Can I Leave a GPS in a Hot/Cold Car

High or low temperatures will cause the LCD to (respectively) darken or become extremely sluggish. Very high temperatures might cause the LCD to lose its Purity Of Essence altogether.

I wouldn't leave any electronic equipment in a car I expected would get hotter than 100 degrees or so.

Never bothered my GO 510 TomTom but I wouldn't recommend it.

I'd advise finding a way of getting local ventilation.

Electronics HATES high temps.

Graham

I use my GPS in a large SUV. I have it mounted on the top of the dash. The front windscreen is very large, and there is no obstruction for proper viewing. When I am parked I put a fishing hat on top of it to look like I threw my fishing hat on top of the dash. I've had GPS's in my vehicles ever since GPS's for became publicly available.

As for leaving it in the car, as long as it is covered from sunlight on warm or hot days it should be okay. The radio, system computers, and all the other electronics in the cars and trucks survive for many years inside of the vehicle environment. Most electronic equipment can take up to at least or a little more than 60 deg C or 140 deg F for storage. I would not recommend operating most consumer electronic equipment in temperatures exceeding 40 deg C or 104 deg F.

Check the owners manual for the device. Many may have them available on- line if you are still shopping around. Check for specifications and any warnings about temperature extremes.

To be honest, any car-related item should be able to handle a reasonably wide range.

You can leave a GPS wherever you want to leave it.Best to throw it away and buy a real paper Map. cuhulin

We don't speak c (temps) in America.It is always F. cuhulin

So? Learn what the rest of the world/science uses.

I agree. To do otherwise is to assert that Americans are either too stupid, too lazy, or too arrogant to learn how to deal with both.

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I think it might vary by maker and model. I'll offer my history of past GPS's and what happened.

Garmin GPS-45. Nice unit but would always hang when hot. When it hung, it would run the batteries down fast. It did that when I parked my truck at the airport, where it took about 5 days to run the car battery down. The display would turn all black if really overheated, but would recover when cooled down. It was eventually stolen out of my truck.

Garmin GPS-65. The display would turn dark blue when overheated. However, unlike the GPS-45, it would not recover until power cycled. Fortunately, no excessive battery drain. The navigation electronics would sometimes hang when overheated, but not always. I think it requires some additional help in hanging, such as starting the vehicle and having the battery voltage sag or spike. I blew it up by dumping a static discharge to the antenna center pin. I still have it if anyone wants parts and pieces.

Magellan MAP-410. Overheating does not seem to affect the display or cause it to hang. It hangs all by itself, without any thermal assist. It may again be the vehicle power causing problems. It has a rather odd effect when warm. The location fixes tend to go wildly out of range, and then return. I've tested this from a fixed location (local restaurant parking lot) both hot and cold. It's quite consistent. High temperatures makes the VCXO drift further off and therefore make it easiest to go out of lock. I still have it and use it as a loaner.

Various Novatel GPS boards running a laptop. This GPS is embedded in my truck and buried under the dash. It's not going to get very hot in the summer. However, I cleverly located it near the heater ducts, which does get hot in the winter. After about an hour of running the heater, the board hangs. It recovers nicely when cooled down. Probably the same problem as the Magellan MAP-410.

I've also borrowed various navigation and mapping displays. None of the current stuff has hung, died, or even complained when hot. I decided that overheating a borrowed $500 mapping GPS was potentially a bad idea and have resisted to temptation to push the limits. Methinks you will be doing fine as long as you keep the temperatures reasonable.

The entire scientific and most of the engineering community speaks metric. Using Fahrenheit labels you a technical Neanderthal. I tend to use both, depending on the audience. To scientists, engineers, and those with a clue, it's Celcius or Rankine (absolute temp). To the GUM (great unwashed masses) it's Farenheit. Admittedly, upgrading from F to C does take some practice and adaptation. However, I think it's worth the effort. Try it.

If you are a professional in any type of scientific field, it does not matter where you are located, C deg is used. This also includes America!

Get educated!!!

Hello JANA:

Up till last year, I worked for decades at a big place, for the U.S. government, where lots of taxpayer dollars go for big science. We collaborate with many folks from other countries. I well remember the large effort that was made to get us to warm up to the metric system. Within a very short period of time, our metric conversion materials sank to the bottom-rear of our desk drawers.

When I left, you couldn't tell if there had been any conversion effort at all. I'm sure that some of us genuinely tried. Others went along with whatever those around us were doing. Some, never tried at all.

When the equipment you work with hasn't been converted, or the specs you deal with are still inches, feet and degrees F, it doesn't pay to follow a different drum.

Expressing yourself in both systems, when appropriate, or considering your audience, is how we did it before the conversion effort, and after. If the person you're working with wants to talk meters or degrees Celsius, you accommodate with minimal fuss.

Best wishes to all.

I would guess that in your situation what happened is to be expected. If you were working in an actual lab with calibrated instruments and had to be working with people in other countries, metric would be the standard. In fact, if you were to buy any modern laboratory type instruments for research, many of them come in metric only.

I was reading some articles that explained that the reason why the US did not go with metric was because of the massive cost. At the time when many of the countries around the world changed most of the instruments for commercial and consumer use were mainly mechanical and the electronic ones were not easily re-programmable. The cost of changing would have been very high.

In Canada the change was done, but at a very high cost. Canada was forced to change because of the situation in how they do business with Europe and Asia. There are very few countries left in the world that are not on the metric system. We'll see what happens over the next 10 years or so if the US will be forced to change over to metric.

--

JANA _____

Hello JANA:

Up till last year, I worked for decades at a big place, for the U.S. government, where lots of taxpayer dollars go for big science. We collaborate with many folks from other countries. I well remember the large effort that was made to get us to warm up to the metric system. Within a very short period of time, our metric conversion materials sank to the bottom-rear of our desk drawers.

When I left, you couldn't tell if there had been any conversion effort at all. I'm sure that some of us genuinely tried. Others went along with whatever those around us were doing. Some, never tried at all.

When the equipment you work with hasn't been converted, or the specs you deal with are still inches, feet and degrees F, it doesn't pay to follow a different drum.

Expressing yourself in both systems, when appropriate, or considering your audience, is how we did it before the conversion effort, and after. If the person you're working with wants to talk meters or degrees Celsius, you accommodate with minimal fuss.

Best wishes to all.

--

@?6A62?FEH9:DE=6o2@=]4@> [r4o7t]

O'scopes, yes. Liquid and gas pressures and flow, no. Ultra high vacuum, Torr. Distances and thicknesses, hardly. Engineering drawings produced locally, inches & feet.

(If I had produced an engineering CAD drawing, whose dimensions were only metric, the drawing would have been returned, ignored or lost.)

Nuts, bolts, screws and washers, nope.

Maybe cost /was/ the general excuse we hid behind. More likely it was our human reluctance to change, coupled with insufficient resolve added to our imperialistic attitudes.

We might have looked into having Canadian folks come down for more than a few years and be our overseers. ;-) If we take a look down the aisles of today's hardware stores, metric is not easy to find. Our liquids are still selling by the pint/quart/gallon. Other commodities are sold by ounces/pounds/feet/inches. If today's children aren't taught to talk/think/breath metric, we will *never* make the change.

I suppose might still makes right...

Water, and other liquids, boils at different temperatures depending upon environmental pressure (like altitude). If you're being so precise, state the conditions under which the water is boiling.

The melting point is characteristic of the material and is not dependent upon environmental conditions.

;-)

Al

Can you leave your radio in the car?

Sure you can...but should you? Leaving a big lcd in direct sunlight day after day can't be good for it. I expect the failure mode will be the glue that holds the connection strip to the glass.

The good news is that it will probably last long enough to be stolen. The bad news is that windows are expensive.

I gave up the second time someone broke a $200 window to steal a $3 radar detector. That'll teach me to park in front of my house. No more in-car gadgets for me.

Sticking a navigation device under the seat is contrary to it's use. If it ain't out, you'll soon quit using it...or quit stowing it under the seat...until it gets stolen. Either way, end result is no navigation.

I have a bluetooth GPS with auto-power on/off in the glovebox. If I need navigation, I pull the pda outa my shirt pocket, turn on voice prompts and stick it back into my pocket.

Most people have no use for a visible display in a moving car. They're too busy trying to juggle the coffee in one hand and talk on the cellphone with the other. A gps display would be a distraction.