Nav IV importing routes help please

[needlongerlegs]

Hi gezzas, Hellllpppppp...

I have set up some routes for Spain next week,

When I try to import them from transferred file Nav IV hangs at 99%,

Have checked using Garmin Express everything up to date, have used routes last year on a Garmin 220 no problem.

Also tried using both Mapsource to squirt them in and Basecamp.

three hang on 99%, on restarting device two of them are there and one is US.

 

[Bumpkin]

I have set up some routes for Spain next week

three hang on 99%, on restarting device two of them are there and one is US.

Are you saying that you have three routes for a trip to Spain and back? If that's the case your routes are too long.

Split them into one route for each day (or even half day) and your GPS will have far less of a problem chucking them about in it's tiny brain. This is not just on import but also when riding, any recalcs will be quicker.

Day routes also add more flexibility to have alternative routes for good/bad weather or mood etc. Though I would suggest that this be catered for in the planning phase which you might not have time for.

 

[Yellow Peril]

Also are you saving in the right format .gpx or the other one can't remember its extension but the 660 only likes one of them.

 

[Flipfly]

One of the arsehole features of the current crop of zumo based units imho.

On my old 2610 I could just set waypoints on the roads I wanted to travel, select minor roads and it would take me to each waypoint via an interesting and pleasurable route. To do the same on the 660 I have to feck about trying to do routes, then there are too many via points and it just takes the fun out of travelling.

GARMIN, please can we have an option to select minor roads and minimise motorways and A roads PLEAAAAAAAASE

I've always defended the use of SatNav, my zumo is quickly becoming an MP3 player and the 2610 will be coming out of retirement

 

[The Grey One]

One of the arsehole features of the current crop of zumo based units imho.

On my old 2610 I could just set waypoints on the roads I wanted to travel, select minor roads and it would take me to each waypoint via an interesting and pleasurable route. To do the same on the 660 I have to feck about trying to do routes, then there are too many via points and it just takes the fun out of travelling.

GARMIN, please can we have an option to select minor roads and minimise motorways and A roads PLEAAAAAAAASE

I've always defended the use of SatNav, my zumo is quickly becoming an MP3 player and the 2610 will be coming out of retirement

Just load on openstreetmaps and the 2610 will be up to date. I'm keeping mine as long as it works. I don't want music on the move-where I live it pays to concentrate on the roads!

John

 

[needlongerlegs]

Routes were daily jaunts in Pecos Mountains biggest was 148 miles :-(

Just uploaded all routes to the Garmin220 no problembo

So I've just spent a whole pile of beer vouchers getting a SATNAV that's not as powerful as my silly old 220..

BMW Hummm.....

 

[The Grey One]

Biggest problem with the 660 is the operators! Many think that reading the manual is beneath their dignity. Strangely it is usually those people who slag off the device. Not knowing how it works is their choice and would be fine if they accepted the failure as theirs and not Garmin's

We download several routes every day to number of devices. It's not unusual for there to be five or six on the desk each morning for me to download routes to. I always check to see how they are set up and adjust the settings so that they will work with my routes. Most common problems are selecting "shortest distance" -(you end up on a lot of farm tracks!) or not de selecting the Garmin default setting of "avoid seasonal closures" (won't take you over the high roads.) Around here setting them to avoid motorways and then take the fastest route between the waypoints works well.

Provided they are set up properly we don't have problems even though the devices all recalculate the routes when they are imported.

John

 

[Flipfly]

It's just not intuative imho. I have made up a route on basecamp, saved it, sent it to the zumo and when I've imported it, the zumo has recalculated it
Then I've done a route on basecamp and it continually picks a faster route, adds more via points than the unit can handle, cut the via points down and it recalculates the route to where you don't want to go it's feckin horrendous.
Then if you want to plod around on backroads it always recalculates on to A roads

It is absolutely crap compared to the old 2610. The screen is better, the music is nice and for fastest a-b it is no doubt fantastic, but I've reverted back to using my nose to find an interesting way home now thanks to the 660.

Thankfully I got mine cheap, so I won't mind when I sling it down the road in frustration

 

[Nutty]

Mine keeps routing me through town and city centres FFS. I can't see any way of avoiding them, even by setting it to avoid traffic and take fastest routes.

 

[Bumpkin]

It is absolutely crap compared to the old 2610. The screen is better, the music is nice and for fastest a-b it is no doubt fantastic, but I've reverted back to using my nose to find an interesting way home now thanks to the 660.

I seriously think that you're doing something wrong. I've moved from Quest, StreetPilot 2720, Nuvi 765 and now a Zumo 660. The 660 works how I want, much like the others. Routes created in Basecamp work fine without any issues. I'm having to add no more routing nodes to my routes than I did previously to get them to go where I want.

 

[The Grey One]

Mine keeps routing me through town and city centres FFS. I can't see any way of avoiding them, even by setting it to avoid traffic and take fastest routes.

I expect that is because you either put a waypoint or routing node on the town or have the preferences set for shortest distance

John

 

[Bumpkin]

I expect that is because you either put a waypoint or routing node on the town or have the preferences set for shortest distance

Sounds like it to me, I tend to place a node on the road I want to take out of a town, the route then tends to follow the most efficient route though or, usually for bigger towns and cities, around a ring road. The routing algorithms can only do so much and don't, AFAIK, take into account things like traffic lights etc.

Nothing is perfect in this World and I accept that getting the full complexities of a full road system in a state of constant fluid change onto a relatively simple device is currently not possible. IMHO my 660, and Basecamp, does a pretty good job with the data that it does have available. The prospect of having to stop and look at a map every now and then as well as relying on a list of towns and roads in a tank bag pocket, as I used to do, isn't half as appealing.

Expecting to have a perfect route for your specific needs by just entering your destination isn't going to produce best results. I take some time crafting and researching my routes at home in the weeks before setting off on a trip. I have no complaints myself or from the others I've lead on tours on the continent.

 

[Katnip]

satnavs

I expect that is because you either put a waypoint or routing node on the town or have the preferences set for shortest distance

John

I agree with The Grey One (hello John, I have stayed at your place, great!!)
You have to really put the work in on the Zumo at least, to understand how it draws a route. When I plan say a circular route on Basecamp it never goes exactly where I want to go. so you then have to move it about with nodes or way points and get the exact route you want to go. It can be frustrating at times but with perseverance you can get there!
When I first had mine I stuck a few waypoints on various roads in France but didn't ensure they were EXACTLY ON THE ROAD in Mapsource. When I did the trip it was a nightmare because the waypoints were, say 50-100 metres off the road and it would constantly be trying to send me back.

 

[Bumpkin]

I agree with The Grey One (hello John, I have stayed at your place, great!!)
You have to really put the work in on the Zumo at least, to understand how it draws a route. When I plan say a circular route on Basecamp it never goes exactly where I want to go. so you then have to move it about with nodes or way points and get the exact route you want to go. It can be frustrating at times but with perseverance you can get there!
When I first had mine I stuck a few waypoints on various roads in France but didn't ensure they were EXACTLY ON THE ROAD in Mapsource. When I did the trip it was a nightmare because the waypoints were, say 50-100 metres off the road and it would constantly be trying to send me back.

I agree.

You need to ensure that way-points in particular are on the road as they must be visited. Shaping nodes, which tend to snap to the road as you create them anyway (but if you're not careful can snap to an adjacent or side road), will be ignored after a mile or two of pestering. Not quite sure on how long or far though...

It's a case of time put into the planning reaping the rewards (or garbage in, garbage out). Taking the time to get to know how your GPS and Basecamp/Mapsource work is the only way to discover the full benefits. At the end of the day a GPS is a fairly dumb device that needs to be properly understood to get the best out of it. Time spent with Basecamp will make route planning an easy task once you've got to grips with the basics.

I'm a Garmin evangelist, I don't believe that there is a better complete answer to M/C sat nav, but then I might be 'blinkered'

 

[needlongerlegs]

Daft thing that IV

Cut all routes in half and they now work fine grrrrr

 

[Bumpkin]

Cut all routes in half and they now work fine grrrrr

Do you have a recent mapping update installed. If it's on the SD card has your internal memory been cleared of old mapping data or is it still there? Or if your mapping is a little older or you cook up your own map-sets in Mapsource or MapInstall...

It's quite possible that you have very little internal storage space available, ideally a couple of hundred MB should be considered as a minimum. I'm pretty sure that the Zumo uses some of this space as operational memory or for caching mapping or route data, I'm not sure, but I've come across a slowing down when there's precious little space available when full European mapping would only just fit into the Zumo660's internal memory a few versions ago.

Plug your Garmin in and then check the free space on the 'Garmin' drive. How much do you have remaining?

 

[Nutty]

I expect that is because you either put a waypoint or routing node on the town or have the preferences set for shortest distance

John

Sounds like it to me, I tend to place a node on the road I want to take out of a town, the route then tends to follow the most efficient route though or, usually for bigger towns and cities, around a ring road. The routing algorithms can only do so much and don't, AFAIK, take into account things like traffic lights etc.

Nothing is perfect in this World and I accept that getting the full complexities of a full road system in a state of constant fluid change onto a relatively simple device is currently not possible. IMHO my 660, and Basecamp, does a pretty good job with the data that it does have available. The prospect of having to stop and look at a map every now and then as well as relying on a list of towns and roads in a tank bag pocket, as I used to do, isn't half as appealing.

Expecting to have a perfect route for your specific needs by just entering your destination isn't going to produce best results. I take some time crafting and researching my routes at home in the weeks before setting off on a trip. I have no complaints myself or from the others I've lead on tours on the continent.

Understood. But what if not planning in Basecamp? If I'm out and about, and punch in a destination, is there a way of avoiding town centres? I have it set to fastest route and avoid traffic, but still end up in towns and cities.

 

[Bumpkin]

Understood. But what if not planning in Basecamp? If I'm out and about, and punch in a destination, is there a way of avoiding town centres? I have it set to fastest route and avoid traffic, but still end up in towns and cities.

Obviously where there isn't a ring road or suitable faster road around a town then you will wind up going though the middle. The intelligence of the routing algorithm and processing power of these devices is fairly limited. The road attributes are also fairly limited as well.

I've just plotted a route, directly on my 660, from here (Ledbury) to my cousin's place in Garsington. It's neatly circumnavigated Gloucester using the A40 and the same around Oxford. If I wanted to get there by the fastest possible route I'd go the same way. Another route to the other side of Hereford does go though the the town but given the various road types I wouldn't say any of the alternatives would be much quicker unless there was heavy traffic, say during weekday morning or evening commute.

The granularity of the traffic data probably wouldn't help, certainly the free data, I'm not sure how much more comprehensive the paid for data is. I have a traffic receiver on my bike as it was only £12 and then purely for interest only (I don't have the traffic avoidance box checked) as it's somewhat academic on 2 wheels.

 

[Wapping]

Nice thread hijack, but hey-ho....

But what if not planning in Basecamp? If I'm out and about, and punch in a destination, is there a way of avoiding town centres? I have it set to fastest route and avoid traffic, but still end up in towns and cities.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but here is maybe why.....

You are tapping (punching) in a destination, by which I guess you mean a town or a city, as you know it is somewhere near where you want to go to. For instance, you know you want the A3 so you tap in Guildford, as you know that will bring you close to where you want to go.

The device knows where Guildford is, just as you do. The only problem is that it only knows Guildford centre, not that specific bit of Guildford that you had in mind to take you to the specific stretch of the A3 you wanted..... So it takes you to exactly where you asked for.... Guidford centre, with boring reliability.

Of course you'd be mighty pissed off if you wanted to go to say the middle of Coventry and it kept dumping you off on the ring road. So it cuts both ways.

Yes, you can avoid going into the town centres when out and about and without the luxury of your PC to hand, in several ways. Here are two of the easiest.....

1. Look at the route it suggests you take. Zoom the map in / scroll it around (easy on a 660) and tap on a road that you know will suit you. The dumb device will then ask you if you want to set that point as a via point or as a new destination. Chose, new destination. Bingo, job done. Or you could selct via point abd the chances are the route will shift to excatly where YOU want it to go. Repeat as necessary. You can edit routes on the device, just as you can on a PC at home, it just takes a bit more effort. For instance, you can re-order via points... Play around with the thing, it really can't break it.

2. Ignore the bloody instructions the dumb device is offering when it routes you into the town centre. Best done by the old fashioned method of engaging brain. This works for many other routing problems, too. So feel free to refer back to it as often as you like. For instance, if you are hammering along the Guildford bypass (which you are happy with) but the device wants to send you to the middle (for reasons known or unknown to you) ignore its bleating.


PS One last tip. Turn the bloody ping prompts off and the damned voice off too. You don't need to be told where to go and it makes you lazy. When you get lazy you make more mistakes. Look at the screen (it's quite safe) and think where the route is taking you.... This is much easier without the voice, as it forces you to make more conscious decisions of your own. Yup, you've spent hundreds on the Bluetooth and Autocom... Junk it. You will get used to it very quickly, trust me.

Oh, and use the very nice zoom in-out features as you hoon along too and play with the map orientation. Yup, it means tapping a screen (just like naughty car drivers texting, but we are on a bike so that's different, mate) or whirl the nice iWheel on your super 1200WC. This (without the voice) will get you out of more scrapes than you can imagine. In short, be brighter than the device.... Though the device is really very clever.

 

[Wapping]

Back on track... Pun intended

Hi gezzas, Hellllpppppp...

I have set up some routes for Spain next week,

When I try to import them from transferred file Nav IV hangs at 99%,

Have checked using Garmin Express everything up to date, have used routes last year on a Garmin 220 no problem.

Also tried using both Mapsource to squirt them in and Basecamp.

three hang on 99%, on restarting device two of them are there and one is US.

Just be patient.

It has not got the world's fastest processor and the maps are getting very large.

It may seem to hang for quite a while at 99%, particularly if you are importing several routes at once.

Be patient and / or tick just one route at a time to import. After all you can only ride one route at any one moment.

The device also slows if the route being imported was created in a different map version. It slows whilst it struggles to do its very best to line things up. The NAV IV ( same as a 660) can hang at 99% for a minute or more.

The latest Garmin devices are very good. The vast majority of glitches are now down to operator error and / or the perils of allowing the dumb device to undertake an unprompted recalculation, should you go off route. Set the device to NO or at worse, PROMPTED. 9 times out of ten you'll get yourself back on track better and easier.