I recently bought a Fiat 500 Lounge with a sat nav port built in.
Will any TomTom fit that port, or does it have to be the one they sell in the dealer for around £300? I think it's the TomTom Live 2 that the dealer sell.

Would like to know more about it and the Fiat TomTom itself.

sarah20 said:

I recently bought a Fiat 500 Lounge with a sat nav port built in.
Will any TomTom fit that port, or does it have to be the one they sell in the dealer for around £300? I think it's the TomTom Live 2 that the dealer sell.

Would like to know more about it and the Fiat TomTom itself.

Click to expand...

The Tom Tom GO Live 1000 along along with the cradle will fit in the sat nav port. TomTom GO LIVE 1000 4.3" Sat Nav with UK and Ireland Maps: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
http://www.fiat-accessories.com/Fiat-TomTom-2-Cradle

At the moment Tom Tom are offering free life time updates up until the 24th of Dec 2012. Note that you will have to pay for the traffic updates which is a yearly subscription. Mine is due for renewal in the new year.

The Blue & Me Tom Tom Live 2 offers European maps and it integrates with the 500 so that you can select music using the graphical display (less cumbersome than the steering wheel controls) and gives mpg info, etc. The latter is a BIG PLUS if you like your music (although I haven't use the feature since it doesn't work in my car).

You can get the B&Me TT Live 2 for around £230-£250 on ebay but you would have to keep checking. The map updates are a seperate charge. Some now are not updating since the roads are not changing as much.

TT device is a bit cumbersome and has to 'man handled' to get in and out of the cradle. Taking out the cradle is a 2 handed job. Still the OH loves it and we hustle for the use of it (we both have MiTos with the 68R option port). I use the iphone as a fallback.

We did use a Garmin (slightly older one - excellent sat nav) and I did buy an older Tom Tom and I thought it was terrible and gave it away.

Screen on the TT Live 2 (both B&Me & 1000) use an iphone like fluid screen. I also use an iphone 3Gs using Google maps to double check that the destination I've put in is the right one. It's surprising how many places have the same name e.g. Milstreet in Cork is in 2 places - one beside Fermoy and the other on the Kerry border. Going to the wrong one costs 1 hour of hard back road driving.

Recently the OH went to a place called Causey farm in Navan - a christmas special with her friend and 2 kids leaving a 4.30pm. It was dark, raining a bit and temperatures were hoovering around zero in that neck of the woods. There got there and back having enjoyed the trip immensely. Last year they got lost in the friends car, missed their 'appointment' - got it rescheduled and weren't back until 11pm. It took the good out of the journey. TT was worth every penny but a cheaper Sat Nav can do the job just as well. The kids LOVED the sat nav with the sharp display and the spoken directions.

I think the B&Me TT Live 2 can be worth the money for the following reasons...
- integrated
-best traffic updates but you pay for them unlike the Garmin
-nice voices although I haven't heard the 'new' Garmin voices
-one account will do 2 sat navs (can really only be done if you 'lose' the first one)
- 4.3 inch is plenty big enough and the lane direction for getting off the motorways is great.
-Safety camera safety alerts are useful but I supplement it with the use of iphone app called Trapster to save the licence.

loveshandbags said:

The Tom Tom GO Live 1000 along along with the cradle will fit in the sat nav port. TomTom GO LIVE 1000 4.3" Sat Nav with UK and Ireland Maps: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics
http://www.fiat-accessories.com/Fiat-TomTom-2-Cradle

At the moment Tom Tom are offering free life time updates up until the 24th of Dec 2012. Note that you will have to pay for the traffic updates which is a yearly subscription. Mine is due for renewal in the new year.

Click to expand...

My year was recently up and every time I had seen the traffic renewal cost mentioned it had been £47.50. However, when I went to renew it was only £29, not sure if this is a limited offer or a permanent lower price. A nice surprise nevertheless and bearing in mind I use it virtually every day I don't think it's bad value at less than £2.50 per month.

Google Maps arrived on iOS6 today...

How many connections should a sat nav b+m cradle have. Mine appears to have 2 on the front , none on the back. Only one of which is connected to the sat nav dock.

Hi,

I think you are referring to the CRATT cradle for the dash slot as there are two types of windscreen suction mount cradles which are very different.


The Docking point (68R) on the dash itself is merely a 12v supply. So two cable contacts would suffice +/-........

The cradle itself has all the electronics inside to do the step down voltage as TomTom work on around 5.4V and any other electronics that maybe the tomtom needs like filtering or smoothing that I don't know exactly what/if but it is why the cradles are quite an expense. Also there are 4 different cradles that fit into the dash 68R for various satnav models and they are bespoke to the device but all will fit and work from the dash 68R slot.

The communication between the satnav and car Blue&Me is all wireless bluetooth so no wires or contacts involved.

If you look at the cheap MPRoC copy cables for the TomTom you will see these too have only two contacts where as the proper TomTom cable has about 20. Those cheap copy cables will not allow connection to a computer to do any satnav updates from MYDRIVE CONNECT and will only again provide a power supply to charge the TomTom out of the cradle on a USB port.

I could explain a lot on what has been posted on others above but as they are so old posts it probably would be a waste

Farrah

Thanks for that info Farrh. Must have a very good copy, it looks the part but does not seem to work. It will however fiat my Garmin which is all I need
Thanks again BoBo

Hi,

We have not worked on enough 'faulty' cars yet with the 68R cradle to accurately work out everything, however the cars software/ Blue&Me certainly has an impact on the supply to both the dash feed and the USB.
At the moment we ie 'hacky' has been quite occupied at weekends updating Fiats and Alfas.
A few weeks ago he went to sort out an Alfa Mito where the owner had the dash mount and bought a cradle and managed with a bit of foam strip to keep a Garmin satnav retained. Eventually owner got fed up with the dangling wire so purchased a TomTom2..........then got very confused as the mount was not an active one just a plastic holder that fitted the dash slot.

It was still possible though to get everything functioning as the TomTom works/interacts with Blue&Me whether in the cradle or not and still no wires needed to be attached. The only thing you just have to switch it on and off manually and connect up to charge as battery runs down quite quickly.

Since then the owner confirmed they picked up a correct CRATT2 cradle from eBay for £25 and now everything functions wire free. happy days

Farrah