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

WEATHER DATA TEST RESULTS:

Test hardware was using a Droid X (Android) using Verizon 3G hotspot capability. NOTE that there are multiple weather "overlays" that you can choose and I found that each uses different amounts of data depending on what needs to be "drawn" over the map and what your ZOOM levels are. So I ran some tests using worst case scenario ("Feels Like" temperature which combines temperature and humidity and another one "Wind Speed.") Other tests were run using the less data-intense overlays (like "Traffic Impact due to weather.)

AND the survey says: it uses from .5 to 1 MB of data per hour depending on which overlay you chose and how much zooming in and out you do. So, for instance, if you drove 11 hours per day with weather on the entire time on the most intense overlays and you drove that way for 30 days straight and never lost your 3G or 4G connection areas (ya right) then you would use 330 megs in a month. I suppose that it is mathematically possible to do that, but so is winning powerball mathematically possible. In reality I think that users would turn on the weather overlay when they are planning a trip or when they are approaching a region where bad weather is likely and then either turn it off or lose 3g/4g signal from their provider before ever approaching even 100 mb in a month.

 

Thanks for that Don. Was keeping an eye it myself but I have other things making demands on my data plan to get anything close to an accurate read so really appricate it.

Mark

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

Thank you for taking the time to run the tests,the information is very usefull for those,like myself who would need to connect using roaming data.


Thanks
John

 

Sorry- should have clarified. It was in regard to your reception when you moved the antenna around in your- office? Den? I'm to cut a J-pole and hang it outside the cab somewhere and see what that does for my reception.

Mark

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

Telus data roaming in the US is $5.00 Mb or for an add on for $10.00 Mo. reduces it to $1.00 Mb. break even point is 2.5 Mb. From the test run by Don it appears that very little data would be used if used sparingly.

 

Mark how do we go about returning this thing for repair?
After charging , powered on and reset all seemed ok. Fully charged over weekend unplugged and put in jump bag for the AM trip.
Plugged in truck, red charging light on powered up input destination and away I go. An hour later screen flickers and shuts off. Red charge light still on. I'm stumped and a bit pissed that I have a $300 paperweight here. If it wasn't for the support we get for these things I would have thrown it out on I81 by now.