GPS stereos

[solo318]

So after a 4 hour drive into southern GA. My gps pulled me up to a set of railroad tracks that were not cross able by anything short of BIGFOOT. Fortunately it was my pick up with the 40 ft trailer and not my TC, so the U turn was complicated but doable.

That got me thinking about my needs in the TC. I have an RV portable gps that mostly sucks. Do any of you with store bought trucks have a gps stereo installed? Can you give me some feedback on quality and camera options etc?
I'm currently so close I can't stand it ( it goes out for paint next week) and i would hate to get stuck in a bad spot on the first trip out.

 

[DeepVee]

I've always used Google maps on my phone but I've been caught a few times when the poo-poo hits the fan in the middle of the night & my phone is not on. So I'm going to switch to a dedicated GPS. I don't have it yet but I'm going to go to a Garmin RV 770 LMT-S. Have you looked at this unit? It's has a nice big screen and you can add four Wi-Fi cameras to the system.

 

[Doug Ambrisko]

I have an earlier Garmin RV GPS with the big screen. It lets me put in my weight and size. It works pretty well and I got the camera module with it. A couple of issues which is probably okay that on the weight it will keep asking me about weight issues when I told it was okay in this area.
For example there are freeway sections in California that restrict trucks based on weight but RV's are exempt. So we take that but it keeps trying to re-route and complaining about the weight limit. It seems sometimes confused on the speed limits. California has a 55MPH limit when towing and trucks with 3 axles. We are 2 axle and don't tow so we shouldn't be limited to 55MPG it tends to state 55MPH as the limit. Other times it doesn't. I like having the limit as a sanity check in case I missed something while droning down the HW and their might have been a speed change I missed.

Sometimes when routing to a location it will take us into a place that can't work. This seems to happen when selecting a place versus address. It seems like the GPS location (lat/long) is wrong but the street address is right. Going across Wyoming it has trouble showing rest stops on I-80. We use that figure out where we'll stop to sleep for the night.

I haven't updated the unit and maps for a year. So it might be resolved. What I tend to do now is to use both Google Maps and the Garmin. It would be nice I could put length, height and weight into Google Maps. There are some bridges that we can't go under at 13'6". On I-94 there is one at 13'7" that we clear. Getting into Detroit things get lower and there are signs to exit. It's nice having 2 units for a sanity check. We started using Google maps more since I have all of our music on my phone so that integrates nicely. We download our destination area so we can use that without data usage.

When are we going to get semi-autonomous RV's to handle the HW driving? That would be nice. With sufficient cameras etc. it could make self parking a snap. It could look at trees etc. and make sure there are rooms for slides, be out on the most level part etc. It could give us warnings about hitting trees in the cities.

 

[neetchracer]

This is a good thread.....lol. Since purchasing my 13.3' tall, 72' long rig and trailer, my worst fear of all time happened coming home from southern Ill this summer. The average Joe, Garmin GPS we used(as in, we will not be using it again) took us on a wrong turn in Indy, putting us in a residential neighborhood with roads rated for 11K, at midnight....lol. Everything worked out ok, but I was sweating razorblades for about an hour.

Since then I have found Garmin makes a GPS unit for truckers, basically the same unit as normal, but with highway only type software. Unless I find something better, I will be trying this unit out.