Suppport Thread for the TND 500, TND 700 or future Rand McNally products.

All these POI files from 3rd parties do come has either Ascii files or binary with a fixed format. It would be a VERY simple task to preprocess these files to change the name to Walmart no matter what they have it listed as.

I am very surprised Rand is using us as their QA people though. It seems this product was released too soon and still should be in Beta only to select people and not for sale to the general public.

The Quick Stop feature for Walmart as an example has been proven not to work yet the spell and search ability is non existent. This alone is very serious and there should be Beta release fixes for those who want to download them with the understanding it's a Beta version and not have to wait for a major release.

 

Thanks Mark for your very prompt response to the email I sent this morning
I was able to move everything to the new laptop without a hitch.

Thanks again for everything you do......

 

Rand seems to be more interested in "eye candy" and "bells and whistles"
than a working unit. In the just short of a year I have had a TND unit, the failures certainly have out numbered any positive performance. While this last OS release 1573 has been more stable that prior ones, the most glaring problems still exist. Like off tracking. as little as 300 ft to some 1500 ft.

Example. I-55 north from Memphis. the unit off tracks some 500 ft. It thinks it is out in the fields.

US 400 in Kansas, same type of problem.

Some of the voice prompts from the unit are wrong. It will say "turn left" when it is showing a right turn. Not often, but happens.

Location awareness. Any time you stop, the unit seems to not know where it is. As long as you are moving, it seems to be able to find its self.

Example. Leaving a shipper, pull out into lot and stop. Go to POI and look for list of what ever you want. Look at the arrows for the POI. then start moving. The arrows will change direction. The map will do this too.




Routing errors.

Toll roads. In some cities a road may be only tolled in certain sections.
The way the TND works, it will avoid the non tolled section most of the time.

Restricted routes. Seems to be a problem here as well. A number of times I have had the "restricted route" warning come up on marked truck routes. Then I have also had no warning for a restricted road.

Example US-75 from Okmulgee, OK to I-40 is a truck route. the TND has it weight restricted. Wants to route some 45 miles around this 13 mile section.

Here is the issue. I have gotten so tired of finding problems, that I no longer really keep track of them. When some thing comes up, I just ignore the thing and move on.

Now with the dead battery problem, it really has been the last straw.

 

Then you should probably close this thread.

 

I have to agree. I worked as a software engineer for over 30 years doing this sort of thing. Embedded Windows CE, Pocket PC, Platform Builder and others. This was my specialty, embedded systems.

And to answer your question Mark, yes, we did have bugs when we shipped but none involved the basic functions of the unit. We actually did Alpha and Beta tests using people in the industry. We also had a QA staff. When a bug was fixed the QA department started the process of testing back to square one. Not just the bug that was fixed as it may have affected other areas.

I thought I was dreaming or misunderstood the unit a few times already when it told me to take a left. I took a right because the sign was clearly marked. I thought it was me until I read the previous reply.

The points of interest may not be a big deal to you but they are to me. Truck stops, rest areas, service plaza's and Walmart are a HUGE part of my life on the road and very important.

It really gets to me when I'm sitting at a Flying J or Walmart and the unit says there is none. I should not have to use my Blackberry to find these stops then enter the address into the unit. Heck, I can't even search for them because there isn't a freaking search/spell button!!!

If you want to make people happy you need to give access to these bug fixes as they come out with the understanding this is a Beta release. I would fully understand the unit crashing or showing other problems if I were to put a Beta release into my unit but to just brush it off and make me wait for something THAT SHOULD HAVE WORKED OUT THE DOOR is unacceptable.

I'm probably going to put my unit up for sale on Ebay. I think you people should buy it back but that's not going to happen.

I was very happy with my Garmin Nuvi 350. The performance was outstanding and I had every Walmart, Flying J, Petro and everything else under the sun as a custom POI.

Anyone interested in my TND500 can send me a PM or email me at steve@easytrucker.net

 

And by the way. I mentioned earlier that your debounce code was no good and causes the screen to jump all over the place. Here is a guide for your engineers.

When a touch is detected via interrupt.

Disable interrupts and go into poll mode. Wait 10ms and see if touch still there. If not, do nothing. If yes then wait another 10ms and do the same. Do the same again. If touch is detected 3 times then it's real. Now beep. Your multiple beeps clearly indicate to me that you are detecting many events instead of waiting.

As far as scrolling across the screen.

It jumps due to this problem also thinking you have taken your finger off the screen. That 10ms pause needs to be greatly increased in the other direction to be more forgiving. When a user is scrolling the map the code needs to do the above code in the opposite way. If it detects the user has taken their finger OFF the screen for 3 samples in a row waiting like 50ms then the user has really taken their finger off.

I also worked in the cash register embedded field for many years at Fasfax corporation who did the registers for McDonalds and Burger King. We hired kids from high school to do our testing with touch screens. There is not a single person faster then a teenager we found.

 

Mark, I wasn't quick enough to save this location on the TND, but I assume I can just explain it with the "Tell Rand" feature next time I hook up to my laptop (I haven't used it yet, but I can prolly finger it out). If you want to try to duplicate it:

It thinks the entrance to the Loves in Calvert City, KY (on I-24, exit 27) is on the eastbound on-ramp. Also, when trying to get to this Loves while travelling north on the Julian M. Carrol PKWY (or whatever they're calling it this month), it thinks I should pass up the eastbound ramp for I-24, and take the next right at the end of the PKWY onto US-62 east, go back under I-24, turn left onto the on-ramp, then about halfway up the ramp I should hang a right into the Loves. I didn't think I could get up enough speed to make that big of a jump, so I just used the US-62 entrance like everyone else was doing.