Community Forums

Radio Flyer · 06-19-2019, 07:40 PM

I typically post to this forum to either ask or answer a question. Today I’m writing simply to share my experience with two trip planning applications, the RV Trip Wizard and the RV LIFE app. Both of these are excellent tools by themselves, but when used together, they’re phenomenal!

RV Trip Wizard has been my go-to trip planning resource for several years. It’s really good at painting a picture of your entire journey, complete with routes, campsites, waypoints, road hazards, fuel requirements, travel times, distances, and expenses. But that’s all it did. It planned. It did not provide live, real-time, turn-by-turn guidance while rolling down the highway, keeping you on the route you created with Trip Wizard on your computer. Until now.

RV Trip Wizard can now push your routes automatically to the RV LIFE app installed on your iOS device and provide live turn-by-turn navigation. Yes, it’s true that Trip Wizard already had the capability to export *.gpx files to Google Maps or to other stand-alone GPS units such as Garmin or Magellan, albeit via a multi-step, relatively complicated process. But with the RV LIFE app, it’s all automatic. And when you edit your trip on your computer with Trip Wizard, the new changes are automatically pushed to your phone or tablet.

Although the two apps complement each other, you don’t need to load a pre-planned Trip Wizard trip onto your phone to get turn-by-turn RV-safe routing. The RV LIFE app can do that all by itself (similar to Copilot, for those of you familiar with that particular app). But the RV LIFE app does a lot more than that. Check out the link to see for yourself: RV LIFE

I spend a lot of time building the perfect trip with RV Trip Wizard, getting it just right, using the “Drag” function frequently to adjust the route for one reason or the other, but then when I’m on the road, the built-in GPS in my truck, or the one I’m using on my phone (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Copilot, Sygic, etc.) never seems to be in sync with the pre-planned Trip Wizard route. Now, thanks to the RV LIFE app, it is!

BTW, this functionality via the RV LIFE app is only available now on iOS devices. RV-safe GPS directions will be “coming soon” to Android devices. And I am not affiliated in any way with either RV Trip Wizard or RV LIFE. I’m just a happy camper who found a system that works for me, so I thought I’d share it with the forum.

Sue46 · 06-19-2019, 09:21 PM

I believe it is available for Android. I received notice of it a few days ago and it was available on Google Play. I did download it but did not play with the App yet.

You are saying the link from RVTW to the RV Life app is not yet available? But will be one day. I wonder, is this going the same way the RVTW app for Android went, never to appear.

Android is something like 75-80% of all phones yet always plays 2nd fiddle to Apple. I don't understand why.

reubenray · 06-20-2019, 05:13 AM

I downloaded RVLife yesterday on my Android tablet and I have not seen what y'all are talking about yet. Will I have to buy it to get the features that you discussed?

Sue46 · 06-20-2019, 06:13 AM

I downloaded to my phone and see my RVTW trips but it appears you need to buy the additional functionality. I am holding off on that as I have too many other things that come due this month. All these nickel and dime things start adding up.

KennyGolub · 06-20-2019, 06:21 AM

Rand McNally Trip Maker does the same thing. You can manually export it to a RM GPS, or if you have the Overdryve RV GPS, it will automatically send changes you make to the trip on your computer to the GPS.
So in my case, I can export the trip to the built in GPS in our Entegra by pulling the SD card out of the GPS (accessible at the dash) and export it at the computer and the Overdryve is automatically updated.
I usually have both GPS's running while on the road.

We're loving it.

.

Victory Blue · 06-20-2019, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Radio Flyer

RV Trip Wizard can now push your routes automatically to the RV LIFE app installed on your iOS device and provide live turn-by-turn navigation.

Thanks for the review.

I couldn't find a reference to voice navigation when I looked at the RV Life app. Does the live navigation include voice navigation?

LarryJB · 06-20-2019, 07:43 AM

This does appear to be available for Android, however it gets TERRIBLE reviews, ones and twos. I absolutely love RV Trip Wizard and use it to plan all my trips. Having a seamless way to integrate it into a turn by turn GPS app would really be great. But given the bad reviews I am seeing, I am skeptical. Is this RV Trip Wizard integration a premium feature? If so how much does it cost? I am not seeing that in the play store.

JohnBoyToo · 06-20-2019, 07:46 AM

Garmin RV760 LMT (lifetime Maps and Traffic) does all the above in one package if you are interested

LarryJB · 06-20-2019, 07:55 AM

Post removed

Sue46 · 06-20-2019, 09:23 AM

Larry, Those reveiws were for the old app I don't see anything for the new app yet

LarryJB · 06-20-2019, 10:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnBoyToo

Garmin RV760 LMT (lifetime Maps and Traffic) does all the above in one package if you are interested

Does it calculate for fuel stops?

FreeLunch · 06-20-2019, 01:13 PM

Radio Flyer,

Thank you for the kind review. We are a small team of people trying to do big things and it's nice to get feedback like yours as it puts some wind behind the sails.

Sue - the Android version does not have Turn by Turn yet, it's in testing right now and we are working on getting the bugs out before it's released.

For RVTW subscribers, if you login to the RV LIFE app with your RVTW email/pwd, you will see a discounted price provided that you're an active RVTW subscriber.

Believe it or not, but making RVTW or RV LIFE is a significant investment for a small company. We're working on giving RVers an awesome product and also deliver value to fellow RVers. We are continuing to invest more in the products and have some HUGE new features that will be released imminently for RVTW and more in the pipeline that will be released soon.

Larry - The iOS app has a 4.4 / 5 rating with over 1200 reviews. The Android rating is less than that. :( The vast majority of the code between the two versions is the same. We are working on getting a few more bugs that Android users are seeing. The approach that you'll see we're taking with RV LIFE is to continually deliver features or enhancements to RVers. We can't build everything in one day and deliver it all at once, so we build features and deliver them when they are ready.

Everyone can use the app for free and the majority of the features are free. For example, if you want to see your RVTW trips in RV LIFE and use Apple/Google/Waze to direct you there, then that's free. There are features like offline, turn by turn, voice guided RV Safe directions customized for your RV that do require a subscription.

Victory Blue - it is voice guided ^^

We are developing these products with a small team here in the USA and appreciate your support. We do the best we can to deliver deliver a great product and try to fix any issues or bugs as soon as we can.

LarryJB · 06-20-2019, 02:10 PM

FreeLunch,
Thank you for all your efforts for all of us picky RV users. As a former software developer I totally understand the huge effort and expense it takes to develop a quality product. I have been a RVTW subscriber for over 2 years and plan on continuing my membership for as long as we have the RV. However at this point I will probably hold off on subscribing to RV Life and continue with CoPilot RV version for my turn by turn GPS.

Victory Blue · 06-20-2019, 02:45 PM

FreeLunch, thank you for your response; you answered a lot of questions.

I have subscribed to RV Life and my RVTW trips came over seamlessly. At first I thought the map downloads (2.7 GB) for my first trip were going to be very slow (even with my gigabit connection) but after a couple of minutes it got cranked up and didn’t take too long.

I found the voice navigation button (it was on) under options after starting navigation but there wasn’t any voice when I pushed start to start the trip; perhaps there’s no voice until there’s movement?

Also, it appears that while navigation is active, zooming and scrolling aren’t allowed. The map display keeps going back to the current location. Does zooming or scrolling on the active trip map require trip nav to be stopped?

Thanks.