Motorcycle versus Car routing foibles

[OldRS]

Apologies if this has been debated at length over many years but, despite trawling through many posts, I have not seen it mentioned.

When I moved from my 550 to my 590 (which Garmin replaced with a 595 after my repeated complaints about the almost useless screen visibility and negligible battery life) I was struck by the bizarre habit of the 590/5 in routing me off motorways at almost every interchange and back onto the same motorway or into minor roads running parallel with main roads even when set to fastest etc route. After a bit of investigation I found that this only happens when it is set to motorcycle and it does not happen with car routing. Any thoughts as to why Garmin think that this is desirable? Does anyone know how to prevent its occurrence? My current solution when I simply want a "without thought" fastest bike route is to change the 595 to "car mode" but that means that I am not recording mileage or fuel usage.

My 550 does not demonstrate this behaviour.

TIA

Richard

[jfheath]

Welcome to the forums.

I don't think that the car / motorcycle setting is the cause of the problem.

Various settings in the Zumo are saved separately for the car and for the motorcycle operation modes.

So for example - in car mode you could have :
navigation mode = faster time
avoidances set to avoid motorways and ferries
Off Road Route recalculation = automatic

in bike mode you could have
navigation mode = shorter distance
avoidances set to disable u-turns
Off Road Route recalculation = off.

The choice of vehicle will determine which settings the Zumo uses. I suspect that your car and your motorcycle settings are configured differently. If your bike is set to take a shorter route, then when the Zumo spots one, it will take it, however ridiculous it seems to be at the time.

The motorway exit issue is common when in the uk, the slip road appears as the motorway curves to the left. This makes the slip road a shorter route. But it is unlikely to be a faster route.
In my experience, the Zumos produce much more predictable routing when they are set to faster time.

Beware the mode that the Zumo is set in it will change - possibly without you noticing. Make sure you check before you start altering your preferences.
It knows which cradle it is in. The car cradle or the bike cradle. It may switch vehicle mode when you clip it into place. But it has a small 'gotcha'. The bike cradle doesn't switch it to bike mode as you might think. Likewise, putting it in the car cradle doesn't switch it to car mode. There is a logic to this that makes sense, but it is bound to catch you out at some time. What it does is it switches the Zumo to the mode that it was in the last time you used the cradle.

So - you decide to experiment, and the best place to do this to keep the battery topped up and the brightness at 100%, is to sit in the car. You remember what you have just read and remember to switch the zumo to bike settings, because you want to configure it for the bike.
Brilliant. Take the unit out of the cradle. The next time you clip it into the car cradle, the unit will switch to bike mode.

If the zumo is configured exactly the same way for both car and bike, i have never noticed any difference in the routing behaviour.


The 590/595 are pretty good bits of kit, but after getting used to the 550, they will drive you mad and have you cursing Garmin every time you pick it up. But the issue is much more to do with what I consider to be Garmin's inability to produce adequate documentation, rather than with the unit itself. The 590 and 595 both have a couple of faults, but they are easy to work round once you know about them.

I use Basecamp for planning routes. Nothing else comes close for the Zumo if you have a Mac or PC. Others will disagree, but from various forums it seems that they have more problems. Use the Private message system on this forum to send me a polite message with your email address. I'll send you a document which goes through much if the stuff that you need to know to stop you tearing your hair out. It Will take a few days cos I dont have access to my computer at present.

John

[OldRS]

Welcome to the forums.

I don't think that the car / motorcycle setting is the cause of the problem.

Various settings in the Zumo are saved separately for the car and for the motorcycle operation modes.

So for example - in car mode you could have :
navigation mode = faster time
avoidances set to avoid motorways and ferries
Off Road Route recalculation = automatic

in bike mode you could have
navigation mode = shorter distance
avoidances set to disable u-turns
Off Road Route recalculation = off.

The choice of vehicle will determine which settings the Zumo uses. I suspect that your car and your motorcycle settings are configured differently. If your bike is set to take a shorter route, then when the Zumo spots one, it will take it, however ridiculous it seems to be at the time.

The motorway exit issue is common when in the uk, the slip road appears as the motorway curves to the left. This makes the slip road a shorter route. But it is unlikely to be a faster route.
In my experience, the Zumos produce much more predictable routing when they are set to faster time.

Beware the mode that the Zumo is set in it will change - possibly without you noticing. Make sure you check before you start altering your preferences.
It knows which cradle it is in. The car cradle or the bike cradle. It may switch vehicle mode when you clip it into place. But it has a small 'gotcha'. The bike cradle doesn't switch it to bike mode as you might think. Likewise, putting it in the car cradle doesn't switch it to car mode. There is a logic to this that makes sense, but it is bound to catch you out at some time. What it does is it switches the Zumo to the mode that it was in the last time you used the cradle.

So - you decide to experiment, and the best place to do this to keep the battery topped up and the brightness at 100%, is to sit in the car. You remember what you have just read and remember to switch the zumo to bike settings, because you want to configure it for the bike.
Brilliant. Take the unit out of the cradle. The next time you clip it into the car cradle, the unit will switch to bike mode.

If the zumo is configured exactly the same way for both car and bike, i have never noticed any difference in the routing behaviour.


The 590/595 are pretty good bits of kit, but after getting used to the 550, they will drive you mad and have you cursing Garmin every time you pick it up. But the issue is much more to do with what I consider to be Garmin's inability to produce adequate documentation, rather than with the unit itself. The 590 and 595 both have a couple of faults, but they are easy to work round once you know about them.

I use Basecamp for planning routes. Nothing else comes close for the Zumo if you have a Mac or PC. Others will disagree, but from various forums it seems that they have more problems. Use the Private message system on this forum to send me a polite message with your email address. I'll send you a document which goes through much if the stuff that you need to know to stop you tearing your hair out. It Will take a few days cos I dont have access to my computer at present.

John

Thanks for your quick reply John

I have, I think, worked through all the possibilities of routing preferences and find the difference between motorcycle and car routing even when set to identical preferences. Even more peculiar: if I ignore a, clearly slower, road the arrival time almost always drops if I remain on the original road. This would, I agree, suggest a preference difference but I've never been able to identify it. Bike mode will even direct me into lay-bys formed alongside upgraded A roads etc. This has been the case in all three of my 590/595s, the first of which was bought when the 590 was released. As a consequence I have several sets of hardware and I could build an indoors car and bike mount system for side-by side comparison. That would address the ludicrous life of the internal battery.

Thank you I will send you a PM when I am permitted to do so - I think that I have have submitted a few more posts before I acquire that privilege.

Regards

Richard

[JohnnyRidesAlone]

FYI, I always run all my Zumo's in Car mode while on the bike for this exact reason

[jfheath]

FYI, I always run all my Zumo's in Car mode while on the bike for this exact reason

I'm not questioning this discovery, because I haven't tested it thoroughly. I just have not noticed a difference. But I would probably have dismissed it for other reasons if I had spotted one.

The reason for that is as follows.

If you create a route in Basecamp and the Zumo uses the identical map, then the route that the Zumo follows is absolutely identical to the one that Basecamp created. Unless the Zumo is forced to recalculate it. In this case the Zumo is likely to come up with different routing. Basecamp uses a fixed speed profile for different roads. The Zumo uses more up to date information, including your own riding profile that it builds up over time.

But Basecamp sends the vehicle and routing preferences along with the route. If you change either one of those, it forces the entire route to be recalculated by the Zumo.

If you create the route on the Zumo, or on third party mapping programs, then the Zumo will calculate the route anyway. But it will calculate a different route depending on the time of day and the day of the week that you ride/drive it. That information is historic and is stored as part of the map data, and is updated with each new release of the map.

Putting two units side by side may give the comparison that you want, but both units would gave to be set to their initial factory settings to destroy any profile data. For the reasons given above, you cannot test the same route at different times. I do not know whether either machine stores a different personal riding / driving profile for car and for motorcycle.

I have had the 595 and XT on my bike at the same time and have not seen any difference for the same route on the same map. But I wasn't testing - I was just getting used to the XT, and wasn't sure that I knew what it was doing.

Taking an old road layby as part of a route has to be a mapping issue - but it is still a navigable road, and may still have the national speed limit - so if it is shorter distance, it is also faster. But I would have expected the map data to have taken care of that, as it is essentially a give way junction to re-enter the main road.

[jfheath]

Bump. Did you discover anything else about this behaviour ?

[Peobody]

This is an interesting discussion. I have an XT and do my mapping in Basecamp. One thing I don't believe is that the route on the
XT is always identical to the one in Basecamp. Maybe it is on the 590 & 595 but I have had occasions where Basecamp shows the route staying on a main road but the XT will route through a neighborhood then back to the main road. Whatever causes this is consistent because that last time it happened I deleted the route from the XT, verified it in Basecamp, and then sent it to the XT again. The XT produced that same neighborhood route. It took two waypoints in the stretch of main road that was being routed around to force the XT to stay on it. I could not find anything in the settings that would explain this. I try to make sure to use the same map in Basecamp as the one on the XT but also have the "Always match route to the map on my device when transferring" option turned off. I wish I still had that route to see if Car routing would have made any difference.

[rbentnail]

This is an interesting discussion. I have an XT and do my mapping in Basecamp. One thing I don't believe is that the route on the
XT is always identical to the one in Basecamp. Maybe it is on the 590 & 595 but I have had occasions where Basecamp shows the route staying on a main road but the XT will route through a neighborhood then back to the main road. Whatever causes this is consistent because that last time it happened I deleted the route from the XT, verified it in Basecamp, and then sent it to the XT again. The XT produced that same neighborhood route. It took two waypoints in the stretch of main road that was being routed around to force the XT to stay on it. I could not find anything in the settings that would explain this. I try to make sure to use the same map in Basecamp as the one on the XT but also have the "Always match route to the map on my device when transferring" option turned off. I wish I still had that route to see if Car routing would have made any difference.

I've noticed this behavior as well in my new XT. I have to add 2 or 3 shaping points in 300-600 yds of road to get the XT to stay on the route Base Camp is showing me. For some reason the XT just veers off only to come back to the exact same road I'm on within a mile from where I'm at. I'd sure like to know why this thing is making these random detours.

So far I've tried recalculating the routes in Base Camp with CN 2023.1 maps. I've tried using the Custom Map feature, this worked well with the 595. Nothing so far seems to help.