgery that had lost all the locations of their patients.

Regular backups of your sat-nav makes a lot of sense, especially if you are using it for work.  It can really save you a lot of stress and hassle somewhere down the road.

The Backup facility is part of the Premium and Premium + subscriptions but can also be bought on it’s own for less then €10.

It’s a fact that Irish consumers pay more than a lot of their European neighbours and with everyone tightening their purse strings coming up to Christmas it may seem a logical choice to buy from international online discount superstores.  Sometimes you can save between €20-50 but what a lot of people are not aware of are the hidden costs that may occur.

So what should you watch out for….

• .ie domains – often these online discount superstores have .ie domains (for example pixmania.ie, expansys.ie) but actually have no presence in Ireland at all and even some stores that claim an Irish presence don’t hold stock and have it shipped in when you purchase it. So if you want to buy from an Irish store, make sure that there is an Irish address, the company is registered in Ireland, carries stock and there is someone at the end of the phone to talk to.

• Warranty – what are they offering? Probably a full manufacturer’s warranty but where are the manufacturers based and what is the stores return policy? If you have a fault with your system, you will have to fork out to get it shipped back (most likely outside of Ireland) to the online store or manufacturer for a warranty replacement.  Under the Sale of Goods Act when you purchase from an online store, your contract is with the store and it is their responsibility to sort out your problems – try explaining this to a customer support representative based in France.

• Support – can they help you with your purchase? Probably not.  When you decide to spend a couple  of hundred euros on a electronic device you want to make sure that you are buying the right product for you. Larger online stores tend to not be able to provide you with this service.

• eBay – a number of manufacturers will not provide warranties when their products are purchased on eBay.

I’m not telling you not to buy from these online discount superstores but merely advising you of the risks.

After watching last nights episode of The Apprentice on TV3, I have to say that I felt sorry for all the contestents as I think that they had a mammoth task trying to sell Garmin satnavs on a Saturday and Sunday. They hopelessly tried to sell premium products at Fairyhouse Market and to the Sunday strollers on Dun Laoghaire pier.

Do you think you could have done better? Below is a list of the products they were given. Where would you have gone to sell?

Garmin have announced the availabilty of Mapsource City Navigator Europe NT 2009 Map Update (version 11).  This release will update any system that had City Navigator Europe Version 10 or earliar.

To see the level of map detail available on Version 11 click here.

To purchase this map update click here.

myPOIs.ie and Pumps.ie have announced the availability of daily fuel price updates for Garmin sat-nav users.  For the first time in Ireland users will now be able to download regular fuel price updates directly onto their sat-nav from www.mypois.ie.

www.pumps.ie is Ireland’s No. 1 and definitive online source of up to day service station fuel prices and price analysis. Entirely community driven, the web site receives over 300 fuel price updates on a weekly basis.

“It’s all about giving the best service and information we can to our subscribers.  We are delighted to have teamed up with Pumps.ie.  Fuel prices are an emotive topic and with significant price differences at service stations, often within the same geographic area, substantial savings can be made by simply shopping around.  This service gives our subscribers information when they most need it and should put a few euro back in their pockets each week!”, said John Dundon for myPOIs.ie.

“There are huge benefits to everyone by having our information on mobile devices such as sat-navs,”, said Jonathan Dean of Pumps.ie.  ”This partnership with myPOIs.ie means that we now have a database of over 1,500 service stations in Ireland with accurate locations.”

Both companies have further plans to enhance the service over the next few months to add details such as opening hours and facilities available at the service stations.

Finally completed the task of getting all the new Garda Speed Enforcement Zones (Sez) into our database.  What was taking the time was working out the direction of each zone.

So you can now download the complete set of the Garda Speed Enforcement Zones to your Sat-Nav from www.mypois.ie.  Sorry but for the moment this only works with Garmin sat-nav.  There are full instructions on the site about what you have to do.

There are no speed limit details with any of the zones (presumably because there are several limits in each zone) however if any one out there wants to collect this information and share it with the rest of our community, we’ll be happy to add the details to our database.  Send an email to submissions@mypois.ie with the zone identifier e.g. WW010  (Zone 10 in Co. Wicklow) and the speed limit/s.

We will likely tweak the dataset over the next few days so maybe refresh your sat-nav at the end of the week.

Click here and download now!

Yesterday, as reported on RTE Evening News, Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy launched eight new speed detection vans in Templemore, Co. Tipperary as part of An Garda Siochana’s Road Safety Strategy 2007 -2012. The aim of this strategy is to reduce road collisions, deaths and injuries on Irish roads.

After an extensive analysis in conjuction with the National Roads Authority, the Garda have identified over 800 speed enforcement zones which are based on collision histories where speed was a major contributor. A full list is also available on their web site. The aim is to provide “information to motorists in order to raise awareness of speeding in these zones”.

To view the Garda Speed Enforcement Zones on www.mypois.ie, click here.

To see details of zones, the easiest way is to search by county using the ‘Find on map’ facility at the top of the web page.

Later today, the speed zones will be available for download onto Garmin sat-nav devices from www.mypois.ie.  There will be alerts when entering and leaving a zone and the zone heading (North, South etc.).  There is no charge for this download.  You can also download Road Safety Authority Danger Zones which are based on 2005 accident data.

We will update the blog once the download is ready to go.

To follow up on a previous blog post – “Do not update the firmware on your nuvi 7xx series!!!”, Garmin have released a new firmware update, version 4.10 which seems to have fix the freezing issue that was occuring with version 3.10.

To download the new firmware – click here

While surfing the internet, I came across an Irish website that is selling Snooper Radar Detectors and stating that they are perfectly legal to use in Ireland, which brings us to the question that we have been frequently asked here at mysatnav – are these devices legal or illegal in Ireland?

These are laser devices used by drivers to detect mobile safety cameras and alert the driver if their speed is being monitored by the Gardai.  Although they are legal in some countries, the UK being one, they are completely illegal to use in Ireland. In fact, the mere existence of a radar detector in a car, even if switched off can attract confiscation and/or a hefty fine. The reason why these radar detectors are illegal is because they interfere with a Garda officer’s ability to carry out his duties.

Check out the Irish Statute Book to see the offical regulation.

On a more positive note, it is definitely not illegal to have the positions of safety cameras on you GPS device. In December 2007 while being interviewed on RTE’s Morning Ireland about the introduction of safety cameras in Ireland, Eddie Rock, Assistant Commissioner of the Traffic Corps said that he has no issue with GPS devices showing locations of these cameras.

To view and download the latest mobile and fixed safety camera locations go to www.mypois.ie

We have had a few customers that have been having problems with their nuvi 7xx series and their device freezing during routes. After inspecting a few systems and noticing a fault we got on to Garmin who have confirmed that there is a bug in the new firmware update for the 7xx series (version 3.10).

So, anyone who has not updated their system, hold off doing so. Anybody who has updated to version 3.10 will need to revert back to version 3.0

To revert back to 3.0

• Log onto www.gpsinformation.org/perry/nuvi/
• Download nuvi750_300.exe