Quote Originally Posted by Butters View Post
The ability of a GPS device to receive live traffic information is dependent not only on hardware but also the firmware run by the device.
You're dead right. Christmas is over and now it's safe moment to reveal the truth by saying that santa does not exist. Yes the hardware and firmware depends on the application. But the topic implies the vehicle sat nav application and in that application it's not the best approach to pack all the hardware in a one toy-looking glossy box for use in cars. Indeed a GPSr with internal FM receiver looks ridiculous because all cars now are already equipped with FM radios. It's the radio unit's job to receive a live traffic data and to provide it to the navigation unit. The navigation unit's job is to plot the chart using internal cartography data base, a location information provided by the GPS receiver unit, a speed data from the car's speed sensor, and a road traffic data from the TMS receiver unit (which can be an FM radio unit). Not every car radio can provide a road traffic data but anyway it's not a new thing, I've decades old Blaupunkt FM radio that has dedicated digital output (so called TMS bus) for use with compatible navigation units. To my memory, some of that units were from Garmin. So this technology is by no mean new to Garmin either. In the automotive world, it's all very fragmented and I don't know if it's something Blaupunkt-specific or there is some kind of industry standard. What I'd tried to ask is if someone did reverse engineered an interface like this