europa

This thread has grown out of the "Need a new GPS for randonneuring?" thread - https://www.bikeforums.net/long-dist...onneuring.html

Late in that thread, I announced I'd bought one of these beasts and started asking questions. However, those questions lead the thread away from it's original intention which was more about comparing and choosing a GPS. I realise that this could also be covered in the Electronics forum... but it isn't and considering that this forum is probably more interested in the navigation side of these units, I feel it's appropriate to keep it here.

Maybe a kind moderator could move the last few posts in the above thread to this one, just to keep the other thread honest and to kickstart this one.

europa

And, of course, my first worry is generic to any GPS user.

I'm using Ride with GPS for route planning and no, I don't know a lot about it. I'm also using the free version at the moment and maybe that's restricting my route planning too much. Does anyone have any thoughts on that? Should I give yet another company money?

I created a loop route, saved it, then decided I wanted to change it. Are you able to delete points or sections of a route in the free version? Or is that something you have to pay for. I wound up giving up and deleting the whole route.

Then, as a Wahoo specific question, how are you supposed to get the route onto your unit? Any instructions I've found talk about tapping the gpx track and selecting something. Well, on my phone, I don't get to see the gpx link, I only get the cue sheet. Not only that, you can't see a map of the route.

However, something that isn't mentioned in any instructions I've found, is syncing the routes in the phone and the Bolt. This involves making sure your Wahoo App is synced to RWGPS (easy) but then you have to know to go your Bolt and click on Sync there. Something I found by accident and, more worryingly, means you'll always have every route you have on RWGPS loaded on your Bolt which seems rather inefficient to me.

europa

Okay, I've finally found instructions for getting routes onto your Bolt. I'm more or less doing it right (though possibly inefficiently because I was making it up as I went along).

This still leaves the question: Syncing will move all the routes not already on your Bolt across. How do you avoid this without religiously deleting routes you're not likely to use in the near future?

njkayaker

You don't really need to have a rwgps subscription.


You can delete the white circles (what rwgps calls "control points").

When you open the route page, the page is in "extend a route" mode.

To go into "change the route" mode, click on " add/remove control point". To go back into "extensively a route" mode, click on "follow" roads.

When I go back to an existing route, I created a habit of immediately clicking on "add/remove control point". (That avoids the confusion of having the page in "extend a route" mode when you plan to change the route.)


=========================

Click on a control point to remove it (when in "change a route" mode).

Click on the red line to add a control point.

Drag the red line to move it.

Think of control points as a way to pin the route on the map. When you drag the red line, it will only change location between control points.

Don't add/create control points at intersections.

Click a little ways after the turn.

Don't use too many control points. You don't need to add them after every turn.

(Don't remove all of the control points to "clean things up".)

europa

Thanks. I'll look at that tomorrow night when I'm in there. I was wondering if you needed something more than the free RWGPS to effectively edit things, sounds like I was just doing it wrong.

And the two cats have just fallen off a chair in a kicking, biting, furry heap... which isn't in the slightest relevant to this conversation.

Steve B.

Many folks have asked Wahoo to allow a route on the device to be deleted, from within the device. So far nothing. Only way current is to delete in RWGPS, which than syncs with the Wahoo app, which then syncs with the device (when powered up) and deletes the route. Kind of annoying. Wahoo has also been asked to allow the smartphone app to function when not BT connected to the device, they haven’t responded to that yet either.

My take on Wahoo support is they are very good at pushing updates that have fixes for things seriously wrong. Garmin tends to suck at this. Wahoo is not so good at adding features and functions that many folks suggest would make the devices work better. My issue ( and others) of not being able to read the TBT info at the bottom of the data screen while wearing sunglasses is a case in point. Wahoo is not fixing this.

NJ nailed the RWGPS instructions, though I tend to get frustrated trying to move around control points, but admit I know more about them now. I usually scrap the route and will re-draw if making major changes.

Hopefully you found out that once you enable RWGPS to access the Wahoo app, create and and save a route, the routes you’ve saved automatically show up on the smartphone app, and are than easy to dump to the device.

europa

Incidentally, in the other thread, I said that I thought I'd seen where you could transfer routes via a cable. Others disputed this, complete with explanations. Right they were.
This afternoon, I connected my Bolt to my computer. My computer detected the Bolt and the Bolt began to charge. However, a look at File Explorer (I use Windows 10) showed that the computer wasn't 'seeing' the Bolt. I see this as a real flaw in Wahoo's thinking as it just makes life harder for users. What do you do if you don't have a 'smart phone'? My father and daughter don't, they have mobile phones but have deliberately chosen phones that make phone calls and send messages, nothing more. [\grouch]

Steve B.

Well, this is the rub with getting a Wahoo, nice as they are. You are required to own a phone or tablet that can use the app, as that’s how you initialize and configure the device. You do not need the smart device after that, you can do rides without a smartphone in your back pocket. The device does have WiFi, so if you connect to your home, or other WiFi, you can save rides to the web. I’ve no clue if you can get routes from RWGPS via WiFi, in theory once you save a route on RWGPS, it goes to Wahoo and if the devices can sync via WiFi, they might pick up the routes. Never tried it.

unterhausen

I have about 5 million rides on rwgps. I don't know, that might be a slight exaggeration, it's more than I can count anyway. So it's a bit annoying that they want to d/l all of them. I would pay rwgps if they had some way to organize rides. I do think it's the best route-making website I have used. I figure if I get a Bolt, I might have to get a second account just to sync with my gps.

When you are making routes, the best idea is to delete as many control points as you can. I find it diffibult to design a route with a minimum of control points, so I go back and delete. A friend deletes all the control points on his routes, just don't try to edit without adding some back in.

njkayaker

This makes no sense.

The control points aren't included in the file loaded to the device (so they have no effect at all on navigation).

seajaye

Same. I've asked support to allow for 'folders' of rides so I can keep my Routes page at least *somewhat* navigable, but they said just make sure to have a useful description to be able to search easily.... Ugh.

Steve B.

Begs the question do you really use navigation a lot for routes you know ?, and if you didn't have a GPS that could navigate, would you miss the capability ?.

I do most of my rides out of my house. I don't need to navigate the 20 or so variations I use, after 25+ years, I know the distances and turns.

I used RWGPS, now back to Connect, to trace out routes for stuff I might be unfamiliar with or routes I ride infrequently and cannot remember all the turns. Not a lot of those so I don't have a huge number, 30 in Connect and I could probably dump half as they are rides I know, so don't ever navigate. Some are special, a 30 mile ride on the Acadia carriage roads, as example, or some dirt roads in the ADK's. Those are the kind of routes I specifically want a navigating capable GPS for.

And since this is the LD forum, how many of those routes do you need to save ?

So I can somewhat see RWGPS's point.

John_V 

It's what I had to do in order to keep my routes and not have to recreate them. After opening my second account, I friended myself from both accounts (account 1 to account 2 and account 2 to account 1) for easier access to each account. On the second account, I copied my routes from account 1 and will use account 2 to create all my new routes. I then deleted all the routes from account 1, which is the one my Bolt syncs to. When I need a route synced to my Bolt, I copy it from the second account then delete it when I'm done with it. It's a royal pain in the a$$ but it's the only way I can keep my routes and still be able to delete them from the Bolt.

Drew Eckhardt 

The paid versions let you split routes, combine routes, and convert recorded rides into routes with turn-by-turn. It lets you schedule turn notifications for some distance before turns. "Events" aggregating multiple routes are probably a premium feature. It also lets

I find that worth paying for.

I don't think premium adds useful planning features over basic paid, although it does provide a ride combination feature for when you've split rides into multiple .fit files.

unterhausen

they want people to share their routes. They aren't going to be strava. I delete routes that aren't mine, but if they are my routes, I usually keep them. I have 10 permanents where the routes need to be kept online. Actually, 4 of those are free route, so I need to keep more. I also have a number of routes in the planning stage. I could prune my list of routes, I suppose I should. But that's counter to what rwgps wants to happen on their site on the social media side of things.

seajaye

Yes, yes, and all of them.

Every brevet route I have ever done is split into controles. This might be 6 files for a 200k, or 6 files for a 600k depending on the route complexity. I've only been randonneuring since 2014, but many of these routes are recycled or slightly updated with each running. I only keep the relevant files on my Garmin for the upcoming brevet, and delete them afterwards. But they live in RWGPS for the next running of the brevet, and/or to share with other riders doing the same route. So, I want to keep all of them. At the same time, I do not need all 378 RWGPS files on my GPS at the ready at any given time...

europa

I've finally realised why my mobile phone is going flat faster than it should, the Elemnt App is constantly hammering my phone trying to connect. I don't want to turn off the Bluetooth because it's used for other things. Does anyone know how to turn the App off?

ruppster

Same as any other app. Android or iOS?

europa

Android.
Normally you turn off an app by closing it, not this damned thing, it just keeps trying to connect. All I've found that works is to go into your phone's settings (not the Elemnt App, the phone's settings), apps, find the Elemnt App and 'force stop'. It works but you shouldn't have to. Just sloppy programming in my view, especially when the only advantage to having the phone and the Bolt connected is your ride being uploaded the instant you finish it, or new routes being uploaded the instant you save them.

ruppster

I use the iOS app, it behaves as expected.

pdlamb

Is this a "feature" that lets you use live tracking through the app?

europa

Well, it seems to be working properly now ie, not frantically trying to connect to a device that's not turned on. I'm guessing the Elemnt App got it's knickers twisted somehow and doing the force stop reset everything. Today, when I went for my ride, it connected up as normal and has been silent on the matter ever since. It even let the phone connect to the car which it wasn't doing before the force stop.

Bloody technology, it was a lot easier in the old days when you had that little counter on your front fork and the tag on a spoke clicked the cog over every time the wheel went round

Steve B.

I had issues with the iOS app not staying connected with the device, thus when I saved a ride on a remote start (thus no home WiFi), the saved ride data would not dump to RWGPS. A Wahoo support ticket indicated that that they recommend restarting the app on the phone. This worked, but begged the question of why the lost BT connection. That in turn meant that one of the BT functions - text and call indications, would not always function. So Wahoo kind of kicked the can down the road on that. I think it might have gotten resolved (for iOS) in either a Wahoo update or iOS update. Can’t test it as I returned the unit.

europa

Well, mine's acting up again, this time, not connecting. It did at the start of my ride. I got a phone call half way through which it told me about. After the ride (not at home so no wifi), it didn't sync the ride until I'd done a force stop and then opened the App. Tried it just now and it wouldn't connect... until I'd done a force stop and then opened the App. Clearly the App's dodgy. Rather disappointing considering Wahoo make you to use it, you'd think they'd have made sure it was right.

Steve B.

Well, if it makes you feel better, some Garmin's work the exactly the same way, BT to the app, which is your method to get data to the web if no WiFi present. You can read many posts of folks with assorted units who experience BT dropouts on a regular basis.

I've gotten in the habit learned from the Wahoo, of just force closing, then re-starting the app after finishing a ride, then stopping and saving the ride on the device.