GPS - Do We Need It

Location - Las Cruces, New Mexico Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Have you used a GPS (global positioning system) or do you own one?

Years ago most people used maps to navigate new places that they have never been. Going to a new City or State would require a bit of planning. First you visit your local motor association or local tourist information centre for a maps and guides of the location you intend to travel. Or you can wait and get this information once your there.

The use of GPS technology is more widely spread today. Manufacturers are including them as standard equipment in new car and trucks. There are mobile units that can attach to the dash or wind screen and then remove when parked. Cell phone are now replacing the stand alone GPS for use anywhere. As a result people are carrying less maps in the vehicle. Maps can clutter up the front seat and are never folded correctly and find them on the floor in the back seat. Maps are just inconvenient, cumbersome, and usually wrong anyway.

Four years ago when we first decided to become full-time travelers we purchased a Garmin GPS with lifetime map upgrades. It has worked very well, although sometimes we have disagreements with the polite lady that tells us where to go. She is always “Recalculating” but will eventually get us to our destination.

Misshape Location – We were on a grocery shopping trip to Mountain View Market Co-op in a mall (don't even know the name of the mall) in downtown Las Cruces, NM. We had only been in the store for fifteen to twenty minutes and was surprised to find the GPS was dead.

GPS Problem – No power, battery is dead. Even the 12V power cable is not activating the unit, so the lithium battery must have been over heated on the dash of the truck, but the temp was not that hot today and the GPS had been working to get use to this location.

The immediate problem was to get home (back to the KOA where the trailer is parked) without a GPS. We did not have any maps in the truck. So all we had were our memories of the turns and directions the GPS had use to get us to where we now sit. The compass on the dash is working, so we knew that we must go west to get to the KOA. The KOA was located on Hwy 70 and that ran east and west through Las Cruces, so we had to find that.

Solution – to buy a new GPS and see if the manufacturer of the old one will fix the problem

Action – At home (trailer) I let the GPS unit cool down to see if it worked after a rest. It didn't work. The next day we were to meet friends Jay and Roni for a brunch. Roni was helpful by sending an email with directions to their home. I also found it on Google Maps and Street View. But the printer wasn't working to give us a hard copy to follow. I transcribed the directions by hand. Later that evening I found the printer cable had come loose so now with it I printed a Google Maps version of the directions.

You must be asking yourself “Why don't I use my Android for the directions.” Well we don't use our phone for “Data” in the US, it's too expensive.

The brunch went very well. The restaurant “Sunset Grill” had a great menu. We said goodbye to Roni and Jay who gave us more directions to “Best Buy” just down the road.

Best Buy had sales on a couple of the Garmin models. We purchased the “nuvi 2457 LMT and headed home to set it up. This unit, like the old one connect to the computer and the internet for map updates. With anything boughten that uses data, it should be updated as soon as you get it. Well the update took 12 hours using the free Wifi here at campground.

Now all that was missing were the destination point from three years of collecting (many, many, many of them). The program used to communicate with the GPS has a feature to save all of the user data to a file. I did not use this feature on the old Garmin, so I plugged it in to the USB port to see if I could transfer the destination data with a dead battery. There was nothing right away, but in a minute or two the screen on the dead GPS came to life. What was going on? I thought the lithium battery was kaput. But here it was charging and coming to life. "It's alive! It's alive!" to quote "Young Frankenstein" (1974). In a half hour the unit was running.

So the big question was Why? As it turns out the 12V cable in the truck was not working, I didn't need a new GPS just a new power cable. Go figure. We now have a back-up GPS. That's a good thing.

Well the new unit works just great with lots of new feature and the old destination data transferred in. We even like the sound of the girl that give good direction. We haven't given her a name yet, but she seems to be sophisticated and well educated.

So until next time remember to “Discover It and Live It”.