Advent Oem-style Navigation Installed!

ride4chevy · March 2, 2012

Rosen vs Advent – I have had the opportunity to own both the Rosen 0710-N11 and the Advent OGM1. Here was my experience with each unit.

ROSEN 0710-N11: I purchased the Rosen unit directly from ebay user “rosenentertainment” which is Rosen themselves. First, handling time was extremely slow about 2 days before it was marked shipped and tracking number supplied. Second, shipping time took about 5 business days. I probably would have seen quicker service through Crutchfield but I did not want to pay $1199.99 for the GM0720-N11 unit which is identical just a year newer. When I got the unit there was 2 harnesses that came with it, one for Bose systems and one for non-Bose systems. I have a 2010 Silverado with a non-Bose system with OEM rearview camera in the mirror, rear parking assist and OnStar. I had tapped into the rearview camera and ran a video rca cable up to the dash before I installed the unit. When I went through the content of the Rosen package I noticed there was no female rca backup camera input. I contacted Rosen via ebay messaging and they told I could purchase the camera harness directly from them for $24.95. I was pretty upset at this point because in the listing there was nothing stating you had to purchase this harness separate along with the audio/video input/output harnesses if you wanted that option as well. Anyhow I wasn’t going to pay that nor wait another week for it to show up to my doorstep. Thankfully I found a forum that showed me how to make my own backup camera plug for the Rosen unit. Before I installed the unit I also had to make some changes to the harness so I could get the unit to display DVD while out of park, which was not hard but just something extra I had to do. I was pretty fired up to see the unit turn on. Installation was pretty easy, just under an hour. There were no instructions supplied to where to install the GPS antenna so I stuck it to the top center of the dash.

After firing up the Rosen I immediately noticed the display was not very bright and even after turning the brightness all the way up it was still hard to see in the daylight. Also the resolution was nothing great and to find out later it is only 480x234! I don’t own an ipod so I thought the USB and SD interface would be the same feel and look. Boy was I wrong! It is very hard to use, unattractive interface that does not match the rest of the interfaces and if you try to switch folders and songs while driving I hope you have good insurance because I came very close in wrecking my truck! Plus you may need a stylus to switch folders. Not to forget that the USB port is on the front so I hope you don’t mind having a USB cable dangling down the front of your dash. The Navigation was also disappointing. It was an old version of the IGO software and the maps were from 2010 and most POI was 2009. Half the time the IGO would error out while running or on startup and would close leaving the Windows CE 5.0 taskbar showing. Then I would have to restart my truck to reload IGO. I could also tell that this unit was probably a 400MHz processor because the Nav would crash or it was jittery and did not keep up with intersections. The button lights on the Rosen are very annoying, constantly flashing off and on whenever the door is opened when the vehicle is off. When you have your headlights on, the Rosen unit lights are far brighter and not the same tint of aqua that the stock dash lights are. Since GM made it that the blinker, door chime, and parking assist sounds are simulated through the head unit the Rosen unit has a different tone and it is very quiet and hard to hear with any music playing. The stock tailgate rearview camera also looks horrible on the Rosen’s low resolution 7”screen. The Bluetooth phone feature is just out right worthless, no phonebook and the integrated mic doesn't work very well. I used my trucks integrated Bluetooth instead. As for firmware upgrades or online tech support is non-existent.

The radio on my unit was defective when I received it. I would get about 2-5 blocks away from my driveway and my radio would go to nothing but static. I would have to stop, shut my engine off, open my door and restart the vehicle and the radio would then again work for another 2-5 blocks. This ended my relationship with Rosen immediately. I contacted them through ebay messaging and they told me that defective units are extremely rare and that this is the best unit they have. Then in each email they go to priding themselves they are "Manufacture of the Year in November at SEMA”, whoever voted for them are idiots in my opinion! So I sent the unit back costing me $25 out of my pocket for their defective product. Refund took 2 business days after they received and verified all contents were there.

Advent OGM1: I purchased this unit directly from Walt Ottenad at www.adcmobile.com. I had seen youtube review videos on the Advent that Walt had made so I then decided to visite their site. There was no price listed so I emailed Walt for a price quote and this was on a Sunday. Monday morning Walt had emailed me back with a price which came in a couple hundred dollars cheaper than Crutchfield’s Rosen. I then called Walt directly and we chatted for a bit about Rosen vs Advent. He then requested that I email him that I wanted to purchase the Advent OGM1 and he emailed an invoice within the hour. I sent payment through PayPal by 3pm Pacific time and ADCMOBILE had it shipped out the same day UPS Ground. UPS had it to me within 4 days to central Minnesota.

When I received the unit it came with all the necessary harnesses for installation. Walt had also included the ipod cable at no additional cost. The nice thing about the Advent it has only one main harness that is light weight in wire making it very easy to get it to fit into the dash behind the unit. In the Advent secret menu you are able to select Bose or non-Bose system (non-Bose is the default setting). When you purchase a unit from Walt at www.adcmobile.com you are emailed a username and password to access installation videos and tech tips. I first watched Walt’s installation video for my vehicle dash type. FYI: He does an installation video for both GM dash types. Great thing about the video was that Walt shows you GM trucks have a stock spot where the GPS antenna is placed where it does not sit on top of the dash but under it making the unit appear more stock. I also did not have to modify the Advent harness in any way to allow DVD playback out of park because there is also a secret menu to run the unit in demo mode, but ADCMOBILE does not recommend or condone this. Installation took me about 25 minutes plus 11 minutes to watch the installation video. Watching the video first made installation extremely quick and easy.

Firing the Advent up for the first time I admit I was a bit skeptical due to the bad taste the Rosen unit had left for me earlier. Surprisingly the Advent had a crisp, clear image of a Bowtie/Chevrolet splash screen on boot up. Nice thing about this, ACDMOBILE has hundreds of splash screens to chose from and instructions on how to change them in their website customer login. Another thing I immediately noticed was the resolution, it wasn’t blurred and the brightness was descent in daylight. The resolution on the Advent is 800x480. Radio mode was a plain interface but the RDS feature made up for that. Depending on the station you listen to the RDS will scroll text along the top but also display a stationary message along the entire bottom, very nice feature! Accessing the EQ and audio controls are easy to get to always one touch away. The USB interface actually matches the other interfaces and is simple to use. No album art in USB mode which is a minus. The Advent has a multimedia interface that can be mounted anywhere within 3ft of the unit. I have mine in the glove box. Another minus with this unit, there are no audio/video inputs on the direct plugin harness on the back of the unit. Any input device has to be ran through the medialink which can be a pain if you are trying to run ipod, jump drive and any other input device at the same time. I don’t own an ipod so this hasn’t been a problem for me yet.

The Navigation is awesome! The unit came with the newest IGO PRIMO and the latest maps and POIs. I was very happy with that! Also the Advent has a 600MHz processor which helps the Nav keep up perfectly and does not miss a beat. I did have my GPS microSD card go bad within a couple days but a quick call to Walt and he had me up and running within the same day! The unit also matches the dash lights perfectly and even the volume and tune knobs are lit. The rear stock tailgate backup cam is super clear on this unit. If you have Rear Park Assist it will also give you a visual warning left/center/ right + distance on the screen!! Very sweet feature, even GM OEM Navs don’t have this. Check out Walt’s youtube video, you will see what I mean. Even the Parrot Bluetooth is impressive. It includes an external mic, phone book sync, missed and received calls right from your phone and voice commands. I could go on with all the positives with this unit but I feel I burnt up enough forum space. In my opinion, If you want a hassle free experience go with the Advent OGM1 and pick it up from Walt at www.adcmobile.com, you won’t be disappointed! He treats each person as a priority!

wottenad · March 2, 2012

Same goes for me. If someone is willing to send that file and a few others let me know. thanks

Oops! Guess I should have included a little more in my quote, huh? This has to do with the availability of the iGo Primo utilities (SysConfigurator, etc.)

ADC Mobile owners users can log onto www.adcmobile.com and hit the iGo Primo mapping support tab - Holty has decided to help everyone out by hosting those files on his server!

wottenad · March 2, 2012

Rosen vs Adent – I have had the opportunity to own both the Rosen 0710-N11 and the Advent OGM1. Here was my experience with each unit.

In the Rosen vs. Advent comparison, there really isn't any comparison anymore.

We've been with Rosen since DAY ONE on their navi product (we actually sent them the XM tuner they reverse-engineered for the GM unit when they first released it), and have seen every version they released since then. We sold quite few of these and had some success, but lack of reliability and features always made the Rosen very difficult to recommend, and we finally stopped selling them due to the failure rate. We then did mainly Kenwood and JVC in GM trucks, and even though we lost some features in the truck, we knew they had more features and wouldn't fail nearly as much as the Rosen.

Since the Advent has shown up, it's very honestly been a breath of fresh air! We can actually get excited about something that really works, has all the latest features, retains ALL the factory accessories and controls, is user-updateable, and very rarely fails (and when it does, they're relatively minor issues). Like @ride4chevy's post illustrates, the differences between the Rosen and the Advent couldn't be more stark.

We'll be selling Advent for a very long time to come...

bsmall1564 · March 3, 2012

I will say everything that I have read about the Advent OGM-1 on this site, I will be saving for this unit. I absolutely love how this forum has handled this thread (AdventOGM1). It's nice to see Walt taking the time to post on this site answering everyones questions, that shows dedication. Keep up the great work Walt. I can't wait to get this unit and get it installed.

dblakeman1972 · March 3, 2012

I've wanted a nav installed in my truck ever since I purchased it over a year ago. I didn't want to lose any factory features and almost went the route of buying a factory unit. Thank God I came across this thread! After reading all about the OGM1 and how Walt has supported every install I made the plunge and purchased mine with the GM-1 backup camera. All I can say is WOW! Walt was great, shipping was fast and the install was easy (not as easy as Walt shows, but that’s why he has all the exp). No regrets and I highly recommend this unit.

Duramax.1 · March 3, 2012

Just to let's you know if you come from New Brunswick Canada and you want to go with igo primo that are some missing streets number when your looking for a adress,if any update or fix came out i'll let you know.

holty · March 4, 2012

Dont forget to check to verify you have the latest firmware! Walt helped me figure out that mine did not ship with the latest firmware, but luckily that is EASILY fixed.

http://voxxsupport.com/downloads/OGM1/

Duramax.1 · March 4, 2012

Thanks for the information, i tried it and didn't work,i try naviextras updates same thing,call walt week and a half ago, i'll see what he will say.

Duramax.1 · March 8, 2012

No news yet did any body have a idea or update that i can try,with navetech they show me 20 roads around my place and igo primo show me only 16 and that is just around my place,i wonder in all New Brunswick and Canada if more missing,i try the update at naviextras and the update that holty gave me and didn't change nothing any help will be apreciate thanks

MikeNH · March 9, 2012

The maps aren't perfect, the roads my apt complex is on are not there but they only appeared on Google Maps in like December (the place was built in 2007 I think). Overall though I'm pretty happy with it. I moved to Michigan last week and like every other GPS, it recommended a route through Canada. This might be shorter distance-wise but the border crossings would add hours to it (especially considering some of my cargo- a couple thousand rounds of ammo and assorted guns ). Rather than listen to the "recalculating" dozens of times like other units, you can have it avoid a certain section of the route, in this case, I selected avoid entering Canada and it recalculated my route to stay on I90. Aside from a few breaks for meals, gas and bathrooms the unit ran 18 hours almost non-stop that day and didn't miss a beat. I sometimes worry about units like that overheating but it didn't seem to be an issue.

Duramax.1 · March 9, 2012

What funny all my other gps,navetec ,google maps any where else it show the road because the missing roads are main roads not back roads(back are there)i have the roads with names is there like Monica Rd,Blanchard Rd,F.x.daigle Rd,is there but roads with number is not there like hwy 134,pass from noth New Brunswich to right trought Sud New brunswick,134 and hwy 160 are the first roads build in this town many many yeras ago and majority of people live on main roads.

wottenad · March 10, 2012

The maps aren't perfect, the roads my apt complex is on are not there but they only appeared on Google Maps in like December (the place was built in 2007 I think). Overall though I'm pretty happy with it. I moved to Michigan last week and like every other GPS, it recommended a route through Canada. This might be shorter distance-wise but the border crossings would add hours to it (especially considering some of my cargo- a couple thousand rounds of ammo and assorted guns ). Rather than listen to the "recalculating" dozens of times like other units, you can have it avoid a certain section of the route, in this case, I selected avoid entering Canada and it recalculated my route to stay on I90. Aside from a few breaks for meals, gas and bathrooms the unit ran 18 hours almost non-stop that day and didn't miss a beat. I sometimes worry about units like that overheating but it didn't seem to be an issue.

I can definitely add to this - after installing almost every single navi system ever invented for the car, I can absolutely state that there is NO system that has every address or POI in it, and even the best systems have POI's miscategorized, streets missing and addresses on the wrong sides of the street. The first thing that almost every owner does is enter their address, and one out ten times, the address will not show up.

WTH?

Well, even if you know the address and have lived there for 40 years, if it's not entered in the database the way it is in your head, you will never find it because the map database is just that - a database. If it's spelled differently in the database, you'll have to spell it that way or it will not be found.

Another for instance - I had an embarrassing situation when we got Kenwood - I went to demo the system for the sales staff, and we looked for the dealership (only the biggest Toyota store in three states, BTW), and it was not there under Auto Dealerships! Garmin had this Toyota store listed as a repair facility! It sure was that, but it's a frickin car dealership too that sells 600 cars a month! No matter how we tried to search for it, we couldn't bring it up any other way.

So, long story short - as amazing as these devices are, there will ALWAYS be something missing - you have to be able to look at everything else the system does and determine if it fits your needs...

Duramax.1 · March 10, 2012

Walt the thing you can only be able to look at everything else the system does and determine if it fits your needs..just. after you buy it( for the mapping) the rest is ok.

MikeNH · March 11, 2012

The maps aren't perfect, the roads my apt complex is on are not there but they only appeared on Google Maps in like December (the place was built in 2007 I think). Overall though I'm pretty happy with it. I moved to Michigan last week and like every other GPS, it recommended a route through Canada. This might be shorter distance-wise but the border crossings would add hours to it (especially considering some of my cargo- a couple thousand rounds of ammo and assorted guns ). Rather than listen to the "recalculating" dozens of times like other units, you can have it avoid a certain section of the route, in this case, I selected avoid entering Canada and it recalculated my route to stay on I90. Aside from a few breaks for meals, gas and bathrooms the unit ran 18 hours almost non-stop that day and didn't miss a beat. I sometimes worry about units like that overheating but it didn't seem to be an issue.

I can definitely add to this - after installing almost every single navi system ever invented for the car, I can absolutely state that there is NO system that has every address or POI in it, and even the best systems have POI's miscategorized, streets missing and addresses on the wrong sides of the street. The first thing that almost every owner does is enter their address, and one out ten times, the address will not show up.

WTH?

Well, even if you know the address and have lived there for 40 years, if it's not entered in the database the way it is in your head, you will never find it because the map database is just that - a database. If it's spelled differently in the database, you'll have to spell it that way or it will not be found.

Another for instance - I had an embarrassing situation when we got Kenwood - I went to demo the system for the sales staff, and we looked for the dealership (only the biggest Toyota store in three states, BTW), and it was not there under Auto Dealerships! Garmin had this Toyota store listed as a repair facility! It sure was that, but it's a frickin car dealership too that sells 600 cars a month! No matter how we tried to search for it, we couldn't bring it up any other way.

So, long story short - as amazing as these devices are, there will ALWAYS be something missing - you have to be able to look at everything else the system does and determine if it fits your needs...

I've had that happen with other GPS devices. Like I said in my case I'm not too surprised my road isn't in there. It was built when the complex was and even Google only added it around the holidays. So if it took the most powerful tech company in the world that long, the normal ones may be a bit longer. I've just been using the intersection to the south of my place to get me back. The OnStar navigation burned me once too- I had been talking to the people at work about how nicely it worked (pre-Advent install of course!) and I went with my manager to a very well known pizza place (locally at least). I knew where it was but just for the sake of trying it I called and asked for directions. They couldn't locate it. It's been open for ages and it's on the main drag. Oh well.