Hi All.
Been following this thread for the last few months trying to get more use from the 590 and today I tried a route:
Hi stratblue - I can probably help you with this - although I'm less inclined when your Custom User Title is swearing at me as I reply !!
I've downloaded the GPX file from the 2nd link, and I'll make some observations from my view of the GPX file in Basecamp.
Point 56 is plotted everso slightly off route - it lies just a tad south of the B4233, and you have to zoom all the way into BaseCamp to see it. The chances are that when riding, this point will not be an issue - it is sufficiently close to the actual route for the Zumo 590 to assume that you have visited it. However - it is the sort of thing that can cause you problems when you are on tour and following the Zumo route. It can cause a recalculation, or it will continue to nag you to go back and visit the point.
Just after 556 I missed the right turn to 557 expecting the 590 to take the next right getting me back on route for 558.
No - you have missed point 557, so the Zumo 590 will not attempt to take you to point 558, it will take you to point 557, unless you press skip - or you pick up the magenta route further along. The 590 is quite happy for you to miss out a shaping (do not alert) point, but until you are back onto the magenta route, it will continue to take you back to the point that it is expecting you to visit next - ie point 557. If you had decided to ignore the satnav and take the next right on the B4233 roughly in the direction of Brynderi, as soon as you joined Tal-y-Coed lane, you would have been on the magenta route. It would probably have asked you to turn right, to go back to 557, but when you turn left it would continue to take you on to 558.
Note that this doesn't happen if you miss a Via Point (alerting point). You HAVE to visit a Via Point, unless you press Skip (Which is now illegal to do when driving - 6 points).
However, I got a u turn instruction. I pressed the skip button and everything went as expected from there.
Hmmm. Pressing the Skip button stops the Zumo from trying to take you to its next point (557) and instead it calculates a new route, using its own routing preferences that are set in the zumo for your current transportation mode (bike, car, offroad). Likely as not, this will be a different route from the one that you plotted on Basecamp - but in this case there are not that many options.
Now - that first bit. "
However, I got a u turn instruction".
Note that in the Zumo, the option is to 'Avoid U turns'. Sometimes they are necessary, so it may be one of those situations. But I am making a big assumption here that you were riding the motorcycle at the time, and you were not in the car ?? Whether you were or not, this next bit is quite important for understanding what can apparently go wrong with the Zumo 590 (and 595). In fact, nothing goes wrong, its just that we don't understand what it is actually doing.
Your route was drawn in Automotive mode and the preferences were set for faster time. I can tell that from the first few lines of the GPX file that I downloaded.
The Zumo 590 has a number of different operating modes - Car, Motorcycle and Offroad, and certain features can be set for each of those different modes. These are Vehicle icon, Driving Map View, Map Detail, Map Theme, Map Layers, AutoZoom, Audible Speed Alerts, Calculation Mode, Off route recalculation, Avoidances, Custom Avoidances, Tolls and Fees, Restricted Mode, Orientation and Traffic Trends.
Put the Zumo into car mode and set some of these features, and then put it into Bike mode and look at the features and they may have changed. The very obvious one is the screen display orientation. Change the mode - car / motorcycle - and the screen changes orientation immediately.
Now that cradle. Put the unit into the car cradle and it should behave with the car settings. Put it into the bike cradle, and it should be set for the bike settings. But it isn't quite as simple as that.
I am guessing that your Zumo 590 was set in bike mode when you turned off the U turn feature. And I am guessing that the 'Avoid U turn' feature was turned on for the car mode.
Your route was created on Basecamp for a car. You put the Zumo into the bike cradle, and the Zumo sets itself to be in Bike mode. You start your route - but it was created for a car in Basecamp - and immediately that you load it, the Zumo is switched into car mode and uses the car preferences - ie U turns are allowed again ! Worse than that - the next time you plug your Zumo into the bike cradle, it will now automatically switch itself to car mode - until you physically set it to be in bike mode again - whilst the Zumo is in the bike cradle.
556, 557 etc appear as small black dots (shaping nodes?)
When you create a shaping node in Basecamp, they tend to appear as black dots which represents the fact that the point is newly created and doesn't exist in Basecamp's database of towns, attractions and other stored waypoints. If you happen to drop the required shaping point onto an existing waypoint, Basecamp will assign the icon associated with that waypoint, and it will become a Via Point (alerting). If you change your points from shaping to alerting points (or vice versa) , the icon remains the same - so you cannot tell that a point is a shaping point just by looking at the little black dot. All you know is that it WAS a shaping point when you placed it.
In the route list they appear to be via points (won't alert) which the 590 will insist I visit, requiring the skip button......
...... all these mystery shapingviawaypoints end up in my favourites in the 590!
I think you are missing a key point about all of these shapingviawaypoint. They are different and behave differently.
Via Points - is now the term used by Garmin to indicate a point on a route (notice I do not use the term
'waypoint') which will alert you on arrival. The 590 insists that you visit a via point. When you start a route, the Zumo will ask you where you want to go to next. It will list the start point, the end point and it will also list any Via points that you have created. Garmin's use of this term didn't seem to be as defined as this when the 550 and the 660 were the latest satnav units. Via points can be used in the data display eg 'Time to Via', 'Distance to Via'. Via points show up as a flag on the 590 display.
Shaping Points - is the term used to add extra points along a route to a route to force navigation along a particular road. The satnav will navigate you to this point and will take you back if you go past one - however, if you continue to navigate and join up with the magenta route, it won't care that you have gone past a shaping point. Shaping points behave in similar way to the route points on the zumo 660 in that respect. Shaping points don't alert, they cannot be featured on the data display (Time to .., Distance to...), they do not appear in the list of next destinations from which to choose when you start to navigate a route. They appear is blue spots on the satnav screen when navigating (depending on the theme that you use, I suppose).
Waypoints - this term is often used incorrectly. A waypoint is not a point on a route. It is a previously stored point - either in Garmin's database of towns, attractions, petrol stations etc etc, or as points that you have created yourself. Typically these will have a name and an icon, and often have other info such as address, phone number. They are there to be used when plotting a route.
However, as soon as you put them into a route, they have to behave as either a shaping point or as a via point. BY default, when a predefined waypoint is put into a route, it acts as a Via Point (alerting).
Any via point can be changed to a shaping point when it is in a route. Any shaping point can be changed to a via point. This can be done easily in Basecamp, and just as easily after the route has been transferred to the Zumo 590.
Additionally, all these 'kin mystery shapingviawaypoints end up in my favourites in the 590!
Yes The Zumo will retain your own Basecamp route exactly as you plotted it. Look at the contents of your GPX file and you will see hundreds of gpxx points (I refer to them as ghost points). These force the Zumo to follow the same route as you had in Basecamp. However, as soon as your satnav recalculates the route, it loses all of this information and has to work on the routing points that you have fixed. For that, it needs to have all of the Via and Shaping points stored. It then uses its own internal routing preferences that you have set on the Zumo for the car (your route was planned for a car, so the zumo uses the car preferences it has) and creates a brand new route between where you are and the next route point on the route.
now on duplication of the route in Basecamp, I am asked if I want to duplicate the waypoints 556, 557 etc....
Further to my post #45 above, I notice in the route list in Basecamp now that the shapingviawaypoints I created are there as well as others that I didn't explicitly create, B45212 for example. I can see no difference between them.
When you copy a route, you are given an option to duplicate the route points that make up that route. Generally speaking, in Basecamp, there is no need to do this. Basecamp works with one copy of the point in question and this same point can exist in many different routes. If you say yes, then you get an extra copy
When the points are duplicated, Basecamp has to distinguish them for the original point. So you will have Point 557 and you will also have point 5571. Duplicate them again, and you will have point 5572 - and so on. The duplicated route will now use the oddly named points rather than the original.
The same sort of thing happens when you add a shaping point to a route. The B4233 is quite a long road. Put a shaping point on there, and Basecamp will call it B4233. Put another shaping point on and it will call it B42331. Now if you duplicate the route you will get a whole string of digits after the name.
Phew.
Sorry it is so long winded. I have done a lot of testing with Basecamp and the Zumo 590, and have been tearing my hair out, having moved on from the 550 and the 660. The 590 / 595 units are very different beasts, but they are still very good at what they do. But they have a few gotchas built in.
The 590 for example, will remember your own riding preferences and routes, and it will adjust the route that it calculates based on your history that it has collected. Also, with every new set of map updates, it comes with Traffic Trends. Some roads at particular times can be busy. If you have faster time set as a preference, then it will use this historic data to guess at how busy the road is, and it will calculate very different routes at midnight from the one that it will calculate at 17:00.
I have quite a large document that I have written with illustrations taken from Basecamp and Zumo. Some members on here have found it useful, but I have recently updated it and added a whole new section on profiles, preferences and cradles. I'm not a full member on this forum - and don't own a GS. I just joined in this discussion having come across it on Google when I was researching, and thought I'd give something back.
Let me know if you want a copy, I'll find some way of getting it to you.
Just one thing - stop swearing at me !