Operator error or a quirk of the thing?

Sanemancured

Sanemancured

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Can someone give me some advice? I like to plan my route on my Mac or PC laptop and download it to my Garmin. As often as not, when using my Garmin 276C and selecting the route whilst at the starting waypoint, the unit would spent the next hour (until I binned it) trying to find the start as I drove the route from memory

Now I have a new GPS (Zumo 660). I had today's route from Farfield Mill in the Dales to Hartside Cafe via Kirkstone Pass clearly waypointed and laid out. I selected it at Farfield and the unit yet again tried to send me back there for the next 20 minutes. This is despite saying no when it asked me if I wanted to Navigate to the start point.

Does anyone know a way around this other than making the 1st waypoint 200 yards down the road on the route?

Peter
 
Sounds like you did it all correctly Peter, can't think why it didn't work. I always say no to navigate to start and it seems to work fine - try a hard reset?

Mup (Zumo 550)
 
Was your route circular by any chance: Farfield Mill --> Kirkstone Pass --> Hartside Cafe ---> Farfield Mill

Sometimes when bods enter circular routes (or one with a figure of 8 loop somewhere in it) the poor device thinks they are wanting to ride the return stretch, back to where they are trying to start from.

Can you attach the route file to this thread so we can have a look at it, please.

Have you got 'recalculate' turned on or off?
 
Recalculation mode was on, since switched to 'prompted'.

I think I need hosting site to attach a file - can email on request.

Peter
 
Thanks for the file.

I think I may have spotted the cause of your problem.

You have created waypoints (as opposed to viapoints) in your simple route.

Got to dash... will complete the answer this evening.
 
Right, here is my guess as to what is happening.

Waypoints are the equivalent of electronic beacons. They are points which you have told a dumb device that you MUST pass through on a route. They are most commonly used in featureless surroundings, say mid-ocean or mid-desert, where there is no clear local landmark to guide you.

If you somehow miss out a waypoint the device will always try to send you back to go through it. Why? Because that is their purpose and you would be mighty pissed off if you were thrown out of the single-handed around the world race for missing out chunks of the southern ocean.

Having recalculate turned on didn't help matters either, I suspect. As of course the GPS kept sending you back to clear the waypoints, recalculating each time as it was only doing as it had been told to do.

When plotting routes, try to avoid using the waypoint tool if possible. Use the route tool instead.

Here is your route re-worked without waypoints. Try it and see what happens now that you have recalculate turned off or only responding to a positive prompt.

Favourites are waypoints, too. though they are less problematic as you will usually have inserted them for some definite purpose. Usually meaning that you really want to go there.
 

Attachments

I've done some research and Garmin are saying that Waypoints and Viapoints are essentially the same thing. I think that the problem may be that I'm using waypoints to 'force' the route along certain roads as opposed to using the routing tool as you say.

I did a route today to the bakery/cafe in Melmerby (Mmmm...) dragging the route itself from the M6 (:eek:) to the A6 (:clap) using Basecamp but I had problems downloading it to the unit :rolleyes: So we went via 'go to' instead this morning.

I had a reply from Garmin re a reset and re-installation of software and I've just done this.

Just created a route similar to the above but to the bakery/cafe in Little Salkeld again using the route tool instead of waypoints to get the route where I want it. Hopefully it'll work fine next weekend, either that or I'm going to get a little portly trying :D

Many thanks and if I have continuing problems I'll update.

Oh and strongly recommended:

http://www.village-bakery.com/

Peter
 
Sanemancured said:
I've done some research and Garmin are saying that Waypoints and Viapoints are essentially the same thing. I think that the problem may be that I'm using waypoints to 'force' the route along certain roads as opposed to using the routing tool as you say.
Peter
Click to expand...

Essentially they are, except you can give your own name / annotate a wayoint, which you cannot do to a via point. Waypints will also appear and be permanently listed / shown in your Favourites. This becomes tedious after a while.

Certainly I agree that your use of waypoints to force a route along is probably not the best. When married to re-calculate it's a likely disaster.

A good tip. If you go off route your device will always announce it. Off routes can occur for a host of reasons. Sometimes something as simple as a temporary loss of the full satellite spectrum can cause it. Sharp hairpins, too. If you have the device on prompted mode and click NO, you can usually zoom the map in or out reasonably fast whilst on the move (bods moan about mobile phone users, but will quite happily play about with their Garmin and not look at the road at all:augie) to simply pick the route up again. If it's obvious the road you are on is going miles out of the way, simply stop and retrace or hit recalculate. Doing this may take you backwards if you have missed a waypoint through going off route..... but that is nothing you cannot sort out.

PS A map is still a good idea.
 
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