Nav IV importing routes help please

[Nutty]

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.

Cheers for the tips. I have the spoken instructions switched off, as they do my head in, so we are agreed on that.

When I was in Italy, we stayed on Lake Varese, and I took myself for a bimble one afternoon, as Paul was planning the next days route. I fancied going to Lake Como, so put in one of the small villages on the lake itself, rather than Como. The nav then routed me through the middle of Varese, round various one way streets, and then through several other towns. As I didn't know the area, and hasn't been there before, I had no idea where I should be headed so just followed the nav. I only had a couple of hours spare, so didn't have time to plan the route properly, but it was annoying that the nav insisted on sending me through all these towns, with all their traffic, when avoid traffic, and fastest route are set as default.

Coming from a TomTom, it'll take some getting used to, and I hadn't used it that much before the trip, so will persevere with it.

 

[Wapping]

That's odd but without seeing it happen it's difficult to imagine.

One easy thought is that you may have some odd settings like 'Avoid U-Turns' and / or ' Avoid highways / toll roads' or summat like that ticked. Depending on the roads, the device might have been seeing hairpins as U-turns and / or was misreading what type of roads they were.

The only other things I could guess at are:

Auto recalculate being on, with the device then getting itself in a twist.

It not having the full road details, particularly if Navteq (who make the maps) didn't know that roads XYZ are (or are not) one way streets. Similarly, the software will (if it has nothing better to go on) will assume that all roads are at least the national limit, when of course smaller alleys can only be ridden at say 10mph. It's why you sometimes get it cutting corners down small roads (it's a shorter distance) and, in theory at least, a quicker time.

The device struggling to see enough satellites, particularly in valleys or narrow towns on cloudy days. It is not quite sure where it is, so it literally does its best.

Really, the only thing to do when it gets into a flap is relax and take over. The device is clever than you might think, in that it will take you to the exact spot in the random village you chose. You could have sat in Edinburgh and asked it to take you to the same spot and it would have done it. But, it can sometimes be incredibly thick.

Not really knowing where you are heading is a bit self inflicted I'm afraid; though it does show how powerful a dumb GPS device really can be, with its millions of road miles of data. It WILL know, though it may well struggle to show you.

It's where having a map is a good idea and / or having a rough idea whether your destination is north, south, east or west. On my 660 I always have the 'Less map, more data' screen displayed, with the basic directional N, S, E, W displayed in the top right box. Beneath it I have: Time to turn, Distance to destination and Time of arrival at destination displayed. The basic directional compass has got me out of several holes. Similarly, if I want more map displayed, I just flick to the next screen, where I can also alter the map alignment to suit. Zooming in and out also helps. It's all down to practice, not getting flustered or too frustrated (that's where mistakes get in) and above all confidence.

One last thought: The 'avoid traffic' setting is definitely NOT a setting that avoids routing through towns per-se. Navteq only sees roads and near enough knows the speed data of the roads. It does not know that the A3 in rush hour is chocker with cars, it only sees a 60 mph road and / or a 30 MPH road in urban areas. It will route you down the A3 if the road meets the two very basic criteria criteria of 'fastest' or 'most direct'.

The feature links to FM radio data, where it picks up news of traffic jams, literally news of 'traffic' and will seek to route you around it. It requires an aerial and / or a sometimes a subscription to the local service. My 1600 turns the function on automaticaly, turning the magenta route line red and, via another screen option, telling me what it thinks the delay is caused by. I then have an option to avoid or ignore. By and arge I ignore it, not least as I am on a motorcycle and even a 1600 can get through gaps with ease.... When it's not overheating that is.

My tip: Read the manual and / or Google something like, 'Avoid traffic Garmin'.

You are new to the device, so asking it for bimble routes (of which you have an image of what you have in mind, but the stupid machine imagines to be something ese) when you are miles from home is not a great place to start learning, perhaps? It's not a complete plug-n-play package like your 1200WC, after all. Actually, that's not quite true.... It's a great place to learn, as you have learnt the hard way that it's not foolproof each and every time. Practice will make it easier. Play around and you'll soon get the hang of it.

PS Your bimble plan was a really good example of where the old fashioned map, sheet of paper and a pencil would have been perfect. Before GPS, we still had the problem of not really knowing where we were going when sitting somewhere we had never been before. It's not a new phenomenon. Indeed, before maps, nobody knew at all. GPS devices have made us lazy. You didn't have time ( or maybe the inclination) to work something out by way of a route.... So you punched in a place and hoped for the best. And why not, the device had got you to Italy, had it not.

It's not a criticism but it shows how easy it is to rely on a technology which, whilst clever, is not perfect. Sometimes we really do just have to step back and do something the hard way... If only to stop us being lazy.

In a way we see the same thing with 'Tell me a route' or 'Is this B&B any good?' when even a very quick look and a bit of self help or confidence will answer most questions before they are asked.

 

[Bumpkin]

Great post Wapping.

Should be compulsory reading for new converts to riding with GPS.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Nutty]

Cheers Wapping, sounds like I need to RTFM a bit more I do have it set to avoid u-turns, so will turn that off. Normally, I would spend more time planning a route, but that day it was very last minute. Silly old me, eh?!