iPad and copilot

Fatboy1960

Fatboy1960

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I’m a newbie
A week in as a newbie and thinking about sat nav

I have an iPad (WiFi only no sim) and I am thinking of using copilot As my sat nav. I have downloaded it on a free 14 day trial

I have it both on my phone and iPad. It works fine on my phone but not very well on my iPad - it works on airplane mode on my phone soo not sure why it does not work on the iPad

I am considering trying mirroring iPhone to iPad but that seems like a clunky Soloution
Any wise words will be appreciated

BW

R
 
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Some devices don't have an actual GPS receiver chip that can actually receive the signals from the the GPS satellites. Sometimes location functionality is provided by triangulating Wi-Fi hotspots and mobile phone towers. I don't think that Wi-Fi only iPads have the GPS capability.
 
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If you search eBay for “Bluetooth GPS Receiver” you will find many products cheaper than the Garmin Glo. However, you mentioned you felt tethering the iPad to your phone was “clunky”.....connecting the iPad to the GPS receiver is using another device in the “middle” and therefore no different to just using your phone. Without an iPad with GPS capability it’s going to be clunky but do-able.

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Kai Morrison said:
Without an iPad with GPS capability it’s going to be clunky but do-able.
Click to expand...

This was my experience of it. I wanted to use it on my iPad mini, as it's a great size, however I had to pair it to a gps device as it's wifi only. In the end, this was too much of a faff, and now if we want to use an iPad as the satnav then Mr Stroppys full size iPad gets used which has a sim card.
 
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Agree with all above about GPS capability, but just to say, you DON’T need to use a SIM card, it is just those IPads that have GPS. I don’t have a SIM in mine ????
 
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You can still enter your sizes, and I directs you accordingly. Route is easily changed just by dragging route, or dropping a pin.
 
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I've set my sizes (caravan settings?) and it's OK to manually change the route if you know roughly what type of roads are en-route. Unfortunately, once off home ground it's often not easy to determine the road types and as long as the road is more than 2.8m wide Co-pilot will send you down it irrespective of Fastest/Shortest setting. I had to drive through two floods on narrow country roads last week. The work around is obviously to not go down the directed narrow road in the first place if you can but this is a bit pants in 2020.
Trimble bought Co-pilot a while ago and are quite adamant that their algorithms are better than the organic blob in the driving seat and won't bring back the routing preferences of older versions (pre-Trimble)
 
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Reallyretired said:
Get a cheap android tablet, they all have gps
Click to expand...
But they don't generally allow you to put vehicle size in, which is Co-pilots best function. I had four sat navs on the go the other day just for a laugh, the Co-pilot on an ipad, a Garmin old skool screen stick on one, Google Maps on my Android phone and Pioneer AVIC on the built in sat-nav. All were wrong in different ways although the Garmin took the best route but wouldn't know my size.
 
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dunnah01 said:
And since co-pilot removed the routing preference I wouldn't bother with it - may as well get sent down tiny roads by Google maps for free
Click to expand...

I agree, the entered sizes make very little difference to the route it picks. It might avoid roads with a specified width limit but it still sends you along impossible lanes and narrow roads with no passing opportunities. When it had the routing preferences you could bang crawling pace speeds on unclassified roads and slow speeds on minor ones and it would then stop taking stupid short cuts that just landed you in trouble. As far as I am concerned they have removed the best feature and left a very mediocre and expensive app. They have also failed to make it CarPlay compatible. Waze and Google are free, probably better and both work with CarPlay.
 
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Don't want to hijack the thread. But sorting a good gps is on my to do list. So what's the best one where I can put van size in.

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I loaded copilot onto my husbands iPhone but had trouble with it in rural France finding GPS, so loaded it onto my Huawei and its been fine. However, still takes me down narrow roads, just like Google maps.
Have now bought a xgody (About £50, I think ) suitable for trucks, seems OK atm but haven't really tested it yet.
Still revert to Google maps for supermarkets, train stations etc
 
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I much prefer Sygic, for navigation where you can enter size and weight. Although I’m not bothered by weight as under 3.5.
 
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dunnah01 said:
I've set my sizes (caravan settings?) and it's OK to manually change the route if you know roughly what type of roads are en-route. Unfortunately, once off home ground it's often not easy to determine the road types and as long as the road is more than 2.8m wide Co-pilot will send you down it irrespective of Fastest/Shortest setting. I had to drive through two floods on narrow country roads last week. The work around is obviously to not go down the directed narrow road in the first place if you can but this is a bit pants in 2020.
Trimble bought Co-pilot a while ago and are quite adamant that their algorithms are better than the organic blob in the driving seat and won't bring back the routing preferences of older versions (pre-Trimble)
Click to expand...

Agree. Had a long running argument with Trimble about this. It turns out (see posts elsewhere on this forum) that:

i. the imported Alt staff at Trimble wanted Copilot to retain the ability to let the user fix routes and reference road speeds.

ii. the bosses said no, because they wanted you to pay more to get their subscription travel service.

iii. the customer service staff (the most patronising and uniformed you will meet anywhere) have been told to extol the basis of their new algorithm, based on an average of users in USA. You won't get a satisfactory answer.

iv. the programmers wouldn't know a motorhome from a Saturn 5 rocket, and said that although it was possible to re-instate functionality, their algorithm, was for most users more accurate than simply expressing a preference for road speeds and types.

Me, I was happy to get the travel subscription but I needed the ability to fix my motorway speed at 60 and to prefer bigger roads..

So, on the basis that most of their users are cars and trucks, Trimble and co-pilot couldn't care less about motorhomers (or caravanners). However I still use it. The evening before travel, I load the start and finish route in and then look close up at the sections of the route where it seems to veer off three lane motorways onto cart tracks. Don't trust it other wise.

Oh, and the motorhome version of copilot has little functional difference to the car version. Only the lorry version has additional useful functionality.

Sadly, I have tested a few and none have the functionality that many motorhomers are asking for .
 
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Gone are the days when I can be bothered. Camper contact - click through to Waze and off we go. Cheap and efficient, no loading POI's and any camper satnav has never been so good as to make it worth the cost. The best satnav app was the old 'for life' TomTom one which they got rid of.
 
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Fatboy1960 said:
A week in as a newbie and thinking about sat nav

I have an iPad (WiFi only no sim) and I am thinking of using copilot As my sat nav. I have downloaded it on a free 14 day trial

I have it both on my phone and iPad. It works fine on my phone but not very well on my iPad - it works on airplane mode on my phone soo not sure why it does not work on the iPad

I am considering trying mirroring iPhone to iPad but that seems like a clunky Soloution
Any wise words will be appreciated

BW

R
Click to expand...
Hi I do not know the size of you rig but I would not navigate with a phone or I pad with an app.
For very little money you can get a GPS with lifetime upgrades for free, and you can input you outfit size and weight etc and it will stop you going down small roads etc. It also doubles as a TV, games etc etc. We have fitted one and its great all for under £140. Having used an ordinary sat nav this gives peace of mind.
It also takes the load of SWMBO who was my navigating officer.
If you want an in dash radio, DVD player, Sat Nav etc I am selling our in dash Tom Tom for £120 qwids, attached pics 20200126_132306.jpgP1040137.JPG
attacheda.
20200126_132306.jpg

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The best sat I did have was Mercedes NTG2.5

My new Sprinter daily vehicle dies not have this, so I use Apple Maps on my Mobile.

I use this for the motorhome too.

I do have Co-Pilot on my IPad (3G) but use my WiFi in the vehicles. But It loses god too often and freezes.
 
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I'm selling a GNS 2000 GPS/Glonass receiver which I bought to use with my iPad mini, they are used by light aircraft pilots for navigation. Syncs seamlessly over Bluetooth, 10 hrs + on a full charge, 80 x 45 x 11mm so small enough to put in your shirt pocket if you want to use it for walking, only used it a couple of times, still boxed and it's as new.
I've bought a full-fat iPad with sim and GPS as I found the iPad mini a bit small so no longer need it, otherwise, it works a treat.
see <Broken link removed>
PM me if If you're interested.
 
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I put Co-pilot on my mini I pad (with sim slot but no sim card. So gps chip installed). It was ok but not great. In Spain last winter the screen vis was poor and every now and then the ipad died of overheating. It also sent me down narrow roads despite loading size etc in.
Bought a Garmin as soon as we got home. In Spain again now. Works perfectly!
 
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Fatboy1960 said:
A week in as a newbie and thinking about sat nav

I have an iPad (WiFi only no sim) and I am thinking of using copilot As my sat nav. I have downloaded it on a free 14 day trial

I have it both on my phone and iPad. It works fine on my phone but not very well on my iPad - it works on airplane mode on my phone soo not sure why it does not work on the iPad

I am considering trying mirroring iPhone to iPad but that seems like a clunky Soloution
Any wise words will be appreciated

BW

R
Click to expand...
 
Upvote 0
Hi there,
Download waze for free. We use it all the time, better than anything else including Tomtom, and it updates all the time to any road changes. unlike Google maps it also shows your actual speed at all times. We regularly use our iphone as a hotspot for our iPad whilst travelling, enabling waze on the iPad.

Kind Regards

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Nomadian said:
WiFi only iPad has no internal gps sensor. Tha needs a gps locator and connect that via Bluetooth to iPad. Something like a garmin glo. That’s wot I do works reet well.

I’ll si thi
Click to expand...
Wifi only don’t have the gps chip but the iPad with a SIM card slot does have the gps chip and works even when a SIM card is not installed
 
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Forget 'twat nav' buy an up to date Michelin map hundreds of pounds cheaper, reliable, accurate does not need WiFi and unless you spill coffee all over it, works every time ?
 
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I used copilot on my iPad (GPS version)for a while, it was OK but often took me on strange and longer routes in areas which I knew well; I guess it did the same in areas I did not know? It doesn’t update maps continually like Google maps or Waze but it never took me down too narrow a road although it did like taking me through small villages. My main problem is that it doesn’t integrate with Apple CarPlay so I now use Google maps and Waze and just watch out for narrow roads and low bridges. (I’ve only had to do a u turn to avoid a low bridge once).
 
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I used CoPilot for a while but it's routing characteristics became increasingly bizarre so I now use TomTom Go instead. It's not nearly as configurable as CoPilot but it doesn't take me to Timbuktu first!
There is no obvious way to add custom POI's to TomTom Go so I get round this by using an app called SendToGps.
play.google.com

Send To GPS – Apps on Google Play

Sendtogps share position,POI using Google maps to your GPS program, friends.
play.google.com play.google.com

If I have any difficulty in locating a destination and getting driving instructions on TomTom I simply look the place up on Google Maps and use the "share" option to share the location with SendToGps, I then am able to share this with TomTom very easily.

Sounds a bit clunky I know but it enables me to get to some slightly "weird" places that are not listed. It probably just uses coordinates under the surface without the user having to make a manual input.
Unfortunately the SendToGps app is not available for IOS only Android.
 
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