Wrong Destination from Contact

[alecbowman]

Not sure if this is the right forum. Have recently bought Navigon MobileNavigator Version 3.6.2 (build. 1134, NK 13)

As a test I used a work contact with information as follows:

Company Name
Broad Oak Business Park
The Airport
Portsmouth
Hampshire
PO3 5PQ
United Kingdom

Navigon gave me the following destination:

Lower Teme Business Park
WR15 8
Tenbury Wells

Close but no cigar. It is 165 miles in the wrong direction but it is at least still in the UK.

Anyone know what is going on here? Any help would be graefully received.

[MaFt]

is this android or iphone?

do you have the postcode in the correct field in your contacts?

MaFt

[alecbowman]

This is Android on an HTC Desire S. Post code is in the correct field. If I shorten "Broad Oak Business Park" to "Broad Oak" it gives me a completely different destination.

[MaFt]

looks like it is getting confused then as it probably doesn't have "broad oak business park" as a street name - which, technically, it isn't.

for cases like this it may be better to simply enter the postcode (until such a time that navigon uses the postcode as the primary address method when using contacts!)

does it work with 'normal' contacts on actual streets with names rather than business parks?

MaFt

[alecbowman]

Navigon doesn't use the Postcode as the primary address method!!!!???? In case it has escaped their notice, not all addresses start off with a house number and street name. There must be 100,000s living in cities where the address is an apartment block or whatever. A system that can't find a business address is hardly fit for purpose either.

Where have these guys been since the 1960's? Perhaps they smoked too much waccky baccy. Postcodes were invented in the UK in 1959 so pre-date the concept of GPS by at least 15 years (or 35 years before it was fully operational).

So we have a code which identifies no more than 100 addresses. Together with the first line of the address gives a unique address. Navigon proudly states that they do full Postcode searches but for contacts they do something else which appears to be completely random. WHY? It must have taken a aweful lot of effort to produce something so complicated and completely useless.

Just to check, I looked up "PO3 5PQ" on the official Post Office Address Finder. It gives the address as

B A E Systems
Broad Oak Works
Airport Service Road
PORTSMOUTH
PO3 5PQ

So the original contact was slightly wrong. When corrected, Navigon gives me a destination of somewhere different from before

Burwash Road
TN21 8
Heathfield

Ok so the address starts with a "B". Apart from that I can't see any similarity.

Any way, so I tried a residential address which it did find. So now I need to change work contacts to use the Post code only. As a work round OK, but not exactly a polished product.

[MaFt]

if it's any consolation, most nav apps on phones that use the address book handle it the same way - basing it off the street as opposed to the postcode...

navigon DOES have full postcode search, but you weren't searching for a postcode ;)

MaFt

[peterc10]

My Sygic does not use Postcodes in the contact address fields either. Does any sat nav app?

I suspect that the reason for this is that sat nav is an international product, and is aimed at an internal market. In the UK we have probably the most accurate system of post codes going. Many other countries don't have the equivalent of post codes. With most of those that do the code is used to narrow it down to town rather than street level and therefore often covers large areas and many addresses.

So for most of the rest of the world post code search is useless without a street name as well. I am not condoning this, just trying to understand it.
_________________
Peter
HTC Sensation
Sygic GPS for Europe (No more TT "support"!)
Copilot for USA
Bury CC9060 bluetooth car kit & Brodit mount

[alecbowman]

OK, back to the problem. Another office I go to is in New Malden, KT3 4LH. Entering the postcode only in the contact results in "address not found". So I tried to enter the address by "enter an address".

Postcode gets as far as "KT" but doesn't recognise "3" . Then tried by town (New Malden), it lists the High Street, but doesn't accept "7". So the closest I can get it the street. Entering "PO3" for the Portsmouth postcode isn't recognised either.

Then I found that it could get the right location from the contact postcode only if there was no space between the 3 and 4. But on other contacts it works fine with a space.

I don't really think I should need to conduct an experiment every time I want to travel somewhere.

Does Navigon do any software testing?

[alecbowman]

Also the lack of post codes in some countries is hardly a good excuse. After all this is a GPS system, accurate to a few meters if better.

Then it is very simple - if there is a postcode search using that, and if not, then search by town, street and number.

[Andy_P]

NO satellite navigation system is based around postcodes. That would be daft as they are so vague.

They ALL start off with a grid of Latitude and Longitude coordinates.
They then lay a pattern of road shapes across that grid
They then produce a database of town and road names to apply to that pattern.
They then add SOME house/building numbers to positions on the roads (and a method to interpolate the ones in between).
They then produce another look-up table to match postcodes to streets (which is why they still need a building number for best match).

All of the steps apart from the first will be subject to some errors.

Normally, on a dedicated sat-nav system, you enter the info about the destination in certain specific ways and you can see from it's replies how it is coping with the information you are giving it (for example if you enter a post code, you can SEE if it is not finding the right street name)
But from your descriptions, it sounds like the iPhone app. is just using any or all of the information in a phone book contact? And if that's the case, you are at it's mercy when it finds what seems (to it to) be conflicting information.
_________________
"Settling in nicely" ;-)

[alecbowman]

OK but do you know what the lat/long is of your destination? I don't often see it printed on business cards or written down on my Christmas Cards.

If you want to go that way, what spheroid are they using? WGS84 would be normal but there are any number of other spheroids and different grid systems. If you are far enough north or south you should use a polar projection etc.

Anyway the point is that of course their maps are not based on postcodes but whether you like it or not, in this country that is the mechanism which most people would narrow down an address. Any Sat Nav tool that is incapable of identifying a destination reliably from that or town/street/no. is worse than useless.

I was just testing this unit and knew where these locations are. If I had needed a navigation device in these examples, I would have been better of with a paper map or some scrawled notes taken down over the phone - cheaper too (and I wouldn't have been directed to some totally spurrious location 200 miles from where I should have gone)

[MaFt]

But if you enter the postcode then it works correctly, yes?

The issue you're having is how a piece of satnav software 'filters' the address field(s) on a mobile device.

MaFt

[Andy_P]

[alecbowman]

The paper map works fine, you contact the person at your destination to get some "scribbled directions" and then stop anyone who doesn't look like the village idiot for directions when you get lost. I also qualified this to some extent by saying that such directions were most unlikely to send you 200 miles in the wrong direction so arguably more accurate than this Sat Nav.

Use of lat/long appears rather limiting in some respects - why not use OS Grid references for example (Mercator), as any competent person can work out the required coordinates down to 10m without too much difficulty (with 8 figure Grid Ref). Apparently GPS uses the GRS80 elipsoid.

Anyway - back to the subject. Actually I am using an HTC Android device, not iPhone. One bug bear is that Navigon don't appear to publish any User Guide. The only links that look promising on their web site suddenly change to German. Consequently it is actually quite difficult to find out what is supposed to be supported on this package.

There appear to be two basic ways to set a destination; using Contact details or Typing in the address.

Problems with Contacts seem to occur when the address includes a building name or industrial estate name etc, even when these are as defined in the Post Office database. In these cases it also doesn't appear possible to enter the address with enough accurately to be much help. (Navigon doesn't recognise anything other than a Number or Intersection with another road).

So if Contact details don't work and the address isn't accurate enough a post code would help (for some commercial areas, a post code identifies down to the building directly. The tower block in New Malden has 3 post codes that apply to different companies)

For the iPhone the Post Code search appears to be a paid for option so I began to think that it wasn't properly supported in Android. This was odd because I had been able to enter a Post Code on occasions. I have now discovered one of the problems here.

The Android "Keyboard" is laid out as compact QWERTY type. On the HTC at least, numeric values are entered in two ways:

1) press and hold down the appropriate key until the numeric value option appears. I.e. to select "5" the "t" key is held down until the display gives the option of the "5" character.

2) Toggle the keyboard layout to numeric and type the value directly .

I found that the first way doesn't work but by switching to the numeric layout it is possible to enter a post code. So the Navigon software does not appear to be entirely compatible with the Android keyboard.

This still doesn't get round non standard addresses and contact details though.

The biggest irritant though is that Navigon clearly don't want reports of software errors as there appears to be no link or technical support option on their web site. Perhaps it's because "Ve Germans do not have ze Softvare errors"?

[MaFt]

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