
Why GPSes suck, and what to do about it - rglovejoy
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=801
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robotrout
Very fun article, not on GPS units ability to be GPS units, but about their
lack of interest in playing nice with 3rd party software / drivers, and the
very clever workarounds that can be done to overcome their shortsightedness.
Read this article!

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jeeringmole
That's some righteous hacking... backing out the vendor from the packet
checksum & header... :-)

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josefresco
Was in Boston a few weekends ago, and our (decent Garmin) GPS system would
lose it's signal with about 200 feet to go in each tunnel, and then would take
1-2 minutes to reconfigure itself which was typically too late to help us make
the right exit. It was frustrating to say the least to have to memorize the
route 4-5 steps ahead each and every time we entered a tunnel just in case it
got confused (which is did early and often)

Why can't the unit 'remember' the route in case signal is lost or have some
sort of 'tunnel' recognition mode to account for this? It's not like the 'Big
Dig' is an obscure set of tunnels (or Boston an uncommon city) that just
'popped up' without warning.

/rant

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Andys
Some of the Garmin units come with a wire that hooks into your car that allows
for "dead reckoning" by watching your speed and braking pattern, so it can
keep up with you when you're going through an area with no reception.

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chiffonade
My in-dash unit does this. It works great for tunnels and parking garages.

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vaksel
The problem I always have with my GPS system is that it sucks if you know
where you are actually going.

For example if I skip a step to take an exit(because I find it faster by using
the next one), it'll spend the rest of the way trying to reroute me to go back
to the step that I skipped. So I can be pulling into my driveway, and the
system will be trying to send me back 50 miles to take that exit that it
wanted me to take.

Granted I have the cheap $150 system, since I barely use it, so maybe the more
expensive systems are smarter

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Andys
I had a top of the line Garmin model which quickly noticed when you ignored a
direction, and re-calculated the route in less then a second.

Until it got stolen.

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pavel_lishin
Well, at least _it_ knows where it is.

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zby
Ah yeah - someone on the Internet designed a wrong interface.

