The reason for this posting is about an issue I had with a dedicated GPS. The following description of a recent road trip is intended keep people from derailing the actual intent of the posting and offer their opinion on how no one in their right mind would buy a dedicated GPS when their phone can do that and so much more.
I was on a recent road trip and was using Android Auto and Google Maps for navigation. Things were going acceptably, but Android Auto kept doing something like a reboot every few minutes. That was just an annoyance for the first part of the trip. On the return, it had a hard time connecting or would say that it couldn't download the route. I wasn't asking for anything challenging, it would have been the route between two major cities. I did get it connected again, but the rebooting continued and sometimes the timing was less than ideal. During the trip I decided that I would bring a dedicated GPS along the next time as a backup.
I selected one with a larger display so that I wouldn't have trouble reading the screen. I went with the Garmin Drive Smart 86 which comes with a standard windshield mount. I prefer not having it on the windshield, so I also looked for a good cup holder mount or beanbag style. Come to find that there are no third party vendors for this unit, and when I checked Garmin, all they offer for their 86 is the windshield mount. Searching online I was able to find a reasonably priced solution which was the new sized ball (22 mm) attached to the old sized cup to accept the ball (17 mm) of a standard mount. It's compact and well built, but I was wondering if having the extra ball might increase the likelihood of slipping and having the GPS display keep drooping.
It seemed that there should be a simpler solution to make the original mount ball tight inside the new sized cup. I recently bought an entry level 3D printer and have been playing with creating pretty simple models. This seemed like the perfect opportuning to get creative. What I came up with is what I've been calling the Olive. I created a 3D model that was a 22 mm sphere that has a 17 mm spherical void. To accommodate the support that the ball is mounted on, I also put a 10 mm hole through one side. If I plotted it with black filament, it would have looked a lot like a pitted olive. I knew that I couldn't get the ball through the small opening, and if I made the opening larger, then the olive would basically be on just one side of the ball. Instead, I split the olive right through the middle of the 10 mm hole. What resulted can best be described as a pitted olive that has been cut in half. The two halves fit on each side of the ball and are a little snug because the plotting isn't perfectly smooth. It provides friction though which works well with the nut used to tighten the ball. I was going to plot it again with a couple millimeter gap, but the two halves didn't touch anyway, but were close enough together that the olive popped right into the cup.
With this kind of spacer (adaptor seems to be more descriptive of a device), you can use any of the available 17 mm mounts on the new Garmin GPS that has a 22 mm cup.
I was on a recent road trip and was using Android Auto and Google Maps for navigation. Things were going acceptably, but Android Auto kept doing something like a reboot every few minutes. That was just an annoyance for the first part of the trip. On the return, it had a hard time connecting or would say that it couldn't download the route. I wasn't asking for anything challenging, it would have been the route between two major cities. I did get it connected again, but the rebooting continued and sometimes the timing was less than ideal. During the trip I decided that I would bring a dedicated GPS along the next time as a backup.
I selected one with a larger display so that I wouldn't have trouble reading the screen. I went with the Garmin Drive Smart 86 which comes with a standard windshield mount. I prefer not having it on the windshield, so I also looked for a good cup holder mount or beanbag style. Come to find that there are no third party vendors for this unit, and when I checked Garmin, all they offer for their 86 is the windshield mount. Searching online I was able to find a reasonably priced solution which was the new sized ball (22 mm) attached to the old sized cup to accept the ball (17 mm) of a standard mount. It's compact and well built, but I was wondering if having the extra ball might increase the likelihood of slipping and having the GPS display keep drooping.
It seemed that there should be a simpler solution to make the original mount ball tight inside the new sized cup. I recently bought an entry level 3D printer and have been playing with creating pretty simple models. This seemed like the perfect opportuning to get creative. What I came up with is what I've been calling the Olive. I created a 3D model that was a 22 mm sphere that has a 17 mm spherical void. To accommodate the support that the ball is mounted on, I also put a 10 mm hole through one side. If I plotted it with black filament, it would have looked a lot like a pitted olive. I knew that I couldn't get the ball through the small opening, and if I made the opening larger, then the olive would basically be on just one side of the ball. Instead, I split the olive right through the middle of the 10 mm hole. What resulted can best be described as a pitted olive that has been cut in half. The two halves fit on each side of the ball and are a little snug because the plotting isn't perfectly smooth. It provides friction though which works well with the nut used to tighten the ball. I was going to plot it again with a couple millimeter gap, but the two halves didn't touch anyway, but were close enough together that the olive popped right into the cup.
With this kind of spacer (adaptor seems to be more descriptive of a device), you can use any of the available 17 mm mounts on the new Garmin GPS that has a 22 mm cup.
