Using Tmc

[bionaire]

Picked up my 400H SE about a week ago and have almost done 500 miles averaging around 30.5 mpg on a mixture of motorway and city centre driving.

Having got my head around the Sat Nav I still can't figure out how the TMC service operates - I've gone through the manual and the various options for setting it but on my work route I have been using Sat Nav and have been involved in some lengthy jams but no warnings. Am I missing something - is there an idiots guide in the forum somewhere - any tips and advice most welcome.

Seasons greetings

[williz]

Picked up my 400H SE about a week ago and have almost done 500 miles averaging around 30.5 mpg on a mixture of motorway and city centre driving.

Having got my head around the Sat Nav I still can't figure out how the TMC service operates - I've gone through the manual and the various options for setting it but on my work route I have been using Sat Nav and have been involved in some lengthy jams but no warnings. Am I missing something - is there an idiots guide in the forum somewhere - any tips and advice most welcome.

Seasons greetings

i am far away from your location (Austria) so i can give only some general hints. hope somebody here in the forum can tell you more useful information for your area.

first you must have a radio station broadcasting TMC information’s. in the TMC setup screen you can set it to a specific radio station or to automatic. in any case the car radio must be on and able to receive a radio station broadcasting TMC information’s.

out of my experience sometimes it takes up to 15 minutes until you get the first TMC info and very often you get the info about the traffic jam ahead of you to late and you are already in the middle of it.

i use the TMC service very often manually, means without the navigation system. but to do so you must have the navigation override active otherwise you have no access to this screen when your car is in motion.

if you have access to it (navigation override is active) you can set the TMC to the street you driving and watch the incoming messages and there details.

hope you enjoy your car! i will reach 30.000km in the next weeks.

[bionaire]

Thanks for that - I found a useful link about TMC here http://www.tmcforum.com/en/about_tmc/tmc_faq/tmc_faq.htm but will have to have a session in the car tomorrow and play around with it a bit more. If I find anything that may help other newbies I'll post it here.

Picked up my 400H SE about a week ago and have almost done 500 miles averaging around 30.5 mpg on a mixture of motorway and city centre driving.

Having got my head around the Sat Nav I still can't figure out how the TMC service operates - I've gone through the manual and the various options for setting it but on my work route I have been using Sat Nav and have been involved in some lengthy jams but no warnings. Am I missing something - is there an idiots guide in the forum somewhere - any tips and advice most welcome.

Seasons greetings

i am far away from your location (Austria) so i can give only some general hints. hope somebody here in the forum can tell you more useful information for your area.

first you must have a radio station broadcasting TMC information’s. in the TMC setup screen you can set it to a specific radio station or to automatic. in any case the car radio must be on and able to receive a radio station broadcasting TMC information’s.

out of my experience sometimes it takes up to 15 minutes until you get the first TMC info and very often you get the info about the traffic jam ahead of you to late and you are already in the middle of it.

i use the TMC service very often manually, means without the navigation system. but to do so you must have the navigation override active otherwise you have no access to this screen when your car is in motion.

if you have access to it (navigation override is active) you can set the TMC to the street you driving and watch the incoming messages and there details.

hope you enjoy your car! i will reach 30.000km in the next weeks.

[Jabiru]

I'm glad someone else had a bit of trouble getting tmc to fire up. I couldn't find any hint in the handbook that you had to have the radio swithched on to get tmc to work. But you do and that seems a bit cheap as adding a default tuner would have been fairly easy.

Anyway in the UK I think the tmc radio is often Capital FM (certainly in the midlands). You can have the radio actually tuned into a different station (thankfully) and I usually run it with the radio volume turned right down (so the DVD palyer is working). My experience is that TMC is fairly fast and furious in terms of giving information (2 - 3 minutes maximum is the norm)

Over all a very useful facility, much much better than trafficmaster and a great help in getting round motorway jams (although I sometimes wonder if I'' following other people with the tmc guidance turned on!)

[bionaire]

I had another play around with it this morning and whilst I think I've configured it correctly the Traffic on Route button is greyed out. I have tried inputting a destination thinking that maybe this will work. Admittedly I have yet to set off on a journey. The TMC stations it picks up in the Yorkshire area are Classic FM and Real radio. Incidentally, I have found more info on how the service operates here for those wanting a more technical explanation...

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/archive/index.php/t-57465

[Damian]

Hi, just to clarify a few things perhaps.

As said in previous post car hi-fi needs to be on, but can be CD or radio and volume turned right down. If off no signals whatsoever. Also beware of FM aerial based iPod adaptors. this prevent the signals being received for the TMC system to work.

Having used this for over 2 years now I would say it can be very hit and miss how long it takes to get the data. Sometimes it can be a couple of minutes after starting, other times it can be as long as 15 minutes or so.I have found in the latter that wehn stationary (otherwise greyed out screen) scanning manually can get a station fix and therefore the data faster than waiting for it. Typicall in the south Classic FM seems to be the only station supporting the data.

As for reliability of data, this also varies. Obviously there can be differences caused by the age of the data and how long ago the incident occured to cause the issue. In the most impressive example I can recall was when I passed a just happened traffic accident on the M25. As I passed the incident I noticed the Police in my rear view mirro just arriving at the incident. No more than a minute later the incident then popped up on the screen! So I guess it also relies on people to feed it promptly too. In some traffic areas where they are typically black spots for bad traffic on regular basis these don't get reported as they're seen as business as usual.

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