How not to get lost... Well... most of the time!

I have only once before used a GPS navigation system, and that was a simple "turn left here, turn right here" system in a Toyota. That particular system took me, rather imaginatively through a multi-storey car-park, whilst trying to get me to a hotel in Portsmouth, in the south of England.

I live on the edge of London, and my wife, whilst very dear to me, is absolutely hopeless at reading maps and giving directions, even when she knows where she is going.

Anyway I decided to get myself a GPS navigation device, and was trying to choose between a Tom-Tom Go 300 and a Navman 510. During this process I came across a special offer for a Garmin i3 at a local electronics store, for a price that was a little over half of the Tom-Tom. So I bought one.

I got it out of the box, put some batteries in, and it was ready to go. The maps (in this case detailed maps of the United Kingdom, and lower level coverage of Europe.) are already loaded onto a 256MB TransFlash (microSD) card. Once on the car, a cigarette lighter lead, also supplied, but power the i3 and save the batteries for when you need to go walk-about.

Its a lot smaller than the Tom-Tom, just about small enough to go into a coat pocket, but not into a trouser pocket. I thought the small screen was going to be a problem whilst trying to follow directions, but so far it hasn't been a problem, as the audio instruction I find are particular clear, and surprisingly loud from the little box.

In the packaging, however, there is no software provided. Garmin units apparently have shipped with Mapsource, in the past, which is used for unloading and loading different maps. I believe the i3 may come with Mapsource in the USA, as the memory card is not able to hold all the map data at once. This may affect the price, as this is probably why the i3 is so much cheaper than other GPS navigators in the UK. This means that to update the maps, this software has to be purchased, or a replacement pre-loaded memory card obtained from Garmin.

Also the i3 came pre-loaded with the City Select maps. This is not so much of an issue, except that City Select is the out-going map format, due to be replaced by City Navigator maps. The i3 is capable of using these, but again these maps would have to be purchase, as well as Mapsource to load them. I can't help feeling that this will not be a lot cheaper than buying a whole new GPS unit, which almost makes this thing disposable, which in turn seems a shame. Time will tell however, when we see how Garmin handle keeping the i3 reasonably up to date.

Windows drivers are available from Garmin websites which allow the unit to be connected to a PC via USB. There are however no Apple Mac OS X drivers, as usual. Being a Mac user myself I find this a bit disappointing, and I have to use a machine at my office to connect to it.

When connected to a Windows machine, I can do two things:

(1) I can keep the firmware up to date. The have been several updates in the last few months. This might be worrying to some, that so many changes are required. So far though I have to say the updates have been for minor things, and I am encouraged by the fact the Garmin are obviously actively giving the i3 full support.

(2) I can upload POIs (Points Of Interest) to the i3. In the United Kingdom an i3 user group has sprung up. They compile and maintain a collection of POI databases. First and foremost, the Safety Camera Database. When uploaded this allows the i3 to warn the driver of upcoming speed cameras, speed traps and traffic light cameras. Usefully the i3 is silent unless the speed limit for the approaching camera is actually being broken. The POIs I have loaded also include major shops, restaurants and the like, that I may like to navigate to. In many cases these also have telephone numbers as well.

In use I found that some instructions can be a little odd, but a quick glance at the screen usually makes it clear what it is trying to get the driver to do. There are however errors in the map for London. It doesn't for example seem to know about fire barriers. These are barriers across roads that block the road normal traffic, and can only be opened by a fire-fighter in order to let fire-fighting vehicles through. These roads seem to be regarded by the i3 as through routes.

There seems to be little significant difference between shortest and quickest route calculations. The quickest route calculations also don't find well established quick routes around London. The reason is that the route finding algorithm will not set off in the wrong direction to pick up a quicker route.

Driving to places I don't know, is a pleasure. The stress of having to navigate somewhere I don't know using a map, whilst driving, is gone. I don't need to worry about missing an instruction or driving off the route as the i3 will detect the detour and recalculate a new route for me. This is particularly useful when getting in areas of bad traffic congestion. I can just drive away from the problem area and let the i3 find a new route for me.



Update 23rd February 2006
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I am still very pleased with the i3, but having had the thing for a couple of months now, I thought it might be useful for some people to know how I'm getting on with it. After all, it’s only after time one becomes more aware of the limitations and quirks.


I have already touched on the fact that the quickest route algorithm will not set of in the wrong direction to save time. This is still the case, but in hindsight it shouldn't really be regarded as too much of a problem. In retrospect, the only reason I knew it wasn't finding the quick routes I knew, was because I was trying it out in areas and on routes I already knew very well. This of course is not what it's really for, at least that's what I think. It is really to get me to places I am not familiar with, and in those cases I will not know the quicker routes that seem to go initially in the wrong direction. If I do use it to go to an unfamiliar place outside of London where I live, then I have favourites in place to get me to the edge of London the best way, and then let the i3 decide from there.

Some annoyances have come to light in the last month or so. There are some areas of London where side streets are blocked part way along by "fire barriers". For those of you outside the U.K., it is a fairly common practice in cities here, to stop side streets being used during rush to bypass main roads. This is achieved by putting a gate across the road, for which only the emergency services have keys. They are marked "Fire Access Only" or something similar. Well guess what? The i3 knows nothing about them, and I have been caught a couple of times now.

The second annoyance is that if the i3 is loaded with s safety camera database, it has an alert tone that sounds as you approach a camera, and then continues to "Bong!" if you are over the speed limit for the approaching camera. The problem is that of it is in the middle of given some directions when the next safety camera alert is sounded, the alert will stop the direction instructions mid sentence, and they are not repeated. I would have preferred that the direction instructions are allowed to finish, and then the safety camera alert can sound. After all, the alerts are sounded when you are still tens of seconds from the camera, so a few seconds delay to allow the instructions to complete is not going to be a problem.

The third annoyance is that the POIs cannot be defined for a particular direction on the road. Therefore you will be alerted to safety cameras that are only active for traffic going in the opposite direction. This is particularly annoying on the M4 west of London for example, where the carriage-way going out of London has a 70mph limit, and the in-bound is set at 50mph, and has cameras every mile or so. This means there is a 3 or 4 mile stretch where the safety camera alert doesn't stop!

Now for some good news...

My wife has successfully used the i3 by herself. I don't intend to put women, or spouses down at all, but there are people who are not comfortable with technology, and simply don't understand it sometimes. My wife is one of these people, and finds it hard to come to grips with new pieces of technology. So it was particularly pleasing to me that she can use the i3. Less chance of the panic calls asking me how to get from A to B!

Update 6th April 2006
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It's still going well, no real problems, but here is some news and useful information. It is particularly pertinent for i3 users in the U.K.

(1) The i3 was released in the U.K. only shortly before the new City Navigator Europe v8 maps were available. If like mine you have City Select Europe v7, there is a free post address to which you can send your Transflash (microSD) card, and they will send you a new one with the Navigator software pre-installed.

(2) I have been receiving occasional emails asking where to get POI databases and Speed Camera databases. I get POIs from here (http://www.maft.co.uk/garmin/download.htm), and these are currently free. The Speed camera database (or safety camera database, if you prefer) I get from here (http://pocketgpsworld.com/). This was free until recently, but they are only charging GBP2 a month or GBP19 a year, which is not too much really.

(3) If you would like to be able to upload and download Favourites to and from your i3, I have found easyGPS from here (http://www.easygps.com/) does the job. It is free, and comes with many features you won't need, as they're for more complex GPS receivers. The software allows you download your favourites from the i3 as waypoints. You can then edit them, view their positions in lat-long, and load them back onto the i3.



Update 27th May 2006
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OK still no real problems, but I thought I'd add some new useful information...

(1) Some retailers in the UK (and maybe elsewhere so check) are selling a newer version of the i3 with some limitations it would seem. Garmin have increased the built in flash memory size, and are loading all the map data onto the internal memory. So although these newer i3's have a memory slot (I believe), the slot is empty. The up-shot of this is that as the built in memory, although larger is being used to store the maps as well as any favourites, waypoints and POIs, there is less space on these newer ones for the latter. For example the older i3 like mine, is able to store the entire MAFT POI database and Safety camera database from PocketGPSWorld. This apparently equates to something of the order of 40,000 stored points. The newer i3's can only accommodate about 30,000 points, and therefore require the user to selectively delete parts of the databases before uploading. Adding a memory card into the empty slot doesn't help, because you are not able to select where to store the POIs. They are always stored on the built in memory, and the i3 being a budget device doesn't come with the necessary software to move the maps from the internal memory onto a plug in memory card.

(2) For people who like to play around and customise things, the forums on PocketGPSWorld are full of clever people doing some interesting things. This includes the creation of utilities and procedures on how to customise the start-up splash screens. The other is a more recent development, and is still work in progress. A couple of i3 users have developed tools and procedures to allow the customisation of the voice files. Aside from the possibility of replacing the voice files with something silly, it is possible to blank out the more annoying announcements, e.g. "Re-calculating", or making important alerts like the speed camera bong, into something more noticeable.

The forum topic on how to change the splash screen is here:
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=30287

The topic contains links to the required software, and describes how to do it.


The forum topic where the technique was developed can be seen here:
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=31721

A manual and a copy of the software tools is available here:
http://www.maft.co.uk/garmin/voice/

Please note: If you decide to use these procedures and tools, you must do so at your own risk.

(3) I recently received my upgraded memory card containing the newer Navigator Maps. It would appear that most of the niggles with the previous map are now gone, e.g. the fire-barrier problem in some of London's side streets. Obviously there are new ones, but these are mostly minor in comparison, and are largely as a result of very recent road and junction layout changes. These changes are only going to become available after some time, I would imagine.

Update 31st July 2006
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Judging by the sudden rise in the numbers of people reading my review, there seems to be a sudden revival in interest in the little i3.

I recently noted that newer versions of the i3 were appearing that came without a memory card in the slot, and with all the maps preinstalled into memory inside the machine. These appeared to have a limitation on the numbers of POIs that could be uploaded to the machine.

It appears that this situation may not be as bad as first thought. It has become apparent that a memory added to the machine can be used to store POIs instead, which means the newer machine potentially has greater capacity for storing POIs than the original i3.

The new i3s come without a memory card installed. Buying a microSD card and a suitable USB card reader/writer allows you to use the POIloader software from Garmin to load POIs to the card when installed in the USB reader. When the card is inserted into the i3, those POIs become available. This means that rather than the typical 40MB free, on the 256MB card in the original i3, the limitation is only the size of the card purchased.


Update 15 January 2007
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Its still working and gets used several times a week, but both myself and my wife.

If you decide that you want one of these things, you might consider getting one fairly soon, as they appear to be becoming harder to find at main stream retailers.

The latest useful bit of information I have for you is with regards a nag screen that is starting to appear on some i3s, suggesting that the maps need to be updated. For many this will probably make sense, like myself. I live in London, and already I know there are road layout changes that can confuse the i3 navigation. For others, like those living in more rural areas, where road changes happen less often, maybe the current maps are more than adequate, and likely to remain so for some time.

In either case, users might like to be able to acknowledge the alert permanently and not see it again. Unfortunately, some of the later versions of firmware for the i3 will reissue the alert every time the i3 is switched on.

According to posts from members of PocketGPSWorld.com, there are ways to stop the alert reoccurring. One is to downgrade the firmware to an earlier version. This was discovered by people downgrading for other reasons, namely better map drawing performance.

If however you are happy with the firmware version you are using then the following procedure appears to work, but before you go piling into following these instructions please note the following warning.

WARNING: The following procedure will delete all entries from the Recent Finds and Favourites menus.

(1) Backup any favourites using Windows software like easyGPS.

(2) Switch off i3.

(3) Press down and hold all three buttons on the i3 simultaneously.

(4) When the i3 starts to power up you may release the buttons.

(5) The i3 should ask you whether or not to delete data.

(6) Answer "Yes".

(7) The i3 should trouble you no more to update your maps.

(8) Reload your favourites using easyGPS.

It is worth noting that any POIs loaded onto an i3 appear to be unaffected by this procedure.