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A friend came round last night and told me of this amazing bit of kit he was going to have in the summer - a gps with real ordnance survey mapping. I thought it odd that I hadn't heard it mentioned on here so here is Satmap

What do you think? Is it what we have all been waiting for? :laughing:

 

Your link seems to be broken but I found the product information here

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What do you think? Is it what we have all been waiting for?

 

Looks very handy.

 

... but ...

 

What does it have that (say) Garmin Topo doesnt? I don't own Garmin Topo (my GPSr is too ancient) but as far as I know it has a comparable level of detail to 1:25,000 (? may be wrong there) in vector format.

 

I think the key question will be - are these maps just raster maps or vector maps? If you plan a route from A-B will it just come up as a straight line (raster) or will it hug the road between the two and give you turn-by-turn routing?

 

NB I'm sure Magellan etc have competitor products to Garmin Topo - I just don't know about them. I'm not banging the Garmin drum here.

 

All the same, looks a nice piece of kit. Mind you http://www.satmap.com/ isn't exactly informative.

Edited by Team Sieni
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FWIW I've got one on pre-order - if only to use as a bump proof, water proof pda with built in gps.

 

However, word is it's going to be fairly limited as to software compatibility - and the maps, although very similar to MM nav, will only come preinstalled on sd cards. Whether it'll be possible to copy the relevant files onto another card and add your own maps remains to be seen....

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Been mentioned a few times now. The site has limited information on the front to generate a 'hype'. There was an ad in a magazine linked some time ago on these forums... Here actually

 

I think I'd prefer a MM/PDA solution to the portable mapping problem - far more flexible. But, I'd need to find a rugged waterproof PDA of some sort, or maybe a casing to compete. Also battery life in this Satmap, on AAs looks good.

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Quote from an earlier thread...

 

Very nice... but at £300 for the basic unit, another £1700 for the National Parks at 1:25000 and yet another £500 for the 10 OS regions at 1:50000 that could turn out to be one very expensive piece of kit!

 

On sale here -IF in stock!

 

Latest due date is June 2007

 

G

Edited by KandG
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What does it have that (say) Garmin Topo doesnt? I don't own Garmin Topo (my GPSr is too ancient) but as far as I know it has a comparable level of detail to 1:25,000 (? may be wrong there) in vector format.

 

Good as the Garmin Topo is... I've got it on my 60CSx... it's not as good as O.S. 1:25000 on MemoryMap.

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However, word is it's going to be fairly limited as to software compatibility - and the maps, although very similar to MM nav, will only come preinstalled on sd cards. Whether it'll be possible to copy the relevant files onto another card and add your own maps remains to be seen....

 

From speaking with them, you have to use their own SD card maps, you cannot download existing MM OS maps. This restriction is imposed by Ordnance Survey licensing.

 

J

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Had a go of this at the outdoor show, the guy there was helpful. Nice bit of kit...although it's nothing you wouldn't achieve with memory map running on a PDA with a BT GPS, but nice that it's all in one unit. Unit was nice and chunky and looked a lot less fragile than a standalone PDA would be. They had one running whilst partially submerged in a fish tank.

 

Maps are on SD cards, yes, but each map for a national-park sized region (lakes, snowdonia, etc.) are £100 each. Maps for a region (Liverpool/Wirral for example, bit like the landranger areas of coverage) are £50 each.

 

Could get a bit expensive but quite cool.

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Non of the other other units have O/S maps with marked footpaths. The screen also seems bigger than most of the others. According to the web site the unit with UK (FULL) at 50000:1 with FP and BW will be £460 - or less than £10 per week [:D]... and it plays MP3 whilst you're searching.

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SatMap Active10 (which is what u r all on about) will be avilable as of August 7th along with the entire UK mapped with OS LRanger @ 1:50k (available @ £140 on 2 SD's), Also avilable are UK National Parks @ 1:25k Explorer Series - Both Meridian 2 Vector Datasets. Maps will also be sold as downloads from their website where you will will be able to plot routes and download other material - (No PC Mapping program available as yet for the device). The unit comes with a built in road map of the UK which is routable. Cannot confirm if the Vector maps are routable but then agian why would you want to routable footpaths? Nobody else dos that either!

 

check out site: http://www.satmap.com/eshot/index_1.php

 

The comapny's site goes live in a couple of weeks with more info and to take orders.

Edited by stingray67
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Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:54 pm Post subject: Satmap

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Hi Guys,

 

Guess what: I share your frustrations but I'm pleased to say that we're starting to ship the Active 10 now. There's many reasons for the delays and unfortunately all were unavoidable. It's an innovative product which makes a number of technological advances over existing GPS and of course innovation takes time - if it was easy our competitors would have already done it!

 

Instead of giving you a list of excuses, I guess what's important is that the product is now ready and we hope you'll agree it's worth the wait. Like any company we need revenue but the product has got to be good - so unlike a lot of companies we took the decision to delay rather than asking you all to be our beta testers.

 

Everyone who has registered will be contacted next week. Now that we're starting to ship product we will be able to shift our focus more towards customers and less on product development. We will work hard to improve our communications.

 

Thank you very much for your patience and sorry for the delays.

 

Kind regards,

 

Richard Calthrop-Owen, Satmap

 

Just found this info on another forum in case anyone was still waiting. I gave up and bought a vista HCx.

 

Shame I didn't see this earlier as I was in Hereford this week and it would have been nice to have a look/ feel/try.

 

I do like the rather relaxed attitude to the mapping, I quote from the Satmap website FAQ, "You can only use our maps on the Active 10. However, you can swap our maps between units (just as you can swap paper maps with your friends), so the maps are not locked to any single Active 10."

Edited by Zetetic
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