Loading MRA Routes Garmin Zumo XT

[Les]

Thanks for the reply, always interested in navigation techniques etc.. regarding Streetview, this can be accessed in Mapsource (my chosen routing tool) by right clicking on any point in the mapping and selecting 'View in Google Maps'.

I didn't know you could do that! Is it a proper street view, not just a satellite view?

It opens up with a little menu which includes satellite imagery, which can easily be switched to mapping or street view.

[colirv]

When using the HERE maps, the route in my tests did not automatically calculate the route from gpx v1.1. It stripped out the shaping points, kept the Via Points, but the original route is kept intact - until it is forced to recalculate anyway.

Mine kept the shaping points in, but stripped them out of 1.2 - the reverse of what you found!

MRA offers the option to email a route using whatever gpx format you care to specify. If you send an email to your smart phone, Garmin Drive will pick it up and it can be transferred to the XT's Tracks and Trip Planner immediately.

Of course if you're using a tablet, which is what I will normally be doing, you simply save the gpx on the tablet, open it in Drive and send it via bluetooth to the XT. This for me alone justifies the cost of MRA. But from the PC that is a useful tip.

Another benefit - the route that Basecamp calculated differed at one point from the route that MRA calculated, shown as a track in Basecamp. MRA was right, Basecamp used a silly little shortcut, as it sometimes does. The nice thing is that the XT itself got it right, which surprised me!

[jfheath]

When you are going point to point, there are bound to be differences. If that matters, then add a shaping point to force the calculation to include a particular road. I am still trying to work out what the XT actually does.

It recalculated my route the other day after I skipped a misplaced Via Point that I didn't want to visit. 9 miles further on it decided to take a main road route to reach the next Via Point 8 miles further on. My route was shorter, but took half a minute longer than the faster route.

I ignored the satnav and went on my route anyway. It tried to get me to turn round to go its faster way. I didn't. I expected it to give up and realise that the way ahead was now faster. It didn't. It kept trying to get me to go back to take its faster road. With just one mile ahead to the next Via Point, it was still trying to take me back to where I had left its new route which was now 7 miles back, and then take the 'faster route' which was about 12 miles from there. So a journey of 19 miles to reach a point just one mile ahead. So the priority seemed to be to stick to the route that it had calculated, rather than to get to the next Via Point.

With half a mile to go, it recalculated and decided to go straight ahead. There were no shaping points to cause this behaviour.

I have yet to repeat the exercise before reporting it, but I have the screenshots.

I'm stumped. I cannot work out the logic that it is using. But I will !

[colirv]

I'm stumped. I cannot work out the logic that it is using. But I will !

Gan' on, as they say up here!

[Richard_R]

Of course if you're using a tablet, which is what I will normally be doing, you simply save the gpx on the tablet, open it in Drive and send it via bluetooth to the XT. This for me alone justifies the cost of MRA. But from the PC that is a useful tip.

That is what I do. With MRA being cloud based it is easy to access preplanned routes from a phone or tablet and simply save them locally then use Drive to transfer to the XT.

Another benefit - the route that Basecamp calculated differed at one point from the route that MRA calculated, shown as a track in Basecamp. MRA was right, Basecamp used a silly little shortcut, as it sometimes does. The nice thing is that the XT itself got it right, which surprised me!

Two more benefits of MRA.
If you ride with others who use MRA you can share routes and collaborate on creating them.
With my level of MRA at least I can also create a route in Here maps and overlay the same route in TomTom Gold and iron out the differences between the two sorts of software so that both TomTom and Garmin GPS direct users down exactly the same route. I used to use this feature a lot when I had a TomTom GPS. It's amazing how the two sorts of software quite often pick subtly different options for navigating routes and when you are riding with a group of people using both systems unless you sort out the differences it can cause quite a bit of confusion.

[jfheath]

When using the HERE maps, the route in my tests did not automatically calculate the route from gpx v1.1. It stripped out the shaping points, kept the Via Points, but the original route is kept intact - until it is forced to recalculate anyway.

Mine kept the shaping points in, but stripped them out of 1.2 - the reverse of what you found!

2 years later, I've just spotted this error on my part.

in between times I posted detailed info about 1.1 and 1.2 from MRA. Here and following page.

in a nutshell :
v1.1 contains only route points, via and shaping. No ghost points to plot the route. Zumo has to calculate it.
v1.2 contains a ghost point plot of the entire route, but keeps only the Via points. Shaping points are all removed

I'll go back and correct my original post, but keep the error in the section that was quoted. Otherwise the thread will make no sense.