FJRocket
Doctor Throckenstein !!!
The Garmin RINO GPS/Comm unit is a great idea that comes up short. This unit isn't for everyone, that's for sure. But it was the right choice for me. I was interested in replacing my old 120, and I wanted a more powerful 2 way radio to hook into my Autocom. I could have bought a Kenwood 3130 and a nice Garmin road specific GPS, but I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I'd been using a Rino 120 for a couple years. Extremely basic GPS, faulted, flawed, now a toasted doorstop. The 530 isn't much better in some respects, but worlds away in others. I decided to save the $89 flat fee repair on my 120 (plus shipping) and invest it into the 530.
The reasons I went (again) with a Rino:
5 Watt Two Way GMRS (FRS limited to .5 watt) radio with VOX. Works with repeaters,too.
Long life batteries, supposedly up to 11 hours of GPS and COM... depending on a lot of features.
DC adapter for bike power to run the unit and charge the batteries concurrently (extra $36) Comes with AC charger.
Waterproof (leave it on the bike!) and "military grade" (well, maybe..)
Nice color screen WAAS GPS.
The radio side of this unit gets great reviews, although using the built in mic is reportedly not that great. Has something to do with the waterproofing more than likely. 5 watts and repeater capability, with 38 subchannels for privacy. Nice. Scans all channels, even weather channels. Has memory for favorite channels.
The GPS side is so-so. Garmin makes great GPS equipment, and as far as reception and how fast this thing boots up, it's vastly superior to the older Rinos. However, it is not as fast as the other latest car systems. It does get 12 satellites and is WAAS enabled. Very acurate. And my unit boots up and acquires sats pretty quickly. The mechanics of the GPS is not really in question. ALWAYS good GPS works from Garmin.
The weakest side of the GPS is the software and functionality. This is more an offroad basemap geocaching gizmo that a road worthy GPS. It does turn by turn routing, but only if you buy the extra software and then "don't go outside the lines". I don't need door to door routing, I just want to know where major roads are, and generally where I'm at if I get lost (on purpose occasionally!). No voice on the GPS, either. I could care less about that.
The City Navigator software appears to be a bastardized Microsoft Streets & Trips. Either that, or all this "streets" type of software is similar. At any rate, I thought Streets and Trips was pretty sad, and hard to learn and use. Garmin's version is worse. The learning curve is high, and for $100 for the software, it is NOT sophisticated or easy to use. But there is a LOT of detail in there. With a measley 56 meg of ram, the Rino 530 will only hold 8 or 9 detailed maps from the very expensive (but not as bad as for other countries) City Navigator software (extra $100+). There's DOZENS of smaller map segments around the country in the City Navigator software. I planned a trip from central Indiana to New Orleans, and I was shy about 3 maps. Now there are still interstates and other major highways in the basemap, so you always have some road information. But if you get off the main roads, and off the Navigator maps, you lose side roads and POI (points of interest).
Anyway, once you choose a route/maps, it's very easy to upload to the unit via USB. Goes fairly quickly and is pretty automatic. At least THAT part is simple.
I wanted to mount the Rino 530 on my handlebars like I had my 120. The cradles are not interchangeable. In fact the new cradles (clips, if you will) from Garmin AND RAM are BOTH reported to not work with the DC adapter. Pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. I knew this going in, but I figured I could hack something to make it work. I did.
I bought the RINO 520/530 U-bolt rig from a RAM vendor for about $45 shipped. It has 2 one inch balls and an adjusable mechanism to go between them. I wasn't sure the U-bolt would work over my AE YCCS mechanism on the bars, but I figured I might be able to use some of the parts. I actually used the RAM as packaged.... more or less.
The DC adapter clips to the back of the battery pack. The stock RAM cradle covers about 3/4 of the area where the DC apdapter mounts to. I took a dental drill (dremmel would work, too, of course), and cut the cradle so that the DC adapter would mount with the cradle on the RINO. Now the worst part of all this is that I had to hack the RAM ball mount that attaches by two screws at the back of the cradle. Well, I just cut that off flush with the cradle, and only have ONE screw holding the parts together. Later on, I may just glue the parts together, but for now, I'll just use the one top screw to hold the parts together.
The results were pretty good.
The RAM mount is pretty cool. The U-bolt holds the unit to the bars very nicely. I did take a dremmel to cut a slot in each half of the YCCS button housing on the handlebars to allow the U-bolt to fit in that area. There's really not much inside that part of the YCCS controller, so cutting into it wasn't a big deal. And I sealed it all up with clear silicone after mounting the U-bolt to keep water from seeping in there.
With the RINO in place on the RAM mount, I can bring the unit VERY close to me.
If I want to get a little better radio reception, I can position the unit full upright, which puts the top of the antenna at about the top of the stock shield.
Sorry, I know the pictures are dark, and the depth is pretty bad. But the RAM gets the unit half way between me and the bars, or up to the top of the shield. It can even move the RINO way out to the outside, over the grips. That would keep it out of the way of a tank bag in turns, as well as get the antenna more to the outside of my body (for transmitting behind me).
This RINO 530 may not be right for you. If you want a touch screen GPS that talks to you, and want a unit that knows Aunt Lilly's zip code, well, you'd better look elsewhere. And if you don't want a two way radio, pretty much forget this thing. But for a basic color GPS and strong 2 way radio, this thing is pretty nice for under $400. It was actually closer to $600 with software, DC adapter and mounting options. Still, that puts me a couple bills under what most people could spend on both units. And I only have to futz around with one unit instead of two. Works for me!
The reasons I went (again) with a Rino:
5 Watt Two Way GMRS (FRS limited to .5 watt) radio with VOX. Works with repeaters,too.
Long life batteries, supposedly up to 11 hours of GPS and COM... depending on a lot of features.
DC adapter for bike power to run the unit and charge the batteries concurrently (extra $36) Comes with AC charger.
Waterproof (leave it on the bike!) and "military grade" (well, maybe..)
Nice color screen WAAS GPS.
The radio side of this unit gets great reviews, although using the built in mic is reportedly not that great. Has something to do with the waterproofing more than likely. 5 watts and repeater capability, with 38 subchannels for privacy. Nice. Scans all channels, even weather channels. Has memory for favorite channels.
The GPS side is so-so. Garmin makes great GPS equipment, and as far as reception and how fast this thing boots up, it's vastly superior to the older Rinos. However, it is not as fast as the other latest car systems. It does get 12 satellites and is WAAS enabled. Very acurate. And my unit boots up and acquires sats pretty quickly. The mechanics of the GPS is not really in question. ALWAYS good GPS works from Garmin.
The weakest side of the GPS is the software and functionality. This is more an offroad basemap geocaching gizmo that a road worthy GPS. It does turn by turn routing, but only if you buy the extra software and then "don't go outside the lines". I don't need door to door routing, I just want to know where major roads are, and generally where I'm at if I get lost (on purpose occasionally!). No voice on the GPS, either. I could care less about that.
The City Navigator software appears to be a bastardized Microsoft Streets & Trips. Either that, or all this "streets" type of software is similar. At any rate, I thought Streets and Trips was pretty sad, and hard to learn and use. Garmin's version is worse. The learning curve is high, and for $100 for the software, it is NOT sophisticated or easy to use. But there is a LOT of detail in there. With a measley 56 meg of ram, the Rino 530 will only hold 8 or 9 detailed maps from the very expensive (but not as bad as for other countries) City Navigator software (extra $100+). There's DOZENS of smaller map segments around the country in the City Navigator software. I planned a trip from central Indiana to New Orleans, and I was shy about 3 maps. Now there are still interstates and other major highways in the basemap, so you always have some road information. But if you get off the main roads, and off the Navigator maps, you lose side roads and POI (points of interest).
Anyway, once you choose a route/maps, it's very easy to upload to the unit via USB. Goes fairly quickly and is pretty automatic. At least THAT part is simple.
I wanted to mount the Rino 530 on my handlebars like I had my 120. The cradles are not interchangeable. In fact the new cradles (clips, if you will) from Garmin AND RAM are BOTH reported to not work with the DC adapter. Pretty fucking stupid if you ask me. I knew this going in, but I figured I could hack something to make it work. I did.
I bought the RINO 520/530 U-bolt rig from a RAM vendor for about $45 shipped. It has 2 one inch balls and an adjusable mechanism to go between them. I wasn't sure the U-bolt would work over my AE YCCS mechanism on the bars, but I figured I might be able to use some of the parts. I actually used the RAM as packaged.... more or less.
The DC adapter clips to the back of the battery pack. The stock RAM cradle covers about 3/4 of the area where the DC apdapter mounts to. I took a dental drill (dremmel would work, too, of course), and cut the cradle so that the DC adapter would mount with the cradle on the RINO. Now the worst part of all this is that I had to hack the RAM ball mount that attaches by two screws at the back of the cradle. Well, I just cut that off flush with the cradle, and only have ONE screw holding the parts together. Later on, I may just glue the parts together, but for now, I'll just use the one top screw to hold the parts together.
The results were pretty good.
The RAM mount is pretty cool. The U-bolt holds the unit to the bars very nicely. I did take a dremmel to cut a slot in each half of the YCCS button housing on the handlebars to allow the U-bolt to fit in that area. There's really not much inside that part of the YCCS controller, so cutting into it wasn't a big deal. And I sealed it all up with clear silicone after mounting the U-bolt to keep water from seeping in there.
With the RINO in place on the RAM mount, I can bring the unit VERY close to me.
If I want to get a little better radio reception, I can position the unit full upright, which puts the top of the antenna at about the top of the stock shield.
Sorry, I know the pictures are dark, and the depth is pretty bad. But the RAM gets the unit half way between me and the bars, or up to the top of the shield. It can even move the RINO way out to the outside, over the grips. That would keep it out of the way of a tank bag in turns, as well as get the antenna more to the outside of my body (for transmitting behind me).
This RINO 530 may not be right for you. If you want a touch screen GPS that talks to you, and want a unit that knows Aunt Lilly's zip code, well, you'd better look elsewhere. And if you don't want a two way radio, pretty much forget this thing. But for a basic color GPS and strong 2 way radio, this thing is pretty nice for under $400. It was actually closer to $600 with software, DC adapter and mounting options. Still, that puts me a couple bills under what most people could spend on both units. And I only have to futz around with one unit instead of two. Works for me!
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