82b - Recording Travel History

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Manual and Automatic Recording

There are three ways in which you can record where you have been, what time,

Track Visibility on XT Screen : Settings ? Map & Vehicle -> Map Layers -> Travel History  ✓

Control Automatic Recording of Travel History Settings -> Device -> Travel History  ✓

(This also turns on/off 'myTrends' and 'Where I have Been' as well as turning off the recording of Track Logs)

Automatically Recorded Tracks can be accessed in two ways

By Connecting the XT to a computer with the USB cable
  • Using the USB and accessing Internal Storage / GPX / CurrentTrackLog.gpx for the most recent tracks
    or Internal Storage / GPX / Archive for the last 20 or so Archive logs which are numbered consecutively

  • Using the USB cable to Access Internal Storage / .System / GPX / DriveLog.gpx for the most recent tracks;
    or ...Internal Storage / .System / GPX / Archive for the most recent Archived DriveLognn.gpx files.


    As far as I can tell, the DriveLog files are duplicates of the CurrentTrackLog and Archive files.
    Both seemed to be turned off when Settings -> Device -> Travel History is turned off.

    The .System menu is not visible by default. Enable it by entering the Hidden Configuration and Settings Menu:

    Main Screen -> View Map -> Speed Button -> 10 sec press the Speedo top centre -> Configuration and Settings
    Select MTP Settings and tick 'Show .System'.

    •

    From the Zumo XT Screen
  • From the Track App on the main screen followed by the track and pin icon in the top left corner.
  • From the Tracks App which can be accessed from the Apps menu on the main screen.



    Both of these methods show the same XT screen. There are two tabs down the right hand side of the landscape view. The calculator style icon will display all of the automatically recorded tracks showing the date and time that they were started and the distance covered in each track.

    Basecamp has a number of tools to review your automatically recorded tracks - include drawing the map, producing a graph of recorded speed and elevation and pinpointing the location on the map. You can also Zoom in on particular section of the graph. This is available on the Graph Tab of the track, as shown in Pic 2.

    More detail can be extracted from the Properties Tab where each recorded point is shown in a table format. I notice that items such as speed and elevation are recorded in the log files. However, the Basecamp values do not match exactly the data from the XT: The lat/long coordinates are displayed to fewer decimal places, the speed is different, and so it the 'course' - ie the compass bearing - so I assume that both of these are calculated from the lat / long co-ordinates and time, rather than the value recorded by the XT.

    When the data from the track log is exported by Basecamp as a gpx file, some of this data is not included.


    • It is also possible to record a track manually

     Unlike active logs, these are not subject to the XT's file management system - in that the track log will not become fragmented over a few active logs. You start the recorder whenever you want - from the track menu. You can stop it whenever you like from the track menu. Even if you stop overnight, it will continue with the recording when the XT is woken up again. When you stop the recorder, it prompts you to Save. By default it saves the file in the GPX folder, with the start date and time as a file name.

    I have recently had problems with 'broken' active track logs - my XT leaves a gap often coinciding with route recalculations and requests to do a U-turn. The manually recorded tracks have not been affected by this issue.

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    The information on these pages has been acquired from personal experience of using and testing the behaviour of Basecamp and my Zumo XT. I have no links with Garmin, and these pages should not be regarded as instructions. They are presented for interest only. The contents of these pages must not be shared, copied, transmitted, redistributed or re-published in any form without my permission. (C) JHeath 2021.