Using Two GPSs Devices At Once

I have a built im GPS in one of my vehicles from Chrysler a "MyGig" unit which I really like. I purchased a Nuvi 760 for my other Chrysler and have loved it. Personally I prefer the mapping on the Nuvi better. I plan on taking the Nuvi on any long trip with the MyGig vehicle, because of some of the capabilities, including the "Red Light" pois.

i recently took a trip to SC from NY and i had 3 gps going at the same time> my nuvi 680, onstar turn by turn, and verizon navigator. It got very confusing because they all wanted to go different ways. you have to just pick 1 and trust that one.

My wife has a Dodge Grand Caravan with MyGig, but we got the step down that doesn't include GPS. I knew when we bought it that I wanted to use a stand alone GPS. Both she and my sons like the built in Sirius satellite. As an aside, she had a free year of satellite radio, but we never subscribed. We know have Slacker Radio and feed it through the auxiliary input. One of the best things about it is no recurring monthly fees!

Ham radio operators running mobile -- a "normal" GPS such as a Garmin up front for maps, directions, and so on, and another GPS in the back, usually without a display, feeding data into an APRS box (radio transceiver), used for among other things, position reporting/tracking.

For a technical challenge, figure out what you need to do to share one GPS active antenna between two GPS receivers... If you're trying to do this, once again, Ebay is your friend -- Ailgne (Symmetricom) 58535A, or a similar box by MiniCircuits, both of which are larger than a Garmin 6xx!

I've used two before. My wife and I each have one. When we go on vacation, we usually end up bringing both. We have a Nuvi 370 and a Nuvi 650. I like to view the screen that shows travel statistics like current speed, distance to destination, etc. With a second unit, I can leave the stats screen showing on the first and display my route/map on the second.

An interesting note - the two have very different routing engines. Invariably, they each suggest slightly different routes. The 650 also does not estimate time of arrival as well as the 370. It always underestimates by about 5 minutes per hour of travel. It's worse during city driving where you stop at a lot of lights.

I have used my 265wt and my 885t, both at the same time and find it useful at times. One has fm traffic, the other MSN, and I like to see the benefits and difference for both. I try not to use both while in town, thought because if my car is broken into, I don't want both stolen. Then I wouldn't have a backup.

Seems a little distracting to me!

I have a built in navigation in my car, but when I take a long trip I will always have my Zumo 660, with all the goodies loaded on it, as a backup or just a play toy loaded with info...
Guns

We use hard copy google maps, my C340 and my husband's 2720.

That would be me too!
I have a Garmin 12XL in the back using an external antenna into a Kenwood TH-D7A into an amplifier to run APRS. Look for KB2PSM-7!

For those who want to see what it looks like, I'll provide a link. Basically my signal and data gets digi-peated until it hits a station with a gateway into the internet so that the APRS position can be seen by anyone even if they are not in range or do not run APRS themselves.

http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/find.cgi?call=KB2PSM-7&terra=4&...

If you drop the Google map to the highest (closest) resolution and go to sat. view you can almost see where I may be parked...like at work in the parking lot. It is pretty cool stuff!

My family and I returned from a week long vacation yesterday. I had both the Garmin Nuvi 500 and Pharos GPS Phone 600 with Garmin Mobile XT. There were several times when I simply kept the 500 on track and my wife, (or I depending on who was driving)used the other device to help plan fuel/food/rest area stops.

One interesting thing was that even though both the Nuvi 500 and Mobile XT were using 2009 maps and appeared to be configured the same (fastest, not shortest, etc.) there were a couple of differences between the route selected. Not huge differences mind you, but subtle differences. Is it possible that although they both appear to be 2009 maps, that there were half year changes that one has, but the other one doesn't have?

I have used two units for years. I currently have a Street Pilot 7200 and a 755T. I use the traffic from both, compare different routes, and different zoom levels. They have different search functions and I utilize the 7200 most of the time when searching the database.
I also load different POI's in the units to maximize the available data.
The 7200 is my "go to" unit when there is a disagreement among the different units.
I also have a built in Chrysler system in my vehicle. I don't use it much but only because it interferes with the audio program I am using.

Sounds like you need a TomTom!

I'm using two right now. I'm in the Bahamas with a rent-a-car that has a kilometer only speedometer. Speed limits are mostly posted in MPH so Im using my c550 as a mile-per-hour speedometer and my nuvi 780 (which has loaded maps of the Bahamas) for navigation.

It would be nice if my Garmin 750 would show my current speed while in navigation mode. My speedometer is off, and I routinely use my GPSr to check my speed.

While navigating, touch the button in the lower left corner of the screen that shows your estimated arrival time, it will display your speedometer and resettable trip odometers.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20...

sounds like a fun (though noisy) trip.

It isn't as if you can see the minor roads on the 660 while you are travelling. You have to be zoomed in closer than 800 meters to see any detail.

Useless.

As I mentioned in another thread recently, I am getting closer to running two GPS devices in my Honda Accord. I already has a Garmin Nuvi 360 and I just switched to a Garmin Air Vent Mount. After admiring the location of the Nuvi 360, I remembered that I have a couple of Garminfones that aren't getting used very much these days. With that in mind, all I really need is another Garmin Air Vent Mount and a right angle USB cable and I can run two Garmin devices at once in my Honda.

I think that there might be a couple of benefits of doing this. One might be to have one unit continuing navigating to a specific location while using the other one to search for things nearby. The Garminfone also has built in traffic, so if I use my Nexus 4 phone as a wifi hotspot to get traffic data, it should be helpful when traffic incidents occur.

One of the other benefits to me will be the ability to leave one of them zoomed in to a 120 feet, or less, when simply displaying maps vs. navigating to a specific destination. With my Garmin Nuvi 360, as soon as I start driving to a destination, it automatically switched to 200 feet display.

Let us know what you do when the two devices give you conflicting turn directions (as it has been reported in other threads).

Other word of advice: I often have two GPS in my car, my Nuvi and the wife.... Not really an improvement! Just one would be better.

I use two GPS when I go on a trip. My wife use one incase she needs a potty break. I use the other to direct me to my destination. It works great. She know not to touch mine.

I use the 2nd gps to find a McDonalds along the route. Soon, one Jill says turn left while the other says turn right. And Barbara says, "Stop them from fighting"

In August my brother and I took a trip from from Cleveland, OH to Rochester, NY and then to on to Easton, PA. My car, so I had the Nuvi 50 for navigation. He had his stuck to the windshield on the passenger side. After about 50 miles I told him to mute his if he wanted to keep me sane. It was VERY annoying, because not only were the routes different but he likes the same voice I do (Michelle). And by time I got into NY I asked him to turn it off, so I would not keep seeing it out of the corner of my vision.

Had he not, one of us would have been walking.....

I've done it before and once posted a picture of the setup. I had the 1300 do the routing and set with a 2D view. The 200W provided the 3D view. On occasion I would have the 200W do the routing, mostly on routes I knew well. The last time I did that, I had the Avatar voice file in place, and was being given directions in Na'vi. Most of the time I used Darth Vader, as I am a minion of the dark side of the Force.

What can I say? They had cookies.

I own a Garmin Oregon 450t (US GPS), my wife owns a Garmin eTrex30 (GPS+GLONASS). Neither of us is comfortable going off road w/o both, + local paper topo maps when available. While I consider the eTrex30 significantly more reliable than the once more expensive O.450 (which routinely becomes challenged functioning as a modest pedometer in the open), the eTRex30 unexpectedly crashed on the trail just 2 days ago (and that was under reduced wood's canopy- late fall conditions).

Although our family owns a Nuvi 1450LMT & a Nuvi 2555 we see no differences in real road performance/navigation. In fact none of us will venture to new destinations w/o 1st checking w/G.E./Mapquest 1st for routing (& usually let the trip programmed Nuvi nail the last mile or so)... and that is within 50 miles radius from home.

Cheers

We had two units on our recent trip south - a new 2550 and a 3790 that "died" on us. We used the new one for most of the trip, then the 3790 suddenly came back to life !

We drove the last 600 kilometers of the trip using both. There were only minor differences in distance travelled, speed and elevation. The biggest difference was in Time of Arrival, where the older 3790 was almost 30 minutes later. This was probably due to better recognition of our driving tendencies.

BUT we had the 3790 muted, so we didn't have to listen to repetitive or conflicting announcements

Since upgrading to a smartphone, I wish I had done it much sooner. In the car, the Nuvi does the primary navigation, with backup and augmentation by the phone and live, real-time searching and Googling when desired. Get to high traffic areas and Waze on the phone does a very good job with traffic alerts. Yes, the volume on one of them needs to be turned down or you'll go crazy.

On the trails, the phone again makes a wonderful backup and augments the eTrex 30. Again, Garmin is the primary navigator, with the phone being used mostly for satellite views; both online, and when we're in the boonies and offline, using downloaded satellite maps.

When geocaching I use the Nuvi to get me to the area and use my hand held to get me to the cache. My hand held is capable of navigating also, it has a full set of maps, but I have never used them both for navigating at the same time.

When I go on long trips I usually bring both in case one dies. When I first got my 3490 it was kinda flaky (strange routing, lockups here and there) and I would run my trusty ol 660 alongside it for that reason. Garmin eventually fixed the issues with the 3490 with new maps and firmware and now it seems pretty solid. So at this point I use only one at a time but still bring the other for backup.
Sometimes I run both when travalling on I95 up and down the east coast since they both have different traffic subscriptions (3490 is Navteq HD traffic, 660 has clearchannnel subscription). If both units report the same problem I'll avoid a certain portion on a long route. Last summer this worked well when we were travelling alongside other family members and I chose a different route according to traffic info. We got home several hours sooner even though we took the long way.

In August I drove from NYC to Dallas in less than two days. I had my Garmin StreetPilots c580 and c340. The c580 is a newer model but if I plugged it in, nav went away and it went into recharge-only mode. So I used the c580 until the battery was gone, then recharged it while I used the c340, and etc. It was something to keep my mind occupied during over 25 hours total driving time.

I also had an Android tablet running the Waze app, a nice crowd-sourced GPS app. Waze was great for letting me know where there was a traffic backup or hidden police, but it's navigation was totally FUBAR, in some cases it actually wanted me make a U-turn and inexplicably drive in the opposite direction. But the nice thing about the tablet is I could also open Google maps and zoom waaay out to see where I was in the country!