Price: 799€ Price paid: 1159 CHF (753€) Click read more to see how to use a TomTom device to be warned when a street radar is in the area....

What You risk:

in Switzerland...if You get catch by a street radar

What the law say:

It is forbidden to use any device that DETECT a street radar in France, so a GPS device do not enter in that category.

 Content of the package

A lot of bags	Opening religiously all bags...

The difference in price between a TomTom GO may be explain by the requirement of using a GPS on a motorcycle. But what can explain the difference of price?

TomTom Rider

• Has an aluminium case, waterproof, and a lot slicker than a TomTom GO
  

• Is shipped with many goodies: textile bag for transport, bluetooth handsets receiver, 2 handsets (one for the cars or street, one for the helmet)
• Has many fixation systems made of black aluminium...
  

 Installation

The first time You'll start the TomTom Rider, You will have to answer a lot of questions: settings preferences, testing bluetooth wireless connections with Your celullar or the headset provided.

I was encountering problem when I first try to install the bluetooth handset, I decide to look at the firmware revision, what was installed was the 5.410, a quick jump at TomTom in the section download reveal that a version 5.420 was available since the end of november.

The update take the form of a "big and monolithic exe of 6Mb", wenn You start it, You only have to follow the instructions, It is recommended to do a backup first of all previous settings (user preferences) and to backup the existing TomTom SD cards, for this there is 2 entry in the main menu. It took approx. 10 minutes to backup 360Mb of maps...so it look like USB1.1 data tranfer rate...The connection to my Sony Ericsson K750i has worked like a charm, Contact database and messages has been synchronized without nay effort (Yes You can use your TomTom Rider as a free hand telephone!)

The installation has run flawlessy, there is really no dfficulty for a non informatician to act with the device, all menu are clear and readable. Personaly I dont not like the awful icons with their limited color scheme. Why Do I have to support then when so much icons are available under GPL? anyway the menu are crips and clear.

I look carefully at the filesystem backup and found in /TomTom-Cfg a file birthday.txt which maybe may contains when my device has been build: vr 14-10-2005 12:53

 Installing Radars overlay

Since TomTom 5.0 no additional 3^rd party software are needed, POIs (Point of interests) like restaurants, petrol gas stations, golf... are supported by the TomTom kernel natively. POIs are simply a set of GPS coordinate organized in categories along with some metadata like telephone number, internet adress, contact name etc...

Managing POIs	POIs can be selectively activated on Maps...

POIs are displayed on a MAP using a technique of overlays.

• Radars overlays are files with the extension OV2, along with some BMP representing how the overlay catgory look like.
• Overlays has to be put in the same directory as the map it refer, for example map overlay has to be put in the /france directory.

For each category of overlay (a category is simply a way to sort all element semantically: fix radar at 100, mobile laser radar are 2 examples of street radar and can e place in 2 categories), You can set when to be warned, (Icon Warn when near POI) usualy by setting the distance in meter when to trigger a sound.

Select a POI category	Then when to be warned...

The table below present You some values which can be taken as a basis, there are base on the distance you may need at 120km/h to adapt to a new speed....

Then choose a sound, 15 are available,but You can store Your own (WAV format) and use them as well. In case of POI, a bref warning is recommended

	then
choose a sound		DO NOT ACTIVATE THIS OPTION!

DO NOT ACTIVATE THE LAST OPTION!

Why? Because You may be not alerted if the GPS do not think You are on the same road as the radar, since the GPS technology and the radars database has an accuracy of +/- 20meters You may be catch by a radar

 TomTom is using Linux!

What is really interesting is that Tom Tom use heavily Open Source software and redistribute as state by the GPL the modified source code (More to read at www.tomtom.com/gpl )

• Blowfish (The Blowfish Encryption Algorithm) -> Maybe for encrypting the ROM or some sensitive data like MAPs
• ClipUtils (The Cohen-Sutherland line clipping algorithm)
• CoRDiC (Coordinate Rotation Digital Computer)
• MD5 (MD5 message-digest algorithm)
• Ogg-Vorbis (Tremor-variable)-> Even If I have found no ogg vobis compatible file, wav seems to be supported through...

 Where to Find POI Radars database?

in no particular order...

radars-fixes.com

Map: France
Download: A free list can be dowmload at www.radars-fixes.com in the download section
Updates: are available each monday for free
Legend:

Screenshots:

radarfalle.de

Map: France Germany Switzerland, others... (Europe)
Download: A list (<10euro per year) can be dowmload at www.radarfalle.de in the download section
Updates: Daily!
Quality of data:

Legend: A lot of icons...

Screenshots:

Zürich the city where I live: 83 radars!

gpspassion.com

Map: France
Download at http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=21763
Updates are Monthly ("Standard") or BiMonthly (named "+" If You are a club member)
Quality of data

Legend:

Screenshots:

Note about all POI database

• It is stricly forbidden to redistribute them or package them in another format.
• I can not provide a directlink to the download
• There is no gurantee that the data are accurate!
• Please drive carefully, this system is only to prevent huge loss of money and reduce risks while driving.

 Links

GPSpassion

Presentation : http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9174
Les Radars - en chiffres: http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9172
Pour signaler un radar - http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5521
Les autres collectes- http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5796 

An exhaustive list of French POIs at www.gpspassion.com

 www.radar.ch

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