Sat nav

[carl4x4]

TomTom one £235 fantastic system, very accurate, and very quick to follow the car's position. You can plug it into your PC's USB port and download anything you need to it, maps, voices, points of interest, speed camera databases.

Four reasons I bought one;
- It's portable so you can use it in your other car if you have one
- You can't put the speed camera database on a factory satnav which means if you want this you still have to have something suckered to the dash anyway
- It's a grand cheaper than the factory option
- the drivers perspective view is excellent (see picture), something I don't believe most factory fits have (or at least they didn't used to)

Down side is, yes you have to hide the fact you have one when you leave the car, but definitely the best accessory I've ever bought for any car.

 

[Tell]

Interesting if the 3D view is only available on these add on units.

The Becker that scores if that is the right word in that they have on their maps the posted speeds for the roads so it warns you when you exceeds rather than breaking the law between speeds cameras which is the pin point things of interest way of doing it.

The Euro mapping is the selling point with the Becker against other systems where it costs more.

 

[TonyC]

The car will tell the sat nav what speed you are going etc since all of that is passed through the cars bus to the back of the integral uni but unless it has a compass in the sat nav it won't know which direction you have turned. Doubt it has the compass myself.

I don't know about the Seat factory system, but the other system I've investigated has taken data from the steering wheel position / yaw sensors.

The steering & yaw sensors are fitted as part of the ESP, which is not standard on the Altea. I expect the VAG system works without it (although I remember the Audi unit I had did have a compass display mode).

 

[Mickey690]

I don't know about the Seat factory system, but the other system I've investigated has taken data from the steering wheel position / yaw sensors.

The steering & yaw sensors are fitted as part of the ESP, which is not standard on the Altea. I expect the VAG system works without it (although I remember the Audi unit I had did have a compass display mode).

The unit does have the compass as i have looked at the unit in agolf which had compass option, also Seat were kind enough to sen me the manual and it states compass function

 

[carl4x4]

Of course, if you're brave enough you could buy the car as standard and buy one of these, it looks like it should just slot straight in if you buy the grey plastic surround (which I've seen on other posts in this forum) Then you'll just need somewhere to put the GPS antenna.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/VW-MFD2-MFD-2...723995593QQcategoryZ75327QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Looks like a bit of a bargain if it works, it says it fits the Altea so should be OK for the Leon. Allways nervous about buying things from crashed cars myself...

 

[Richie D]

If you have the bluetooth option fitted in the car will it work with the satnav unit?

Cheers
Rich

 

[Tell]

Life gets just so complex and that is a lot of money to gamble if it isn't going to work isn't it. That is also the intrinsic value of the unit is some one wants to nick one even though people on here have said that people don't nick factory fit sat units... always a first time.

 

[Tony Lawrence]

Carl, reference your comment about buying a used sat nav,you are right to be nervous because the VW and Seat units are different. The Seat usually has a single pole rear mount antenna so the unit only has/needs one DIN aerial connection. The VW unit usually has a glass diversity system (elements in the rear side windows) so the unit has two fakra style aerial connections so through experience l know the units internal settings are different. You can buy adapters to convert one to the other but radio reception is affected.

 

[Tell]

Which nicely leads me on to my question of where does the Altea satnav aeriel go in a car which has it built in ?. I'm planning of putting my external Becker unit under the head end and using an external aeriel so kind of interesting to know where the inbuilt one is fixed. In principle slapping it under the dash would be good but by disembly skills aren't that good.

One assumes that don't pre-install one.... one can live in hope... just a question of finding the wires... hmmm.

 

[TonyC]

Tell,

Looking at the workshop manual, it shows 3 different versions of the roof aerial.

A basic FM radio version, one with FM + GSM antenna & a third with FM, GSM and GPS.

They appear to be interchangeable, so you could buy a GPS version & swap it ?

 

[Tell]

hmm