INSPECT DA GADGET ULYSSE GPS SPEEDOMETER

‘APP’LY THIS TO YOUR RIDING GO GADGET! GO! WORDS JOHN CONNOR

Meet – the Gadget Man! This new technical feature for Australian Motorcyclist is all about the gadgets that we motorcyclists like to have on our machines. Ranging from GPS systems to electronics and those general bits & pieces that really need someone with the time and “gadget knowhow” to review. We’re sure you’ll enjoy this feature when we have these kinds of gadgets to review. Take it away, John. SW

My first review is of a new Smart Phone Application that is a GPS based speedometer, called the Ulysse GPS Speedometer. While the app can be used in a car, bicycle or walking it has been designed with motorcyclists in mind.

The app is available only for Android based smartphones; at the time of writing there is no iPhone version available. It is readily available on the Google Play Store for only $1.99. This is a GPS system and not a navigator; however this will integrate into Google maps if you have it on your smartphone.

The app is small and takes little time to download, taking up very little space on your phone. You can also put it on a tablet. We put it on a Samsung phone first to review it. Then later I put it on a Samsung tablet – it worked very well on both devices.

The first thing we noticed is that the display interface is amazing. It has quite a lot of information on the screen and you would think it would be cluttered, but it isn’t. The standard color schemes and layout are really clear and make it easy to read at a glance. The default configuration has the speedometer as the standout.

This configuration is probably more than you will need for a motorbike and it is highly customisable through the settings button. You can change the display to your liking and save it as a profile so you can have different settings for different requirements.

The designers have packed as many features into this App as they could.

There are a lot of GPS style Apps available but we have never seen them all in one that’s as good as this one.

The feature that we most enjoyed playing with and noticed almost immediately was the “race” feature. This will measure your standing start from 0-60km/h, to 0-100km/h and 0 to ¼ mile. If you want to find out what you can do on your bike this is a great tool for measuring it and then bragging to your mates, “on the racetrack of course”.

The other feature that stood out for us which is also useful for motorbike trips is the provision of multiple trip meters. You can get this feature on a Navigator too but this app has a lot of different trip meters to customise to your requirements. Great for those long get away rides. The other good feature is that you do not need to be on your mobile phone network or connected to wifi . It works completely on satellites – a must for country roads!

There are so many more features available that it would take a few pages to write about them all. So I won’t bore you with the complete list.

As with all Smart Phone Apps the accuracy and efficiency of the App is really up to the phone you use. We put it on a super cheap $79 Samsung Phone at first and found the screen too small, and also found that it seemed to lag a bit on startup and when finding satellites. We then put it on a Samsung Galaxy and “boom”, no lag and it picked up satellites very quickly. We found the same when we downloaded it on a tablet (not that you can put a tablet on the front of your bike, but maybe in some tankbags). We had it running all day on all devices we tested, so 12 hours plus did not seem to be a major drain on battery life.

Summary: A really good GPS System tailored really well for motorcycle riders. If you need GPS information this is definitely the app to use.

PROS:

• Terrifi cally good display
• Packed full of lots of features
• Great for long journey motor biking
• Great for track days
• Little drain on your mobile battery
• Good price on the Google Play Store
• Designed with motorcycles in mind

CONS:

• Not available for iPhone’s yet

Where to get the app : https:// play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=com.binarytoys. speedometerpro&hl=en

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