About Electronics

Pioneer’s latest sat nav system, the AVIC-X3, will be available in Europe in September.

Tthe X3 lets you find pinpoint-accurate directions, avoid the traffic jams, find a local hotel or parking space; even whilst your passengers are enjoying a DVD in the rear.

It’s got a 7-inch motorised touch-screen and will play your entire CD and DVD collection; including compressed tunes (MP3, WMA, AAC) or video (DivX) stored on CD-R or DVD-R.

Interestingly it has a feature called  dual-zone, which means that your passengers can watch a movie or play a video game on optional rear-seat screens at the same time that you are using the navigation system and listening to the radio up-front.

Source: Pioneer Europe

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CNet News: Nokia last week launched a service that it said will cut the time a GPS-enabled cell phone takes to pinpoint its whereabouts, opening new opportunities for location-based online services.

Nokia hopes the service, available for people who own its flagship N95 smart phones, will cut the start-up time to one minute, from up to three minutes currently.

The slowness has so far hampered interest in cell phone navigation. Analysis firm Berg Insight has forecast annual shipments of handset-based personal navigation devices in Europe and the United States to reach 12 million units by 2009, compared with 1 million in 2005.

While most assisted-GPS technologies use mobile carriers cell sites to find locations faster, Nokia’s new service bypasses operator networks, using data from a SIM card and new software that helps the phone to catch satellite signals.

Nokia’s N95, with a €700 price tag, is not within reach of the wider market, but the Finnish company aims to bring GPS chips to a wide array of its phones.

All of Nokia’s GPS-enabled phones will have the new service. Nokia bought into the navigation industry last year through its acquisition of German firm Gate5 and started to offer free maps and routing data in February, while charging extra fees for navigation.

While a few years ago personal navigation device makers like TomTom shrugged off possible rivalry from the handset industry, they have now acknowledged the potential risk to their business.

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NaviGadget: Korean Mercury just announced a new navigation system called Black Eagle (or MD3000) that doubles as a black box.

The black box uses a special camera to record video of accident for about 18 seconds (12 seconds before the accident and 6 seconds after), considering any situation of reaching a negative 1.1G acceleration as an accident.

It relies on a special software to detect the vehicle and its break lights from your vehicles windshield.

The black box also tries to warn drivers with alerts before you get into an accident.

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Digital World Tokyo: Lawbreakers and people who need to be told what to do will probably benefit most from the latest Japanese car-navigation system from Nissan, which warns drivers of the dangers of drunk-driving.

A recent upgrade to the space-age Carwings navigation system Nissan offers on all its cars comes with a nagging voice that is intended to help deal with Japan’s notoriously high Driving Under the Influence  problem.

Drivers starting their cars after 5:30pm will be warned by the sat-nav “Do not drive after drinking!” for all of five seconds, while the message changes after 5am to “Let’s continue safe driving today”.

Other technologies used so far in Japan that take a more active approach include NTT DoCoMo’s Videophone Alcohol Check System that uses mobile phones to check the sobriety of commercial drivers. The system uses a central computer that needs to be fed regular readings from a 3G phone fitted with a breathalyser. Drivers need to be seen via videophone testing themselves before the data sent by the phone to HQ clears them to drive or not.

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Engadget: We’re not entirely sure what TomTom has up its sleeve here, but the European Patent Office has revealed a patent application that describes a GPS unit bolstered by live video feeds.

As you can see, the system would superimpose directions on top of actual images of your surroundings, which could go a long way to preventing some of the GPS-related incidents we’ve seen over the years.

From the looks of it, however, the system would only make use of a camera in your own vehicle, not ones sprawled across the countryside, reducing the potential benefits somewhat but likely making it much closer to reality.

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Which: Motorists with sat nav systems are to be handed dusters in a bit to thwart the rocketing number of thefts.

Police in the UK county of Gloucestershire are handing out 2,500 yellow dusters to drivers with sat-navs and shops which sell the systems.

They want drivers to use the dusters to wipe off the tell tale sat-nav sucker marks from their windscreens.

The move follows a huge 75% increase in sat-nav thefts in the county since 2005.

Crime Reduction Officer Paul Francis said: ‘The sucker mark can act as a beacon to thieves and they will target your car on the assumption that a sat-nav has been left in the glove box. ‘So even if you have removed the device you will still be left with a smashed window to replace which is hugely inconvenient.’

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Scotsman.com: In-car gadgets, such as DVD players and sat-nav systems, could badly injure child passengers if they are involved in even a low-speed crash, research showed.

German road-safety experts crash-tested a car equipped with add-on equipment including sat-nav, mobile phone holders and DVD players which attach to the front-seat headrests.

Their tests showed they could become dangerous missiles even in rear-end, town-centre-style impacts at speeds as low as 18mph.

One popular type of DVD player, which is attached to headrests with Velcro straps and used to entertain children in the rear seats, flew off on impact and crashed into the head of a child-sized crash-test dummy. The researchers said such an accident could potentially result in “serious injuries”.

The tests also found mobile phones rocketed out of some holders attached to the dashboard or windscreen by a sucker, with the potential to cause serious injury.

A sat-nav device attached to the windscreen by the same method stayed in place, but one clipped to the air vents detached and flew through the cabin of the car.

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NetworkWorld:  Companies like TomTom, Garmin and Magellan may face future trouble from newer navigation applications on mobile smart phones.Research firm In-Stat thinks so. “Mobile phone operators now have the ability to market a downloadable navigation application that is just as good as, if not better, than personal navigation devices,” In-Stat says in a new report.

Handset-based mapping and navigation apps could “cause a major change” in the navigation market, the firm adds.

Why?

1) People already own their cell phone, and many have GPS capabilities built in because of mandates to support E-911 services. If they want to try a navigation system, they don’t have to buy an additional device.

2) Customers who don’t want to use their navigation application all the time can pay for just a 24-hour version, giving them the directions they need for one-time trips. Unless we drive to unknown locations for a living, most of us know how to get where we’re going. It’s the occasional unknown destination that makes us sometimes yearn for driving directions.

In-Stat predicts that by 2012 there will be 42 million mapping and navigation mobile phone subscribers.

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Telegraph.co.uk: A drive around England’s Cornish coast could prove an eventful experience over the next couple of days, as the country’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) tests new ways of jamming GPS signals.

Even in normal conditions, satellite navigation systems seem entirely capable of directing motorists to the edge of a cliff or into the path of an oncoming train.

But add the frisson of intermittent interruptions by MoD experts and the effects could be startling.

Accordingly, ambulance crews, firemen and police officers working in and around Portreath, near Redruth, have been warned against relying on their sat-navs.

A similar note of caution has been issued by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to any passing sailors thinking of steering solely by GPS navigation.

The MoD claims that any disruption will be limited to a radius of less than two miles around RAF Portreath, where the tests are being carried out. But coastguards say they have been told to expect disruption “within a clear line of site up to seven nautical miles and up to 30,000ft”.

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GPS Business News: TomTom, today announced the introduction of TomTom Map Share on the new TomTom GO 520 and TomTom GO 720. This new map improvement technology allows TomTom users to improve their maps as soon as they spot changes in the roads.

According to TomTom: “Thanks to the smart user interface, it is easy to make improvements, such as blocked or unblocked streets, reversed one way traffic or new street names, which will instantly take effect”.

These map improvements can be shared with other TomTom users via a connection of the TomTom device to the TomTom HOME software on a computer. When it comes to sharing improvements, users can choose between downloading all reported map improvements or only accepting map improvements verified by a TomTom team of experts to guarantee timeliness and validity.

“TomTom Map Share™ is an important component of a new era in navigation. By enabling millions of TomTom users around the world to automatically share and mutually benefit from each other’s local road knowledge every day for free, TomTom ensures that drivers have the most accurate and up to date maps available in the industry”, said Harold Goddijn, chief executive officer at TomTom.

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Newlaunches.com: Denso Japan has developed a headlight system that works in conjunction with map information stored in a car navigation system.

It uses Adaptive Front-lighting System (AFS), which moves headlights to the left or right at a corner in accordance with the steering angle and vehicle speed.

Operating in conjunction with map information, the prototype system can light the direction in which the vehicle is headed earlier.

It is a common practice to look into a corner before entering, with the new system the driver does not have to do so as it makes the headlights illuminate the road ahead of the car earlier. AFS is enabled by processing the position information from the car navigation system in addition to the information on vehicle speed and steering angle.

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NaviGadget: Somewhere at a trade show in Europe Garmin unveiled a wider version of the entry level Nuvi 200 series.

It looks like 200W will be the regional model and 250W the continental version which will contain maps of North America or Europe.

It is not clear whether the nuvi 270 will get a W as well.

The new 200W series will come with a 10.16 centimeter screen offering 480×272 pixel resolution and the rest of specs will remain identical to older 200 models.

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