Software/PNA

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Personal Navigation Assistants (PNA) or Personal Navigation device (PND) are gadgets that provide you an easy way to navigate using GPS data. Some are built for outdoor use (for example when walking) but most are built to guide you on a ride with a vehicle. Essentially they are just extended PDAs that include a GPS receiver and have a locked user interface. See Wikipedia: Personal navigation assistant for more general info.

GarminDakota20.JPG

These devices have proprietary operating systems but you can generate OSM maps for their original applications:

Typical other brands are:

Some devices have a locked file format, but sometimes you can get into the operating system and install OpenSource software.

WinCE based

PNA Connex NVA-03560-TC.jpg
Gosmore running on a Transonic 6000

These devices use Windows CE or Windows Mobile as operating system (see also below for the PocketPC). So you can run most of the tools that work on this platforms, too. But before you have to get access to the underlying windows with a few tricks:

Some commercial tools that come preshipped on a micro SD card, run with OSM data out of the box: Find and Route, GPS-Mate

PocketPC

If you have a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) you can turn it into a PNA (or PND) by installing software that is compatible with your OS (like Windows Mobile). As many older PDA's have a separate GPS receiver (either wired or Bluetooth) and the software that was designed for these devices is no longer supported, you can give these devices a new lease of life because some of the applications that were designed for these devices are still available (and often free). Basically the program is a shell which uses data from OpenStreetMap, meaning that you will always have a recent map for the area you wish to use the device in. Amongst others (there is an overview in the Windows Mobile article, if your device runs on this OS):

  • Noni GPSPlot (donation required if you want to use it with large maps)

Linux based

TomTomGo720.jpg

Linux allows you to hack your device but might be a little bit complicate/dangerous.

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Becker Traffic Assist

See also