Peter Roosen's NAVIG2: choose a GPS receiver

Some help with the German selection tool "NAVIG2"

NAVIG2 can be found at http://www.vollmer-roosen.de/Roosen/Navig2/.

The program has been developed by ROKO in Aachen, Germany in cooperation with the ITWM in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

On the first page you have nothing to do, only admire the beautiful German language. Click on "Los geht’s…"(here we go).

On the left you find 21 characteristics of GPS receivers, divided into 5 sections. You have to choose at least 3 criteria, but should limit your choice to less than about 10, as the tool will not be very helpful with more selections. You can choose more than one in every section.

Here is a translation of the sections/criteria of NAVIG2:

Section tour planning
No. of waypoints/route
Total no. of waypoints
PC interface speed
Kind of flash card usage
No. of track points, manageable while on tour (in active track)

Section spontaneous navigation
Size (MB) of base map
Auto-navigation capability
Compass
Barometric elevation meter

Section screen quality
No. of pixels
No. of display colors
Diagonal size of display

Section outdoor usability
Weight
Volume
Waterproofness (IPX ranking)
Usage time on accumulators
Capability to swim
Operability especially with respect to motor bike driving (position of keys, size of keys)

Section common criteria
Price
External antenna?
Sensitivity of build-in antenna

If you made your choice, click on "Aktualisieren". If you chose 3 criteria, you will obtain a star with 3 axes. If you chose 7 criteria, you will see a star with 7 axes. Axes are oriented such that better values are in the center, inferior values at the outside of the diagram. Orange sections on the axes indicate available ranges of criteria.

You can click on any axis of the graph to a respective value you would accept as "lowest acceptable" to receive an update on the available receivers, meeting the demands of all restrictions you made with previous clicks. You can reduce a restriction by clicking on a respective axis again in the white area.

The blue number in the center of the graph indicates the number of receivers that meet your imposed restrictions to your chosen criteria. Click on it and you will receive a table with those remaining receivers and their data. The receivers with a green column background color are those that are "pareto optimal" with respect to your individual choice of criteria.

Pareto optimality means, that you definitely have to release the quality in at least one of your criteria if you intend to obtain a better quality in one of your others. The receivers in the other columns meet also your criteria settings, but there is at least one other device that will beat it in all qualities (read: "dominates" it). In those columns the names of those dominating receivers are given at the lower end.

Finally, you can sort the receiver data table in ascending or descending order for any criterion by clicking the respective red/blue arrows.

Click on the red "?!?" left from the "Aktualisieren" button to give your opinion about the program. The authors of Navig2 would love to receive comments as the development is aimed at investigating the acceptance of multi-criteria decision making support.

Return from NAVIG2 to the GPS Types page

Return from NAVIG2 to the GPS Software page