DrPete 

I've been playing with bikeroutetoaster.com since I discovered that the LBS in the town I'm moving to uses it to post local rides. I thought that was pretty cool, until I created my own and downloaded them to my Edge 800. Now it's ridiculously cool.

You can go to this site, create a route, and send it to a Garmin device complete with warnings for upcoming turns, etc. etc. A true electronic cue sheet. All of this gets transferred to the Edge via the Garmin Communicator plug-in and takes all of 10 seconds.

The site itself still doesn't have the greatest UI, but the creators have definitely earned a donation from me to continue development. This is REALLY cool.

Here's a sample of a ride I whipped up today:
https://bikeroutetoaster.com/Course.aspx?course=266393

But now I'm off to go follow said route. Be back in a bit.

LAJ

This works well on the Edge 500 also. One doesn't have to follow the breadcrumb course as it can be specified to give a warning prior to the turn. I enter 300 feet as the preferred warning distance. Then, no matter what screen you are on, there will be a small box at the bottom of the screen stating "turn right" or "turn left". If there is a T junction, and you the route takes you straight through, it will state "straight" in the box.

It is imperative that you go to the "Do Course" prior to starting the ride, especially if the course is a long one. I have had the Edge 500 shut down when trying to navigate through the breadcrumb screen. I had to divide the course into 2 or 3 parts to keep it from being corrupt. By doing course, then scrolling through the screens, you can see if it will function properly. Then go to "Stop Course", and when it is time to do the ride, go back to "Do Course.

Still, as DrPete says, well worth a donation.

volosong

Tried it. Didn't like it. MapMyRide is more accurate, at least on the route I created.

DrPete 

Discovered another nifty feature--with the map card installed, you can overlay Garmin's turn-by-turn directions onto the route and get prompts with street names, descriptions of roundabouts, etc. So I guess the built-in warnings are more useful for Edge 500 users, but still a nice feature. I'll have to try it with my 310XT sometime too.

El Conquistador De Amore

Is it possible to get turn by turn directions on the 705 with bikeroutetoaster(tcx) yet? I'm still a little miffed at the Garmin engineers for making the unit follow its own auto routing instead of following the gpx file it is given.

DrPete 

IF the 705 is like the 800, you can 1. use the auto routing on the Edge if you have the map card installed, or 2. the .tcx file from bikeroutetoaster can be set up with course points at intersections--you can set up warnings a certain distance from the turn, and it'll give you a basic "turn right"/"turn left" cue.

kissTheApex

You can open the bikeroutetoaster generated course in garmin training center and replace the "right", "Left" etc with the street names from the overlay and upload to 500. That way, you have a turn symbol (right/left/straight) but the prompt you get on Edge 500 is "Beach Dr" with the turn symbol. I just discovered it yesterday, so I haven't run/rode the course with edge 500 yet though. I'll try a short section of my saturday ride this weekend. I'm a little apprehensive to use courses as 500 has a tendency to crash on courses longer than 40-45 miles, any less than that and I'm around the places that I'm not going to get lost anyway. If you have a Garmin automotive GPS, you can load the Garmin maps it came with to garmin training center so your're not stuck with the default maps either.

As a side note, RidewithGPS also can upload a course to edge 500 but I haven't tried that riding that one either.

Mose

I like RidewithGPS better than the toaster. I don't use it for what you guys are talking about, but I save my rides on my droid with MyTracks and upload the GPX to the RidewithGPS as a training log. Easy and fast. If I ever get a real GPS, I'd like to use it for turn by turn on a mapped route. Mapping is faster on RidewithGPS and the calculated elevation stats are actually accurate, unlike MapMyRide. I've confirmed it on a number of routes from 20 miles up to 200 miles, 13000 ft elevation gain with my barometric altimeter.

DrPete 

I discovered the toaster because I'm moving to a new town next week and the LBS (the only LBS--it's a small town) has about 20 ride routes on bikeroutetoaster. Being able to come to a new town and have a bunch of turn-by-turn cue sheets loaded into my Edge 800 is just awesome.

Mose

Yeah, I rode a 300k brevet two years ago and one of the guys had the route in his Garmin... not sure which model. It didn't have a map display but it gave the name of the next road, distance to the turn, a warning beep before the turn. It was so handy, I rode with him the whole way; I really hate paper cue sheets.

Congrats on the move. I've got to go to the next town over to get to the nearest shop, but riding in an area with long roads, few intersections and little traffic (and beautiful scenery) more than makes up for it.

DrPete 

Thanks--I'm definitely looking forward to it. There's only so long you can live in DC before it makes you overly uptight. Definitely looking forward to small-town life.

pallen

Thats pretty handy. On ridewithgps you can put in a zipcode and search for all the routes in the area - so you might find some more there as well.

These tools really make the GPS worthwhile. Avoiding the paper queue sheet is the #1 reason I got my Garmin. I'm surprised Garmin doesnt include a tool like this with their own software.

dgasmd

I basically have been using 2 sites for routes. Mapmyride is for looking for routes in the area where I may be. There are routes for cycling anywhere pretty much. Last year when I went to France, I went on it and simply put in the towns where I thought I would stay. Dozens of routes for each town popped up. The second is bikeroutetoaster. It is pretty simple and reliable to plug in routes and get them transferred to your device. Mapmyride is a PITA to use for it.

rushbikes

How do you pull up already created routes through Toaster?

This thread reminded me to give Toaster a try and was disappointed with the route map I got back. It took me along some pretty major highways. Maybe I'm missing something...

DrPete 

On the right side of the screen, you can change "route for" to "bike." Alternatively, you just have to pick the route yourself.

rankin116

I can't seem to do that, 'cars' is checked and the other options are grey-out boxes that I can't select. Any idea why?

cooleric1234

I've got the same problem. I notice that if I use the OpenStreetMaps instead of Google I can check the bike box. OpenStreetMap is nice but considerably behind the curve in my area. I've been adding to it but I think I'm the only one working on a large area.

RoboCheme

How does this differ from a .gpx file? I create routes on ridewithgps.com and download a .gpx file onto my 705. It shows me the route and tells me when to turn. It doesn't give me the street name. Is what you're doing different from this?

Did you ever get your Pinarello fixed? That was one sweet bike.

rm -rf

I only use .tcx "course" files with my 705. I had too many problems with .gpx "route" files. tcx course files never crash or try to re-route me.

bikeroutetoaster is hard to use. I've given up using it. It's route drawing features sometimes got stuck, so I had to start over. I liked the ability to load warnings ahead of the turns, but it doesn't do a very good job with them. The turn warnings are often shifted off the road quite far, enough to make the 705 show "off course".

ridewithgps.com is my preferred mapping site. It's very easy to draw a new route, or undo the last few sections and try a different road. The elevation graph is very nice, including zooming in on a hill to check the grade. It has a one-click .tcx export that works OK with my 705. Each route gets a name, and there's a nice list of my previously created routes, sortable too.

On the 705, the purple course line is very easy to follow on the map, but there's no warning for the turns until I'm right in the intersection. I tend to leave the map display on the screen, so this works for me. (They are planning to add advance warnings someday). The 705 data display page that shows the next few turns is correct, counting down the time and distance to each turn.

Here's a sample ridewithgps route. You can drag to select a section of the elevation graph, and it zooms in to that part of the route, and shows the segment's distance and average grade. Change the Map pulldown at the top right to Terrain!

-------
ridewithgps.com also does a great job with uploaded recorded tracks. Here's a Blue Ridge Parkway ride from last fall. Check out the Metrics tab on the right, and click the blue bar graph "Time spent at each speed". (I had the "pause when stopped" feature turned off, so it recorded my lunch stop, too)

RoboCheme

The .gpx files worked fine for me on my 705 once I learned to turn off the autocorrect feature. It gives you plenty of time to make your turn and you don't have to keep looking at the map. It just beeps and says to turn in X miles/feet.

El Conquistador De Amore

How do you turn off the autocorrect feature? In your system settings/routing screen, what do you have selected?

MPress

I've had good luck with GPSies.com I like how you can choose what format to save the file as. The TCX courses are fine for shorter routes. But it has left me hanging on longer century rides. My preference these days is the GPX track format. Got to turn off the re-route feature for best results.

radshark

I'm going to routetoaster a try .. looks cool.

take a look at sport tracks for uploading your data. I'm still using version 2 but the version 3 looks pretty slick. I don't think it does routes though....

it has some interesting plugins - one reputably calculates power based on recorded metrics and meteorological data - can't vouch for its accuracy.

RoboCheme

Settings/Routing/Recalculate=Off

NoRacer

+1, and I do the same for long routes that may have many turns in it--2 to 3 sections for each century or century+