HEMA map/gps

gandk · Senior Member

HEMA map/gps

erad · Guru

I have a very cheap ALDI GPS. It is fine for what I do, but if I go off road, it rapidly gets lost. I travel mainly in country areas. I use it mainly as a more accurate speedometer, and also I use the distance to go feature to see how far I have left to go to my destination. However, the GPS has been invaluable when I travel around the country on holidays, arriving in an unknown city somewhere. I program the address I want and 98% of the time it will take me there via the most direct route. I say 98%, because occasionally it wants to take me well away from where I want to go, but that is rare. I turn the voice off because when I disagree with the thing, it never shuts up, telling me to turn around and go back. Also, at times, I know of a much shorter way to go, and that well and truly confuses the GPS. Personally, I wouldn't be without it, but at times my wife would cheerily throw it out the window.

TheHeaths · Guru

Kim,

my opinion is this.

For general travel, out of towns, I would get some paper maps to allow planning. The HEMA maps in the Camps series are good, and give the necessary level of detail in my opinion. I like to look at maps to plan.

An in car navigator comes into its own when you are in unknown towns/cities, and are either looking for an address, or looking for routes through the place.

I would have a decent set of maps for planning of an evening, and a low cost navigator for navigation around major towns.

gregroz · Member

we have downloaded the Hema Explorer onto the Ipad and find this is particularly useful. We have recently spent 6 months touring WA and the ability to take photos with the Hema Explorer and view the tracks the we have completed is really beneficial once you get home. the photos are marked as waypoints on the map. worth looking at in conjunction with the car GPS.

GarrynLyn · Senior Member

We paid the extra and bought a Hema GPS for our lap, and found it to be very handy. While I was driving, Lyn was able to look for the next possible free camp, caravan park or dump point as it had Camps 7 in it.

Worked well for us.

Desert Dweller · Guru

Give us a paper Hema map out in the bush & we know where we are & where we're going. Flat battery & you're history with a GPS.

Tones · Veteran Member

Kim,

We purchased a HEMA HN7 navigator last year after having owned and used a Garmin gps for quite a while. Our priorities in using the Garmin had been for both city and country navigation. The bonus had always been that we could run Camps 8 on the Garmin and it makes navigation much easier and safer. We could also run Geowiki downloads from CMCA and the Garmin was basically a tool that was able to provide everything except for one thing' it lacked the ability to provide good highway and road mapping and also off road mapping. Hence our purchase of the HEMA so that we could get a device that did it all.

Would we buy the HEMA again......NO. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, to keep the Igo street mapping up to date you have to purchase from a third party provider and the cost of the current update is over $60.00. Secondly, you have to run the HEMA in either street mode or 4x4 mode at any one time; you cannot run both at the same time. Thirdly, you cannot load the HEMA Navigator software onto an IMac or MacBook, it will only run on a pc. I have also just found out that the third party provider of the software updates also provides the Camps updates. Lastly, you have to connect the HEMA to a pc to do an update.

Our final solution has been to purchase HEMA maps for the IPad and keep using the Garmin. that way we can install update maps free for the life of the Garmin. We can also keep the other two sources of camping data current on the Garmin with very little effort. Geowiki data is free for CMCA members and the Camps update is onlu $19. If you use an Ipad that can take a SIM card, it means that the IPad can give you real time mapping (even when the SIM card is not installed) When you use HEMA maps electronically.

It has been an expensive learning curve, but we look at it as being an investment in saving money in the longer term by being able to stay off the grid and by being independent as much as possible.

Hope my rambling on can help with your decision to purchase or not.

Tones

-- Edited by Tones on Monday 30th of January 2017 10:33:40 AM

dieseltojo · Senior Member

Good post Tones,

I have the Hema 5. I think it is the second iteration of the series. Not saying the new ones aren't better, but Hema started out as a profit making exercise and not to help the public. The around town gps part will get you lost and frustrate the hell out of you. I sent mine back twice as they reckoned there was nothing wrong with it. It was intermittently going to blue screen. They reckoned it couldn't happen. Sent me a replacement though so all ok after a 3 month sort out time.

I like the mapping of Hema and it is a moving map, so turn it on and it will always tell you where you are. + or - makes the map bigger or smaller. There is a bit of a learning curve with this thing though, and it is just too much for some folk. I once ran into a 5 car group on the QAA line in the Simpson that were lost, and trying to get to the Dalhousie Springs. They all had a Hema and all didn't have a clue how to run the damned ozzi explorer to know where to go....Hema is not intuitive or user friendly to me. The screen in mine is very hard to see.(compared to almost any other GPS in its day even)

With out running the Hema down, and having had many different GPS models I like the Hema as well as having the Garmin. So to feel comfortable I need two Gps systems.

Sounds strange I know, but if you are trying to find Caroline Springs on the Hay river track, the Hema is hard to beat, yet useless in the towns.

Bryan · Guru

gregroz wrote:
we have downloaded the Hema Explorer onto the Ipad and find this is particularly useful. We have recently spent 6 months touring WA and the ability to take photos with the Hema Explorer and view the tracks the we have completed is really beneficial once you get home. the photos are marked as waypoints on the map. worth looking at in conjunction with the car GPS.

Same and very happy.

Hylife · Guru

gandk wrote:
Hi all My husband frequently confuses me and so we go again. He has asked me to find out how handy would a "hema map" be for our big lap around Oz. NOW. I am thinking he means a GPS, as when asked did he mean a map he said no, the gizmos that go on the dash.?????HELP. Anyway would they be worth the cost please. Also I really am going to add a photo and some info on our page. Shortly.
Kim

Hema is simply a brand name.
They make both a mapping software package that can be downloaded to phones and tablets and a complete dash mountable GPS unit using their own and others map data.
Their specialty is in covering off-road locations and tracks where a normal GPS mapping system doesn't. Large city metro areas is not their specialty and this is where they do fall down.

The software package seems to work well for some tablets and most smart phones, but many tablets do not come with an inbuilt GPS chip or even 3G/LTE capability (mobile phone network) for mobile triangulation and so for many users the software won't work at all for mobile use.

Just as a side note, if you are in the market for a new vehicle that is 4x4 capable, many brands/models now include a large screen GPS and they include all the same off-road and tracks features commonly found on the Hema range.

Having recently (May 2016) gone through the new vehicle shopping/buying process, I do know that the mid-upper Toyota range of Hylux, Fortuner, Prado, and LandCruiser have an inbuilt large screen GPS unit which already has all the features you would find on a Hema unit.

Chris61 · Senior Member

If you have an Android phone or a cellular connected tablet have a look at the Sygic GPS app. Wikicamps GPS coordinates links straight into Sygic, an absolutely fantastic feature. The ithingy version of Sygic doesn't link from Wikicamps (I have both versions)

I use my Samsung S7 with a holder that fits in the cd slot while using Sygic, works very well and you don't have to buy a dedicated GPS.

www.ebay.com.au/itm/152337926314%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

You can try the free version and then upgrade to the paid version if you like it. I don't go offroad so I don't need Hema style maps on my GPS.

Ziggy99 · Member

@Tones... Garmins can run any compatible vector map. Garmin itself sells a a topo map but it's not very good. Oztopo is much better. Then there's OSM for Garmins. The bottom line is to specify your map needs, locate and evaluate the dig map offerings that may meet them. Scale is critical. It's hard to do real bush nav above 50K. That rules out the packaged Hemas which have too many errors anyway. For a company that boasts about field verification they're surprisingly tolerant of inconsistencies between maps and ignoring corrections sent in by users.

Ziggy99 · Member

For just town and highway navigation all you need is a basic GPS with lifetime maps. Go to a shop and see what size will suit your vision and your dash.