Best Truck GPS to Buy?

Yes, lots of cams flooding the market. Wildly different guts inside of basically less than 10 "outer" shells though. We've done almost two years of "learning" in that area. A camera that would go on a 560 GPS is not actually a "dash cam" as it is more of a backing up kinda cam, or a blind-spot view cam. You may be referring to a windshield or dash cam that is recording and that is different than a GPS cam unless you are using the GPS as a monitor FOR a recorder. But I would prefer not to divert this GPS particular thread unless you are asking about a cam that connects to a GPS out of respect for the OP.

 

You point out something I had been wondering. Connecting a camera to the 560 has some upside.
In the manual for the 560 does not seem to have a lot of info about that.

I have seen a number of stand alone "backing" type camera systems. They all seem to have some sort of "brain box" for them to work. So will the 560 just take raw input? Could it also be a monitor for one that may also record.

On another note. In talking with some of the tech people at Garmin. I learned that you can delete a number of files from the unit with no problems caused. This has an upside in that it will free up internal memory. Some of the files they said were OK to delete are the voice and help files in the languages you will not use. Also the demo and tutorial files.

I did delete the voice and help files from the unit. It did open up a good bit of memory.

Have you tried this on any of your test units?

 

The bean bag mount works very well in a minivan, with its half acre of flat dash. Also, my mother uses one in her car. I don't care much for them, but they do eliminate having to clean those rings off the windshield.

 

Map always worked for me

 

never mind found it http://my.garmin.com/mapErrors/repo...utm_content=support&utm_campaign=error-report

 

The bean bag has its place for sure, probably works well in a number of vehicles.

Fortunately, it stays in the same spot, so it is not so bad when cleaning the windows.

I have seen windshields that are just covered with the little circles.

 

Yes, the Garmin 560 and the Rand 720, and the Magellan 9270 and others can act just like any other video monitor. The key to the whole process is getting the connectors and the pins right. Since I didn't like any of the options that I searched for, I made them instead.

The GPS IS the "black box" in this case. It has a video processing circuit inside that can process a standard video signal. So technically with the right connectors you could make anything that has a video output show on the screen. A camera still needs power though because the GPS jack does not power it. So that would need a cigarette plug or direct wire to the 12v system. So yes, if you hooked the video out from a mobile DVR to the GPS, then it would act as a monitor for backing up the trailer, watching recorded road incidents, etc just like any other monitor that would come with the stand-alone system.

No, I have not deleted any files from the Garmin in an effort to free space, to answer your other question.

Camera demo vid below.

 

A good old fashioned laminated rand mcnally road atlas. It never screws up or gets you lost unless your sense of direction sucks.

 

Problem with most GPS units is that they are geared for cars not trucks. Even though you may occasionally find a GPS that is marketed for the truck market, it usually just has a larger display and perhaps a few truck "points of Interest, i.e. truck stops, truck wash etc", they usually have no clue what roads are hazmat restricted, have load or axle restrictions, bridge heights or weights. If they do have bridge heights they are frequently inaccurate. So yes, you may love your Garmin or your Tom Tom, they both make good units, but do they really help a truck from losing 18 inches off the top of their trailer.

 

Maybe a car unit, Today's truck units do take into account the restrictions that a truck has to avoid based upon your settings.

Any restriction is only as good as someone getting it to the folks that make the mapsets or in Rand's case our own DB for restrictions.

Mark