Motorola DROID – Navigation With Google Maps And Contacts

For work I literally have hundreds of sites in SE Michigan that I might have to go to. So, as you can imagine I don’t know them all by heart. Work gave me a Garmin GPS unit to help me navigate around but even with that I have to find the place first and then save it into Garmin once I am there.

So, now that I have a DROID I have uploaded all my work points to My Maps in my Google Maps account. I have actually made several maps so that each one is categorized and I can more easily find and pinpoint where I want to go. Navigating to these points is pretty simple on the DROID. Also, I have all these points loaded into my contacts on my DROID so I can navigate from my contacts as well.

Here is how I do it.

Now I got a little lucky with all my locations because we have a spreadsheet with all the GPS coordinates of all out locations. So this made things very easy for me. I simply uploaded the sheet to my database and then had it spit out a KLM file that I could upload to My Maps.

The other thing I did was to make a CSV sheet with all my location and upload that to my Google contacts. In the contact information I have the grid coordinates as one address and the physical address as another address.

Let’s start with the Google Maps approach.

I will use the default Car And Home application as my example.

1. Pull up the Car And Home application (Applications—>Car Home).
2. Next when that comes up click on View Map.
3. Now we are going to load the map(s) from Google Maps that you created.
a. Hit the Settings button and click Layers.
b. You will have 2 buttons on the pop up screen. Click More Layers.
c. Here you will find an option for My Maps. Click that.
d. This will access your Google Maps where you can then pick the map(s) that you want.
4. Now that your map(s) are loaded you can select a location.
a. Instead of fumbling around the map looking for the location that you want you can click the little icon on your screen in the lower left side. This is a list of all the placed on your map. If you have more than one map map displayed this list will only display the items of the map where you have something selected.
b. Scroll down until you find where you want to go and click it.
c. Then click the Navigate button and it will ask for Navigate or Directions.

Some of the Labs are also very useful. Click on settings again and then More. Then you will see an option for Labs. Personally I really like the “Layer Button”, “My Location Button” and the “Bubble Buttons” options. All these really do is add an icon to your screen so that you don’t have to go through settings every time to pull up your Layers or other information.

The ” Bubble Buttons” option is really cool in that it adds a Call or a Navigate button inside the bubble for your map point. Very useful.

Also, if you want to see more details about a particular point you have plotted on the map….just click the bubble and on the screen that comes up click on details. These are the details that you would see inside the bubble on Google Maps from you home (or where ever) computer.

Very cool stuff.

As I stated earlier I made up a CSV sheet with all my points – grid and physical address – as well as the phone numbers for the locations and there names. I then uploaded that to my Google Contacts and made sure Google Sync was active on my phone.

WHAM….auto populated to my phone.

Next is doing it through your contacts list. I have actually started migrating away from this but it is still very useful. Simply click on a contact. If you have an address loaded in the contact information for that particular contact you will see it with the little navigation icon next to it. Just click and off you go!

Simple as pie.

SOME NAVIGATION LIMITATIONS
I was very disappointed when I started playing with the navigation system on the DROID that Google didn’t a speedometer to the screen (or even to the program). I has to be easy enough to do because there are other apps out there with that offer this for free as a separate program. But who wants to flip back and forth between programs just to see your speed. No one!

Also, it would be VERY nice to be able to see the posted speed limit as well. I have become very accustomed to seeing this on my Garmin.

Hopefully those will be coming in the near future. We shall see.

There are probably a whole host of things people would like to see added but the 2 I listed are the biggies for me. Overall though I have not encountered any problems with navigation on my DROID. I do notice that in some instances it takes me a different route than the Garmin does. Not saying one is right or one is wrong….just different. And once….and only once so far the DROID took me on a crazy route. Once is not bad considering how much I use it.