The Treo is cool. The Treo TomTom* in your car is way cool. But how do you define the Treo TomTom once you’ve mounted it to a Vespa scooter? That’s right: uber cool!

* "Treo TomTom" is short for a Treo 650 or 700w with TomTom 5.x installed plus a BlueTooth GPS receiver

Life without Treo TomTom

I set out on my quest for a Treo TomTom mount almost the day I bought my Vespa GranTurismo 125. Before having this scooter, I would drive to my office and in & around Paris by car. But a new job in a new office located in a neighborhood with virtually no parking made the decision to buy a scooter a no-brainer. My commutes went from anything between 20 and 40 minutes to a predictable 10 minutes. Instead of driving around for 15 minutes to find a parking space and paying 2 Euro per hour (with a maximum of 2 hours, and a run back every 2 hours to refill the meter!), I could park right at the pavement in front of the office for free. Pure commuter happiness.

Almost. I missed TomTom’s computer voice “Jane” telling me driving directions when using my scooter for other things than the daily commute. Soon I realized that GPS navigation would in fact be even more useful on a motorcycle or a scooter than in a car. I found myself frequently saying, "Where do I put these city and road books on my bike? Time for another stop or else my map will be blown away! How quickly am I going to get myself killed by trying to find where I am on the map while driving?"

So for a while I tried using TomTom in the way you would normally only do with physical maps: look up the directions before leaving, keep TomTom running on the Treo in a coat pocket, and stop each time I suspected I had missed a turn or didn’t know whether to take a left or a right. It worked, but was far from ideal–especially because I had to take off a glove each time I had to reach for the Treo in my pocket. The only real solution: the Treo & TomTom combo had to be mounted on the Vespa somehow. I don’t buy Treo accessories overnight. So I started by putting together the list of requirements…

The Requirements

If you’re using a Treo TomTom in your car you’re probably familiar with a limitation of the Treo: it can only connect to one BT device at a time. Before driving off, you need to choose between using TomTom with the Bluetooth GPS receiver and being able to make handsfree calls with the Bluetooth headset. On a scooter, it’s even worse, because you have the extra limitation that unless you’re willing to use a wired headset, you won’t be able to hear “Jane” - or whoever’s voice you’ve selected - telling you where to go. This is not a major issue, as I find the spoken directions in TomTom an extra and the visual directions essential, but it means my solution had to leave the screen visible and easy to read. At the same time, as my Vespa doesn’t have a windshield, I wanted to make sure the Treo was going to be well protected from rain, wind, insects, and what not during trips in the open air. (Actually, even with a windshield, I might still have worried about this.)

Knock on wood that it has never happened to me, but these days one has to be careful about carrying anything of value in plain sight because somebody might be tempted to grab and make away with it. Obviously I wasn’t going to have my Treo stolen at a traffic light, hence another requirement: securely mounted and, if possible, with a lock. But, as I didn’t need the mount every day, I also wanted something that was easy to attach and detach, and detached it had to be small enough to fit in one of the storage spaces of the scooter.

Finally, one of the things I love about the Vespa is the design, and I didn’t want to ruin it by some horrendeously ugly mount. But given the other seemingly conflicting requirements, this also wasn’t a showstopper…

 

Enter RAM-mount

I figured there had to be other people with the same desire to use their Treo (or plenty of other electronic mobile devices like an iPod, mobile phone or PDA) on their scooter or motorbike. Although I couldn’t find any reference to somebody mounting a Treo to a vehicle other than a car, eventually Google did turn up RAM Mount. Go ahead and click that link. But be warned: they’re the specialists of mounting whatever you want to whatever you want, and the result is that they have too many options. You read that right: TOO MANY options. Countless cradles, holders, plates, balls and arms that will leave your eyes glazing over, and apparently they can all be attached to each other. On the left is an image of just a small subset of the options (note that only one of the four pieces that I bought is actually on display here!).

Mind you, even though I haven’t checked out all the different available pieces (it would be quite a daunting task), I’m still willing to bet my left index finger that if RAM Mount doesn’t have the pieces to mount your device to your vehicle, you won’t find it anywhere else either. It’s just so darn hard to find the pieces you need! Clearly RAM Mount are aware themselves of how overwhelming the catalog can be to noobs like me. So they’ve added a wizard. This wizard lets you select your motor and device and then turns up the possible solutions for that combination. Unfortunately, the Vespa isn’t in their database. Oh, you have a real motor? Good for you, but the Treo isn’t in the database either.

Luckily, through a review in French about a RAM Mount solution for a PocketPC on a motor, I found GPS Central in Canada, heeeey. They’ve managed to break the catalog down in chunks that make it much easier to find what you need, logically combining the pieces together to a complete solution. Right, enough chit chat. How does that solution look for me then?

My RAM Mount Solution

The center piece of the solution is the Aqua Box, best described as a sturdy case made of hard plastic with a lid that frames a flexible shield made of thick transparent plastic. Officially marketed as an outdoor case for iPods and other MP3 players, it’s almost like it was designed with the Treo in mind. It has the perfect dimensions and the plastic shield provides excellent protection yet permits using all keys and the touch screen. Three pieces of foam, each with a different thickness and adhesive on the back, allow you to create an custom interior that fits the device snugly for the best protection and making it rattle free. For my Treo I stacked two of them and cut the third one into pieces to follow the shape of the phone. I recommend cutting the foam with scissors instead of a knife - I started with a knife and it made a mess of the first pieces that I cut.

Inserting the flexible plastic shield into the frame is a total pain. RAM Mount is even including a short video with instructions on its web site. However, the screen fits the frame so tightly that it remains a tricky step. Of course, at the end, this tightness is really a big plus because you’re sure no water will be able to leak in around it. But I’m wondering why the box isn’t shipped with the shield already installed.

Just before removing the protection from the bottom layer of foam and attaching it permanently to the box, you need to mount the box to the Diamond with the included bolts. Once that is all done, you have a portable outdoor case for your Treo that you can fit on a scooter, motorcycle, bicycle, boat - whatever you want. (I think mr. bl8k, who won the last mytreo.net Everywhere contest, should use one the next time he jumps out of a plane with his Treo!)

To mount it on my Vespa, I use a standard metal arm and a so-called “Angle Mount with 9 mm Hole” that fits the thread of the mirror stem. Note that I should have ordered the version with the 11 mm but my Vespa dealer incorrectly told me the thread has a 9mm diameter. The 9mm hole does fit more or less. But the 11mm would have been better. The ball of the diamond then goes into one of the openings of the metal arm. The other opening of the arm goes over the ball of the angle mount, and then the arm is tightened with a large knob fixing it all rock solid together. If you would like to leave the mount attached, you can order the metal arm with a built-in lock. But personally I prefer to detach the whole thing when I’m not using it. It takes only 5 seconds and you can see in the pictures below that the remaining angle mount is visible but not very noticeable.

Treo-in-the-Box

Now that the mount is all put together and on the Vespa, let’s have a look at how the Aqua Box works. After the Treo has been put in its comfortable foam bed, the lid is closed and solidly kept in place by a large clip that is running almost completely from the top to the bottom of the right side of the box. The plastic shield in the lid is only a millimeter away from the front of the Treo, ensuring your precious device won’t go anywhere when you hit an unexpected bump in the road. Although the plastic is fairly thick to protect the Treo from the dangerous world outside, it’s sufficiently flexible to push hard buttons and the 5-way nav buttons, to type simple things on the keyboard, and to press larger areas on the touchscreen. I wouldn’t recommend trying to type emails or playing games. But you wouldn’t want to do that anyway while riding a scooter, would you? Oh, not on the pictures below but still important: I usually put my GlobalSat BT-338 GPS receiver in a pocket of my coat or in the leather belt pouch that came with it.

Taking The Treo For A Ride

Switch on Bluetooth and the GPS receiver. Launch TomTom, enter the destination, put the Treo in the box and start the Vespa. It all works like a breeze! It might be a difficult to see on the pictures. But in reality the screen is clearly visible and the maps and directions can be easily read.

I haven’t tried using a Bluetooth headset to make calls while driving. But I’m sure that would work fine, too, provided you have a headset that fits in your helmet. Because of the restriction that you can have only one current BT connection with the Treo, you’ll have to decide before leaving how you’re going to use the BT: for GPS or for calls.
I’m very happy with the overall solution. It provides exactly the features that I want at a total cost of around $100, a reasonable price for the unique functionality and the build quality.

Related Links
The Modern Vespa forum has more examples of mounting GPS devices on a Vespa.

Purchase a TomTom GPS receiver from mytreo.net/store.

Purchase a car kit from mytreo.net/store.

Discuss accessories in mytreo.net/forum.

Filed under: How-to guides