On a 180 mile trip from Iowa to Minnesota with the Nav system running I encounted several interesting things and I am curious if others have had the same occur.

I will say in advance I still like the Nav system and am still glad I got it even if it ain't perfect.

Issue One: Twice on a perfectly straight road within a two mile span, the navigation system told me it was time to turn left. If I turned left I would have been in the middle of a cornfield. The map had dots on the straight road. Dots typically indicating action needed to be taken.

Issue Two: Three times that I recall the first warning of a turn ahead told me to make a left turn 1/2 mile ahead. I look down at the map and the next turn indicated was actually a right turn. However, when I got to the intersection each time I was correctly told to turn right.

Issue Three: There was a detour on a road so I had to go around. After the detour I was back on the same road again for another two or three miles. As I appoached the intersection of a major highway where I knew I needed to turn, the navigation system did not warn me to turn. Interestingly the map below showed my position right at the intersection, but indicated the road I was turning on was three or four miles ahead. So the indications on the map said to go straight through the intersection and said it was several miles to the next turn. But in text form it was showing my next turn was the highway right in front of me. So it knew where I was on the map, it knew what road I needed to turn on, but told me the road was two or three miles ahead and did not tell me to turn when I appoached the correct road.

Someone said you can contact these people and they are interested to be informed of errors in maps. Anyone ever contact them and send them information about incorrect maps and guidance issues?

Before anyone jumps on this thread to say navigation sucks, 1st year GM, blah blah, I will point out that Mapquest, Google, etc are not perfect and they been doing it for years. I don't expect 100% perfection from this map system as others online have been doing maps for years and also get stuff totally wrong.

I would think that after 8 years at least one map system might have my street correctly located on a map. None do.

So none of the sytems are going to be flawless. Doesn't mean however they can be improved when errors are found if there is an avenue to get them fixed via owner feedback.

 

Well, did you check the GPS setting - did it have the international symbol for "negation" on it? If so that might explain the mis-haps. I'm glad you didn't turn hard into a field at speed - that was good thinking!!

JK

 

Did you happen to notice, or do you ever see the little box in the upper left corner of the screen that has the GPS with the slash through it while you were driving? It kinda sounds like your loosing GPS signal and if so, the Nav is using the speed pulse line and possibly the lateral g-sensors to fill in the gaps in the Nav's route. The Eclipse Nav in my Toyota does a decent job of navigating with it's internal sensors when it looses the GPS signal, I'm assuming (?) that my C6 nav has similar internal sensors.

Maybe another thing you could test is to set up the screen to display track-up instead of north-up, then see if the screen makes occasional sudden and exaggerated rotational moves. If the Nav momentarily looses it position you see the screen jump around easier than just the little triangle.

 

I haven't had any real problems with the NAV system other than some roads/POIs, etc being incorrect or not there - that is expected though. I haven't had any of the bugs you have seen which indicates you may need either a firmware upgrade and/or a new NAV DVD. I'd contact the dealer first.

I have the NAV system in an Escalade, it is different than the Vette and not nearly as current - the Escalade/Vette are both 05s. I like the vett because of the heads up display on street mode - very, very cool.

When I checked the Cadillac forum it was indicated that a new DVD costs about $600 and MAY require a firmware upgrade...

A firmware upgrade can either mean a new chip(s) and/or a software upgrade (not NAV software) as well.

In general I don't have 100% confidence in these systems in that thye may make mistakes because of bad/lack of information - BUT eventually it will get you there or real, real close.

 

The quality of the maps in the DVD could be old - and they might be the best available. I have seen this on really twisty roads, where the map says I'm off in the weeds and the road is over to the side. The maps were based on old data - and need to be upgraded with new satellite data. It will get better as time goes on.

I want to know where the 2006 Nav DVD is and how much it will cost!

Gregg.

 

I'm not sure that it is the data - I'm had mine jump around in locations and then correct it's self. Good GPS signal all the time as well. There are definately some bugs still n the system. I'm hoping for the HU flash that should fix the bugs and give us MP3 capability!

 

I've had the same glitch with mine-on the route from Kingman AZ to Las Vegas it tried to route me left into the desert twice last week (on the same trip,maybe 5 miles apart). This is on a road that hasn't changed in years so it can't very well be the maps.

 

I remember someone posted that you can have the NAV recalc the route after detouring off the current route.

 

My NAV system will automatically recalculate when I get off the route.

 

I've not had that problem although I have noticed that it seems to lose GPS signal occasionally. I have Nav in my BMW and it doesn't seem to lose GPS as often so it is probably antenna location.
Maps do seem old. Did a trip up the Maine turnpike last week and the exits were renumbered more that 1 year ago (I think 2) but they are the old ones on the NAV system.
The thing that bothers me most about this system is that on the highway it often tells me before each exit to CONTINUE on what ever road I'm on. Then that goes away for a while and then comes back. Why does it tell me to continue when that is obvious from the rest of the directions?

 

Was in downtown Minneapolis over the weekend in a rental Lincoln with Hertz "NeverLost" navigation. It took forever to find itself, the screen was tiny, etc, etc. Absolutely horrible unit, no confidence in it at all.

The C6 Navigation has been very, very good to me! However, I WANT MY MP3!

 

I have a Garmin 2620 GPS unit that simply sits on the dash. It gives audible and visual instructions and has never given me any problem. I even loaded the map of the UK onto it and used it there last July. Can't do that with the Vette. We are going to order a '06 coupe and will not be ordering the NAV unit.

 

I have had commands to turn on rural roads. I assumed that it was "seeing" sharp curves as turns. In my opinion, the maps used in the C6 nav are not as good as the maps used by my portable Garmin Quest. However, the Quest can only handle a few states at a time due to limited memory. I recently carried the Quest to Hawaii to be used in a rental car. It worked flawlessly once I remembered to "tell" it that it was not at "home".
The C6 Nav is ok, but I find myself questioning the instructions more than I do with the Quest. This second guessing can sometimes cause me to ignore the unit when I should not.
I have learned to question the Quest a bit, but not as much as I sometimes should, but it quickly recovers even if it guides me off route.

Jim

 

?

sure you can, you'd use the UK dvd map disk.

 

Yes you can - it is just an
other DVD.

 

i already said that steve, beat ya by 3 hours doing it too. neener neener.

 

Mine works fine. Road changes (and that's lots of roads around Denver) that are changed after the disc is cut won't be reflected. Recalc is automatic after you miss suggested turns, etc...when GPS gets picked up after a break, system relocates you and updates route as necessary.



Flatbush Harry

 

Does that mean I can load my Lexus nav dvd into the vette?

 

i'm doubting that.

what i referred to, and Steve Germany a couple hours later , was the fact that C6's intended for export to the UK get a NAV disk with the UK map data on it.

get one of those.. pop it in.. wah lah, UK NAV.

 

On a recent trip through the west this summer, including TX, NM, CO, UT, NV, and AZ, the nav got very annoying as it would announce turns that weren't actually there. This is because the map data was flawed. The errors were usually just crossroads or Ts that were misrepresented on the map as Ys, causing the nav to say turn left followed by turn right as we went through the intersection. This happened way too often as we traveled through the rural parts of the country on secondary roads.