Nav a bit rubbish? - Page 2 - Boxster/Cayman - PistonHeads UK

2016 Spyder, have used the Nav a few times and seemed ok, but was travelling from Cambridge to Wiltshire a route I know and the route it selected was all round the houses, I’ve now lost confidence, is it a bit rubbish?

If it is PCM3.1 do the joyauto upgrade to get CarPlay and Waze.

OP .... Have you checked what the route setting is (Fastest, Shortest or Dynamic) ? I tend to be set on fastest, but even that can through up some odd routing, getting taken down some very narrow roads on occasion. As a consequence I don’t trust the system and only use as an aid, after having a quick look on Google maps or similar before hand, so I have a good mental picture of where I’m going (but guess this defeats the reason for a Nav system) I personally think the navigation system routing parameters (algorithm) is a bit rubbish. To be honest my iPhone makes a better job of it than the PCM

h0b0 said: If it is PCM3.1 do the joyauto upgrade to get CarPlay and Waze. Now, even if it is PCM 3.0 too. They are taking preorders now. https://www.joyeauto.com/

Gander101 said: OP .... Have you checked what the route setting is (Fastest, Shortest or Dynamic) ? I tend to be set on fastest, but even that can through up some odd routing, getting taken down some very narrow roads on occasion. As a consequence I don’t trust the system and only use as an aid, after having a quick look on Google maps or similar before hand, so I have a good mental picture of where I’m going (but guess this defeats the reason for a Nav system) I personally think the navigation system routing parameters (algorithm) is a bit rubbish. To be honest my iPhone makes a better job of it than the PCM Yep, it was on fast, I got to see quite a lot of rural Essex!

I found the PCM NAV to be crap. Add to that I had to pay for traffic (US market) which was simply acknowledge and ignored by the route algorithm. I upgraded to CarPlay and it’s made a huge difference to the technology in the car. My first thought when I turned it on was “if the screen was capable of displaying at this resolution, why wasn’t it?!?!”

i always use my smartphone... always up to date, and free-to-use... cantvsay I've ever been impressed with sat nav in any if my cars...

New to the Porsche Navi and have some questions for anyone familiar with it. It would appear I have PCM 3.1 V4.76 and my understanding is that for a 981 Boxster that is reasonably up to date. Having played around with it I have managed to locate a destination and then export it to a USB stick formatted to FAT32. The resultant file is in a .navi format which as far as I can make out is specific to Porsche Navi, but happy to be corrected on that. I can then delete the original destination stored on the navi and then import it back in from the USB again, so that much I can do. Finally my question, how do I find a destination and get it saved to the USB so I can import it and keep it in my stored destinations to be used later as part of a trip? I must be missing something obvious here because on the face of it Porsche have made this a lot harder than it need be, hopefully someone will tell me what I am missing. Many thanks in advance for any input.

Daz, Hi, I may be missing something here or just being plain thick (more than possible) but why all the exporting and importing?

Gander101 said: Daz, Hi, I may be missing something here or just being plain thick (more than possible) but why all the exporting and importing? Fair question - if you want to go to say the Stelvio Pass having been there before you may have preferred to get there the way you want rather than the way your Navi tells you. Whilst the Navi route might well be the "quickest" it might not be the most scenic. So you create some waypoints that force the route in the direction you want. Those waypoints might not be towns they could just be roads so you end up with the route you want. You look at a google maps, Autoroute, whatever, pick the locations you want as waypoints, save the co ordinates as a place and then use them when you are in the area. So you plan the trip before you leave, import all those waypoints and save them to the Navi and when you want to go there you just pick them out of your saved locations rather than spend your holiday week trying to pick them out by searching the map and zooming in for each one. On some satnavs you simply create an excel spreadsheet and import a list of places in seconds via a USB stick, it would seem Porsche know better. In 2000 I fitted a Pioneer AVIC-X1 satnav to my car, ok it was the best of the best at the time but it would still knock spots off this PCM thing even 20+ years later. Oh and before someone says just use your iphone, that only works with a signal and if you travel to places with patchy signal areas (there are still plenty) that doesn't work whereas the satnav reception is still there and working. Obviously this applies more to Eurohoons than touring Skegness but assuming the drawbridge ever comes back down that is what I will be doing again. Not sure if that makes any more sense but it does to me, I have done it both ways.

Daz, Yes that makes perfect sense. It’s the same way my original Garmin used to work (almost, had to plan route on PC then download to Nav unit). I wasn’t aware that you could on this with PCM, I fiddled about with way points and the zooming in and out with the car system .... a complete faff. The system isn’t very intuitive. Porsche always think they know better I’ll have to do some more research, sorry can’t help

Gander101 said: Daz, Yes that makes perfect sense. It’s the same way my original Garmin used to work (almost, had to plan route on PC then download to Nav unit). I wasn’t aware that you could on this with PCM, I fiddled about with way points and the zooming in and out with the car system .... a complete faff. The system isn’t very intuitive. Porsche always think they know better I’ll have to do some more research, sorry can’t help What you can do is input an exact location by using DMS and those you can get from an online map, once again a bit of a faff as you say but a start.

h0b0 said: If it is PCM3.1 do the joyauto upgrade to get CarPlay and Waze. We've got Carplay in one of our cars and I am not sure that I fully understand what is good about it. Yes it allows the use of Apple Music and Waze. But it appears hugely locked down. If I could stream Youtube, or anything else I fancied, then yes. The other problem is that the touchscreen (Bentley) is better at presses than swipes. So trying to change menus is not great. Then, also, you have to plug it in, go into the phone menu and turn off Bluetooth, go into the car menu and select the port. It is far from convenient.

h0b0 said: My first thought when I turned it on was “if the screen was capable of displaying at this resolution, why wasn’t it?!?!” The more resolution you use the more processing power is required, maybe they saved that for working behind the scenes?

Louis Balfour said: h0b0 said: If it is PCM3.1 do the joyauto upgrade to get CarPlay and Waze. We've got Carplay in one of our cars and I am not sure that I fully understand what is good about it. Yes it allows the use of Apple Music and Waze. But it appears hugely locked down. If I could stream Youtube, or anything else I fancied, then yes. The other problem is that the touchscreen (Bentley) is better at presses than swipes. So trying to change menus is not great. Then, also, you have to plug it in, go into the phone menu and turn off Bluetooth, go into the car menu and select the port. It is far from convenient. Waze, google maps or even Apple Maps. The wife can input info from my phone or on the screen. I don’t swipe in the Porsche, I use the dials to move to the next screen. Also, you can use your streaming service for music. It isn’t perfect as some of the features are locked. For example, you can’t read a text in the screen. But, Waze is many times better than the original NAV and worth it alone. I used to use my phone. That required a magnetic mount by the PCM. It worked great but stopped wireless charging due to the metal disk. I tried a wireless charging mount but didn’t have much luck.

h0b0 said: Louis Balfour said: h0b0 said: If it is PCM3.1 do the joyauto upgrade to get CarPlay and Waze. We've got Carplay in one of our cars and I am not sure that I fully understand what is good about it. Yes it allows the use of Apple Music and Waze. But it appears hugely locked down. If I could stream Youtube, or anything else I fancied, then yes. The other problem is that the touchscreen (Bentley) is better at presses than swipes. So trying to change menus is not great. Then, also, you have to plug it in, go into the phone menu and turn off Bluetooth, go into the car menu and select the port. It is far from convenient. Waze, google maps or even Apple Maps. The wife can input info from my phone or on the screen. I don’t swipe in the Porsche, I use the dials to move to the next screen. Also, you can use your streaming service for music. It isn’t perfect as some of the features are locked. For example, you can’t read a text in the screen. But, Waze is many times better than the original NAV and worth it alone. I used to use my phone. That required a magnetic mount by the PCM. It worked great but stopped wireless charging due to the metal disk. I tried a wireless charging mount but didn’t have much luck. If it wasn't so restrictive I could forgive the other faffing. I am given to understand that it CAN be if you're prepared to jailbreak your phone.

Louis Balfour said: If it wasn't so restrictive I could forgive the other faffing. I am given to understand that it CAN be if you're prepared to jailbreak your phone. Its probably more of use for older cars as the nav systems begin to age. With carplay your maps will be up to date forever in theory. I've just bought an old Fiesta ST and upgrading retrospectively to CarPlay will be game changing! For me the ballache with my 718 is that its a wired system and to be honest I've no desire to keep taking my phone out of my pocket every time I get in and out of the car just to plug it in. In BMW it's wireless (and possibly the newer Porsches?) and therefore became my default option.

OPOGTS said: Louis Balfour said: If it wasn't so restrictive I could forgive the other faffing. I am given to understand that it CAN be if you're prepared to jailbreak your phone. Its probably more of use for older cars as the nav systems begin to age. With carplay your maps will be up to date forever in theory. I've just bought an old Fiesta ST and upgrading retrospectively to CarPlay will be game changing! For me the ballache with my 718 is that its a wired system and to be honest I've no desire to keep taking my phone out of my pocket every time I get in and out of the car just to plug it in. In BMW it's wireless (and possibly the newer Porsches?) and therefore became my default option. My Carplay is wired. The wireless might be less faff.

Louis Balfour said: We've got Carplay in one of our cars and I am not sure that I fully understand what is good about it. I tend to come at this from the other direction, I look at what I want to get done and try to get what I need to do it. The music side of things is already covered by the jukebox, 40gb is plenty. The DAB tuner works a treat. The only reason I would have to consider doing the upgrade is for the navigation. The cost isn't the deal breaker, I can fit it myself, seems easy enough to do but not convinced about messing with the PCM with hardware from a company that I don't really have much confidence in. The shame of it is that with very little extra effort from Porsche that very expensive option could have been so much better.

Daz1855 said: Louis Balfour said: We've got Carplay in one of our cars and I am not sure that I fully understand what is good about it. I tend to come at this from the other direction, I look at what I want to get done and try to get what I need to do it. The music side of things is already covered by the jukebox, 40gb is plenty. The DAB tuner works a treat. The only reason I would have to consider doing the upgrade is for the navigation. The cost isn't the deal breaker, I can fit it myself, seems easy enough to do but not convinced about messing with the PCM with hardware from a company that I don't really have much confidence in. The shame of it is that with very little extra effort from Porsche that very expensive option could have been so much better. I am not massively interested in ICE, but I'm surprised that no one offers a Carplay-like product that doesn't have Apple's restrictions all over it. Or is it possible to have a dedicated jailbroken "phone" in the car with its own SIM? As I say, I would be more interested if I could browse the Internet or stream Youtube.

Daz1855 said: Louis Balfour said: We've got Carplay in one of our cars and I am not sure that I fully understand what is good about it. I tend to come at this from the other direction, I look at what I want to get done and try to get what I need to do it. The music side of things is already covered by the jukebox, 40gb is plenty. The DAB tuner works a treat. The only reason I would have to consider doing the upgrade is for the navigation. The cost isn't the deal breaker, I can fit it myself, seems easy enough to do but not convinced about messing with the PCM with hardware from a company that I don't really have much confidence in. The shame of it is that with very little extra effort from Porsche that very expensive option could have been so much better. I realise I am now sounding like a sales person for CarPlay...... The upgrade is relatively simple and about the same as building a PC. You do have to split the PCM but that is only a couple of screws. Once inside, the new board intercepts a couple of ribbon cables. I am not sure there is a huge scope for destroying the PCM and I have not seen anyone reporting any issues now they have been out there for a couple of years. It is an easy to reverse install as well so I would consider removing it before selling the car. The only issue I have had is Waze not showing the map properly. This is 100% not the Joyeauto unit's fault. It is the waze app and car play. It happens some times and I just have to restart the app on the phone. Google maps does not do this. I paid about $300-$400 for the upgrade and think it is absolutely worth doing. I know in the UK you can pay for the install but that brings the total price close to £1000. At that point I would consider buying a newer car if it meant hat much to me.

h0b0 said: I realise I am now sounding like a sales person for CarPlay...... ............. and I realise I am now sounding like somebody knocking it, which isn't the case ............ In my former life I spent many years in the car audio/security world and one thing that was always true is that no matter how good the spec read on "cheaper" head units/amps/alarms they were always just that, a cheaper product that was not as well made or engineered. They would always suffer from issues that branded units wouldn't, they were not as well put together, which invariably resulted in a shorter life and even inferior suppression issues in the case of some head units. You would not open up any Kenwood/Alpine/Pioneer unit and find a PCB suspended with three spacers, or cables not secured properly to the casing, then we get on to the PCB itself. It may well get the job done but I doubt it is built to the same standard as a named brand would be and a tenner says not to the quality of the PCM unit. In this case you would even have a software element on top of that. That is not based on having seen one or installing it, it is based on never having heard of them before, like some of the head units, amps and alarms we used to install. I wouldn't buy an unbranded TV from Tescos for similar reasons. Would I buy one and try it, could do, it looks easy enough to do and as you say it could just as easily be taken out, will I, probably not, for the reasons given but I can see why others have.

Sorry if this question has been asked on another thread, but would a new 718 GTS come with wireless Appleplay?

RTA3 said: Sorry if this question has been asked on another thread, but would a new 718 GTS come with wireless Appleplay? No, it’s wired

OPOGTS said: RTA3 said: Sorry if this question has been asked on another thread, but would a new 718 GTS come with wireless Appleplay? No, it’s wired Thank you. That is a surprise and somewhat disappointing.