[DieselBoss]

FYI

Last week, we completed a 5-week test of the TeleType 7" version. The test included in-house usage and OTR driver use in the US and Canada.

We feel that this product has great promise, but that the price tag is not yet justified at this time for the version as tested. We provided TeleType with a full and comprehensive report on the unit with clear suggestions from my in-house tests and the on-road driver comments.

I will update this thread for you if/when the product evolves and we do a second round evaluation.

Finally, I want to publicly thank TeleType for providing us with a loaner unit and for the open communications concerning their GPS product. There is a great need out there for a good hand-held GPS with real truck routes, low bridges, etc. and we are constantly watching out for this solution for drivers.

[highroller]

Any more input on the TeleType GPS? I am dying to find out more about it as well....I have been holding off buying it until I here a good review :-D

[DDCavi]

So im slightly confused. Is the Teletype the brand name of Worldnav or two different identities

[kneescraper]

Teletype is Worldnav.

I have been using one for over a month and I HATE IT!!!!! The damn thing is always telling you to exit and then get back on the freeway. It will tell you to turn when the only thing that changed is the name of the road. I use it on the I-5 corridor mostly. This thing SUCKS!!!! Punch in a trip from LA to Seattle and it will have you exit I-5 35 times and get back on.

I do a lot of pickup and del in the OXNARD, Salinas CA. area. Many times, it has tried to route me onto highways that don't recommend trucks over 30 feet. Yes, I enterend my truck length info correctly during the set-up.

This thing is a piece of garbage. Of course, I bought the thing in bumbf#$% nowhere so I can't get my money back. I prefer google maps for a printout of the directions and I am done.

[highroller]

Yikes....thnx for the input :-O

[DieselBoss]

This is a follow-up on our hand-held truck GPS product tests from earlier in this thread.

We just completed testing the upcoming release of the "PCmiler Truck Navigator" hand-held GPS due out to the public in Mid-November (at an estimated price of $349.)

Details:

Screen: 3.5" touchscreen. We found it to be quite clear and easy to see. It fades (as most do) in bright sunlight but still quite usable and not as faded as the TeleType screen. The touch function is easy and accurate. The buttons may be a little small if you have huge "sausage fingers" but most users will find them adequately sized. Very nicely allows for 4 different ways of viewing when you are driving (2D map, 3D map, Itinerary, or "Next Turn" modes)

Volume: Verbal directions are given including the road names that you are looking for. It is loud enough but as always the speaker is small and could be drowned out by cab noise if your rig is excessively loud inside.

Routing: It is powered by the Co-Pilot Truck 11 engine and is nearly identical to that program (for those who are familiar.) It includes routing for profiles for truck, car, motorcycle, and walking. It also has the ability to create custom routing profiles based on your particular road preferences. In use, it was easy to see the next turn and accurate as far as your position. It also gave us visual and audio alerts when we went down trucking restricted roads with low bridges or weight restrictions. It uses the PCMiler truck routing maps for this.

Trip Planning: Like the Co-Pilot 11 (and UN-like the Teletype unit tested) it allows you to put in up to 50 stops on a single trip and allows you to pre-plan from any point to any other point (rather than ONLY from where you are currently sitting like the TeleType.) The trip plan uses the road profile that you have selected and you can alter it easily by changing your profile or adding waypoints.

POI's - There are 6 million pre-programmed in. Includes truck stops, weigh stations, rest areas, Wal-Marts, etc. Unfortunately the exits are still included when you turn on the "Truck Services" alerts. That's fine only if you want to be alerted to every exit you are passing. Yikes. It is easy, however, to add a POI to your trip plan or to search for them around you or on your route.

Addresses and roads: Much like the CPT-11 program it has most of them that we tried, but still has the occasional unknown road and the issue where if a road has 2 names (like "Johnson street could also be called "SR-43 for instance) then it often only knows the address by ONE of those names and not by both. Still, the database is extensive throughout the US and Canada and this was not a show-stopper.

Additional misc features: The unit has battery backup and will function when not plugged in for over an hour (also in contrast to the TeleType 7" that we tested which shut off immediately and lost the current trip when unplugged or the truck ignition was shut off.) It has an SD card slot so that you can also add programs, store music, pictures, and video, etc on it. The unit as tested was not bluetooth capable.

It came with an AC charger, a 12V charger, and can be charged from your USB port on a laptop with one of those cords like what come with a digital camera. It also came with a suction cup windshield mount that held very well.

In summary: This was a good solution for those who don't have, or don't want to use, a laptop computer truck program GPS. We have heard no response from TeleType after providing an extensive test report to them in August so we can't update anything beyond what I said earlier in this thread about that solution.

We found the PCMiler Truck Navigator to be ready to go as-is and will begin shipping in November as long as they are delivered on schedule and we do not find any show-stopper problems with it between now and then.

- Don
www.dieselboss.com

Attachment: picture of the unit as tested

[Malaki86]

Well, the fact that the unit is based on CoPilot 11, I'll never buy one. I have CoPilot 11 sitting on a shelf at my house. It's not worth the drive space to install it. The fact that they are refusing to do any patches or upgrades to fix the multitude of problems with it is enough to say "Hell no."

Thanks for the info, though.

Edit:
Oh, just for anyone interested in CoPilot 11: I hope you don't travel in West Virginia with it. The ONLY roads in WV it has marked as truck legal are 4-lane highways. Sure, most of the 2-lane roads are crappy, but they ARE legal 99.5% of the time. After I received CP11 and found this out, I called ALK about it. They said that the weight limits in WV are 64,000 on all 2-lane roads. They didn't even believe me when I sent them a letter from the WV DOT listing weight-restricted routes, which only have about 10 roads on it.

[DieselBoss]

Hey Malaki,


It's been a while - I hope that the world is treating you well! Since you brought up your long-standing concerns with the CPT-11 laptop product, I'll update you with the latest since we talked last:

- You are correct that they originally said there would be patches to rev 11, and then several months later retracted that statement based on the workarounds and their current development projects on PCMiler and other Co-Pilot systems.

- The screen resolution problem was fixed by changing the window size in the "preferences.cfg" file so that no one has to change their actual native laptop resolution any more. Obviously that bug only applies to the laptop version and not to the Navigator.

- The features (like avoid/favor roads, POI manager, etc) are going to be included in ver 12 due out in spring/summer timeframe of 09. (or so the word to us is anyway)

- The map and address data has always been a concern - especially because many roads have more than one name and the ALK systems sometimes only have one of the names (like "Johnson Street" is also called "state route 23" for example.) We do find it to be greater than 95% accurate in day-to-day use though, especially if you try the road by different spellings (like highway verses hwy, or state route verses SR) The response is that this will be greatly improved in the ver 12 also.

- I researched the West Virginia roads a while back for another driver by calling the WV DOT and they responded that the ONLY roads that have NO trucking restrictions are the few major interstates. All of the other roads have either weight or size restrictions and that are explained in a very convoluted manner by their highway planners on the following 2 documents: http://www.wvdot.com/3_roadways/rp/G...Size%20Map.PDF AND http://www.wvdot.com/3_roadways/rp/G...ht%20Limit.PDF. Because they break it down by length verses number of axles, weight per axle, number of feet between the axles, and about a dozen other confusing methods, ALL of those roads are CORRECTLY designated as trucking "RESTRICTIONS" but NOT truck "PROHIBITED" by Co-Pilot. If a driver knows that his rig, trailer, and load are "normal" height, weight, etc. then all he has to do is click on "Override Restrictions" in his routing setting. Co-Pilot will then route him down any of those 99.5% of roads in West Virginia like you say. It still will NOT put him on any of those trucking "prohibited" roads that the WV DOT identified however. Whoever gave you the "weight limits in WV are 64,000 on all 2-lane roads" answer at ALK gave you and incomplete and inaccurate explanation.

So far, the options for truck routing GPS are still very limited out there to my knowledge. We have a ton of drivers using the ver 9 and ver 11 Co-Pilots who know the limitations but feed back that the benefits (especially for new drivers) far outweigh those limitations.

If you know of any other units that we can "run through their paces" on the market, please let me know and we will provide test reports on them too. At the moment we believe that the PCMiler Navigator units are pretty cool and are going to at least bring another truck routing GPS, especially without having to mount a laptop, to the drivers.

Best regards on your continued safety and success out there and thanks again for the feedback.

[Malaki86]

Good info on the screen resolution problem. You'd think they'd put that info on the FAQ page. I truly miss the avoid/favor and POI manager in CP11.

As for other truck specific solutions, you're right - hardly any are out there. I know that in Europe, there are a few choices for true truck specific routing using NAVTEQ Transport. It's a new set of data added to the already incredible NAVTEQ map data. The data includes all railroad crossings, bridge heights/limits, road length/weight limits, etc.

If you do a Google search for "navteq transport", you'll get a nice selection of information.

Also, Siemens-VDO was supposed to release a truck specific GPS unit. Their unit is a 2-piece setup. There is a control box that can be hidden and a choice of monitors, up to a 7". If you search here, you may find links I've posted about it. Just search the forums for "siemens" and you should get something.

Right now, I'm having issues with my laptop/GPS in the truck. For some reason, I can't get any receivers to work unless I'm going under 35mph or so. I've tried 3 different receivers and am getting the same results on all of them. I even formatted/reinstalled everything on the laptop with no luck...

[Harold J. Carter]

As of October 3rd, 2008

There are many major and minor defects that make the Teletype unit unusable for car or truck navigation.

WRONG TURNS – The GPS unit will direct the driver to turn right when the actual route is to turn left.

SKIPPED TURNS – The GPS will indicate that the next turn is right when the actual route is to turn left, continue for 1km and then turn right.

WRONG ROUTING – The GPS unit will direct the driver to turn off of a Highway in favor of narrow dirt roads. This condition applies to all settings (car quickest, car shortest, car prefer highways, car avoid highways, truck quickest, truck shortest, truck prefer highways, truck avoid highways).

WRONG REROUTE – When a turn is missed or skipped, the GPS will recalculate the route to the destination. This recalculation will direct the driver many miles/kilometers the wrong way only to circle back to the destination. Example: Destination is 1km from current position … the GPS will create a 10 km route to end up at the destination.

WRONG GUIDANCE – The GPS will direct the driver to bear right on the road you are already on even though the road is straight as an arrow. The correct action should be to indicate the next turn at an intersection.

AUTOZOOM – Autozoom does not function on the Teletype GPS and must be disabled. With autozoom active, the map display is so close in that the map is unusable. With autozoom disabled, the drive must manually zoom out and zoom in for driving and approaching turns.

ROADS DISSAPEAR – At certain zoom levels, (500m and up), the roads will disappear from the screen leaving a route line on a blank map. The map of the roads may or may not return. The driver must zoom in and then zoom out to force the unit to display the roads once again.

STREET NAMES – Street names are not shown on screen is the zoom level is set to a level that allows you to see crossroads ahead. (300m and up)

WRONG HIGHWAY NAMES – The GPS will not accept a destination address of HWY … you must use a formal highway name of “KING’S HIGHWAY” for Ontario. Note that all other GPS units on the market as well as computer navigation software accept HWY or HIGHWAY.

VISIBILITY - The backlight on the GPS is too dim to see in bright daylight. For daytime use, the automatic backlight setting must be disabled and the brightness on the monitor need to be turned up to full power.

BRIDGE HEIGHTS ETC – We have not tested this main feature as we could not even navigate from point “A” to point “B” properly.

All of the above defects have been documented with video recording and presented to Teletype over the past three months. Teletype stated that the version T6.0902r98M is final and there is nothing more that can be done to correct the defects.

Harold J. Carter ....