Admit it, there’s one thing a dedicated navigation device (PND) does better than most mobile phones and PDAs: free traffic information via TMC/RDS over FM radio.
There are solutions to this, but most of them consist of a special charging cable plugged into the cigarette lighter and at the other end of the cable a custom jack for your pda or mobile phone.
Now there’s a very elegant alternative, created by the experts in RDS/TMC receivers: GNS TrafficBoxPlus FM9BT-Y doesn’t come cheap, but it offers a few very interesting advantages over the other solutions:
- Fixed and hidden installation in your car
- Perfect reception by using the car antenna
- Bluetooth connects with virtually all recent devices
Let’s have a look…
Installation
If you’re a little bit handy, you can easily install the TrafficBoxPlus yourself. It takes only 5 minutes and roughly comes down to this:
- Remove the car stereo.
- Either clip the TrafficBox Plus directly on the 12V power cable, or cut/strip that cable and solder it for perfect connection.
- Connect the antenna cable to the TrafficBox Plus and then connect the TrafficBox Plus to the car stereo antenna input.
- Put the cables and the TrafficBox Plus back in the dashboard and mount the car stereo in its place again.
You can of course go to your local dealership and have it installed for you.
Note that there are two variations of the TrafficBoxPlus:
- FM9 BT-Y ISO (with ISO connector):
- FM9 BT-Y FKR (with Fakra connector):
Make sure to check your car stereo before ordering one.
Configuration
As with all Bluetooth devices, you need to pair the TrafficBoxPlus with your mobile. Make sure your car stereo is getting power – it doesn’t have to be turned on though – and search for Bluetooth devices. You’ll find the GNS FM9 BT-N pretty quickly.
Next, you need to configure your navigation software. For this test, I used the Palm Treo Pro Windows Mobile 6.1 device of course, and the latest Navigon Mobile Navigator 7 software. GNS reports compatibility with the following navigation software (satnav): ALK CoPilot 7.0, NAVIGON PDA version MN6 & MN7, DESTINATOR Destinator6, Destinator PN, i-GO 8.
In Navigon, tap Options | GPS Status | Configure Manually, and then set GPS Type to “GPS Receiver with external TMC”.
Next, set TMC port to Bluetooth:
When you press OK, Navigon will search for Bluetooth TMC devices and find the GNS FM9 BT-N:
Operation
When the TrafficBox Plus has been configured, confirm and exit the configuration screens. Wait a moment until you have good GPS reception and then tap Options again. You’ll notice the Traffic button is now enabled:
When you tap the Traffic button, you’ll get the following screens:
Tapping each entry will show detailed information in the language of your software. This is handy when you want to plan ahead and know what major traffic problems there are right now. I find it much easier however to open the map and see the same traffic symbols spread out over the country.
The best part of the TMC/RDS functionality is of course the dynamic route recalculation when a new traffic info comes in when you are driving your route. Luckily in Navigon you can choose to have automatic recalculation, or ask for confirmation every time the traffic problems appear on your route. Operating this confirmation is quite easy with big “Avoid” and “Ignore” buttons, but the effectiveness is of course dependant on the quality of the supplied traffic info. As this is different in every country and with every radio station, results may vary. Here in Belgium I’ve had an occasion where one long road works was reported differently more than 5 times (long road works, slow traffic ahead, small driving lanes ahead, etc.), and thus needed several confirmations.
Conclusion
Although installation is more difficult than with a TMC module on a cable, the advantages are very compelling:
- Perfect reception of the RDS data over FM, as it uses the existing antenna of your car stereo. This is a huge improvement over other solutions!
- No cables in sight keeps burglars away, you don’t need to plug in an antenna cable, and no charging cable with TMC module is needed. As soon as you start your car, traffic info is available on your mobile.
- It’s future proof: most new PDAs and Windows Mobile phones have Bluetooth, so you can upgrade your device to a new model and be assured that it will accept your traffic info. Again, no need for custom cable for every device anymore!
I’m very happy with the end result and can only highly recommend it!
If you really want to avoid a fixed installation solution like this, GNS has some other new tricks up their sleeves:
The TrafficBoxplus FM9BT-C:
- TMC data receiver plugged in cigarette lighter jack
- portable, very easy installation design car antenna
- Bluetooth interface, designed for all BT enabled host devices (mobiles, PND)
- supports charge power for mobile device via USB jack, 5 V, 800 mA
The GNS 5860 GPS RDS/TMC Receiver BT USB-Stick:
- Smallest GPS TMC Receiver worldwide
- Useful for all portable devices with Bluetooth capability
- USB interface for UM-PC and laptop
- Power supply via USB
The GNS 5870 GPS RDS/TMC Receiver BT is more like a traditional GPS receiver with rechargeable battery:
- Slim housing
- Bluetooth connectivity
- Rechargeable battery
- Useful for all portable devices with bluetooth capability