lpolliard

Most times I use my Garmin just to record ride information. My rides are generally local. But sometimes I want to be able to map out a direct ride and upload it into my Garmin. It seems easy enough but my Garmin is always taking me off my intended course. What am I doing wrong or do I have a setting incorrect? I go to a mapping site (www.RideWithGPS.com) create a gpx file and move it to the gpx folder on my Garmin, easy squeezy. After pulling up the ride it all seems to work correctly but after a few miles in, it starts to take me off in wrong directions and wants to re-calculate multiple times. All I really want to see is the turn by turn. Any idea's as to why I am having this issue? My Garmin is all updated and functions correctly in all other aspects. I ended up using the POI feature to get to the location desired and this worked just fine.


Thanks for your help in advance...

Copperhed51

I dunno. I just use www.bikeroutetoaster.com to map out routes, set it to give me turn warnings about 400m before the turn and if I'm really unfamiliar with the area, I just make sure to leave it on the map mode with it zoomed in pretty well. Haven't gotten lost yet.

dorkypants

In Garmin terminology there are "courses" (.crs) and "tracks" (.gpx). Courses are supposedly what the GPS recorded as you moved around. You're supposed to be able to later tell the GPS you want to redo the course to compare your performance to previous rounds. Tracks are what you plan out in advance and download to the GPS to follow.

I haven't used courses, but my understanding is they shouldn't change. However, the GPS can change the path to get from A to B on a track. It needs to have some flexibility to re-route if you go off course.

I find that particularly if you have a track where you go down some road in one direction and later on come the opposite way on the same road, my 705 can get confused about which leg I'm on and keep telling me to make a U turn. I've learned to break up such tracks into separate segments, preferably at some sensible place where I have to pause for a moment (like the top of a long climb), to have an opportunity to switch to the next segment.

Sometimes the GPS just loses sync between its realtime position and the track I'm following. It'll show the track fine on the screen, but the turn-by-turn directions lose street names and become compass directions, like "turn L and go northwest".

JoeB14

I had similar problems with RideWithGPS. It would tell me to turn right when I knew left was the coorect turn to make. I read on their website that this happens when you click directly on a street intersection-recommended that you click before and after the intersection, so there is no doubt that the turn must be left. Unfortunately I haven't tried this yet, but you might want to give it a try.

Hashball

I just got one of these so I think maybe I can help.

First of all - Call Garmin for Free Tech Support: 18008001020. They are very helpful.

Use bikeroutetoaster.com. The consensus seems like that is the most superior of all the available options. It sounds like you sit at your computer and have a ride that you want to do.

Map out the ride in Bikeroutetoaster
Save it as a .tcx file
Add to your Garmin device under the "Courses" folder

A course file (.tcx) is like a trail of breadcrumbs that you follow - which you have previously mapped out. Load the course by going to Training>Course>Do Course. When you pull up your course you can scroll over to the map and see your course plotted out. You can adjust your course display settings and get metrics such as distance to next turn, time until you are at the turn, direction of turn, all on the same screen. It will prompt you at the turns (late, but I've only done this once so far) and let you know when you are off course. It also recognizes when you are back on course.

Haven't used the GPX feature yet but people reccomend unchecking automatic recalculation under Menu>Settings>Routing>Uncheck auto-route.

Call Garmin.

RoboCheme

I started off by downloading gpx files. They worked fine until I'd get off track just a little bit and it would give me crazy directions like "make a U turn" even though I was on the right track going the right direction. Someone then told me to turn off Recalculate (Settings/Routing). After that it's been working great.

Ygduf

If I put a course in the folder, I just go to the course and pick show on map. I don't do turn by turn, or any of that. Just follow the map trail on the map screen. Easy.

rdtompki

I use Ridewithgps and generally use Courses (tcx files). You should get turn indications, but just at the turn itself. I prefer courses because the unit won't under any circumstance recalculate and I can see the elevation profile ahead of my current position on the course.

lpolliard

My response from Garmin,

Thank you for contacting Garmin International. I will be happy to help you with this. It sounds like maybe the settings in your unit are set differently then the settings in the ride. For example, your unit could be trying to take you the fastest way to get to the end point, where the ride was taking you the shortest mileage way. One way to avoid this is to put a waypoint or via point at every turn while making your route. This way it is not looking just at the end point but each point in between. You would do this while creating the route before transferring it to the unit. Please let me know if this does not help.

Athlete, Joe

So what happens if you are off-course legitimately?

Hot Potato

Save the path you want to take as a route (gpx). Load it onto your Garmin. Then disable auto-re-routing. Now the garmin will give you better turn notification than using a course file, and it won't decide to choose a different path as you go along. If your route shares roads in more than one direction, the garmin will not know which direction you want turn notifications while you are on those sections. The solution is to ignore the garmin on those sections, or split the route into more than one file so that the shared roads have only one direction per route file.

edit: oh, and sometimes when you create a route in another program, then transfer it to the garmin, a corner will get cut out of the route. When that happens, you don't get a turn notification. I use the plug and play card on the garmin, and haven't bought garmin maps for my pc to see if the garmin maps are more reliable in this regard.

Athlete, Joe

My experience with this advice has been VERY BAD. The navigation on my 705 has been behaving strangely for over a year now (problems like: mapsource would disappear or the nav would just stop directinhg in the middle of a ride with a warning that it could not find maps, taking forever to load if at all, etc, etc.)

I think I narrowed the problem down to a bad/corrupt microSD card that would interfere with the normal functioning of the 705 flash drive as well. But I would also not rule out that too many waypoints (say over 50) is also to blame.

I create tracks with as little as two waypoints--beginning and end--I click and drag the route to make the turns I want.

I have yet to test this out extensively, but I'm optimistic that I've finally figured it out.

p.s. Garmin was completely stumped about my problem.

Athlete, Joe

This doesn't seem necessary. WHEN my 705 was working properly, it did know which direction I wanted to go. So even if it displayed a double purple line, it knew I was going outbound or vice versa.

lpolliard

BF was more help than Garmin.
I will turn off the auto re-calculate and split my rides in the future.

Thanks for the information.

Hot Potato

The issue I had was that the garmin would determine that everything outbound must have been done, since I am at a point that corresponds to the way back in. Then once I got to a spot that was uniquely outbound only, it would be fine again. I can't remember if there was a rest stop on this section. I forget what program I used to create the gpx file.

Hot Potato

I don't know if this is correct, but I think the edge was not designed for someone creating a route on a PC then using the edge to prompt them along it (AKA a digital cue sheet). DESPITE the fact that this seems to be the very first thing a new edge owner tries to do! It is a fantastic data gathering device, highly user configurable, and meant to be a training device. Such are the roots of the edge line. It was on board maps that gave cyclists the silly notion of programming an event ride on it and using the edge as a digital cue sheet? Early 705 software versions didn't even have a way of disabling automatic re-routing, causing all sorts of issues for using it to follow a pre-determined route from gps maps. I do like my edge 705. I just don't use the maps features all that often. No regrets on having the maps, however.