Frustrating last hour of ride with XT

[Stu]

Having just done a 3 day trip to Wales I came across this issue in that if I missed a turn knowing full well where I was going and purposefully missing a part of the route in favour for a better route

I had major issues with it re routing to take me back miles down the road and in some cases trying to take me to the original route despite me being closer to a point I can join!

I also had the same coming home too

I had a route set for home and once within my city I had to pop to my work place and the XT gave me some extremely off re calculations!

IMO the recalculations where less than useful this could a major issue if you was to get re routed in a place you have no clue where you are or know the area especially if it takes you on some very undesirable roads like it was trying to do with me! these where single track and in some cases farm tracks!

This is totally unacceptable for Garmin to allow this sort of thing to be happening especially when we are supposed to be out having a good time! not getting stressed out and having to stop to sort a route out

I think we need to try and get support for other XT owners on this and all email Garmin so they start to listen!

It was that bad I was contemplating on buying a TomTom Rider

[Peobody]

It was that bad I was contemplating on buying a TomTom Rider

I have been there! It is a shame that we can't trust the XT to provide a reasonable route calculation. We don't have a chance of getting Garmin to fix it if all of their support folks are like the one I dealt with. She was unreceptive to the possibility of a problem. It reminded me of an experience with the support folks of the website of a retirement plan administrator I had contracted with for the corporation I was working for. The UI was terrible but it became apparent very quickly that the support folks were not empowered to collect and pass problems and suggestions on to developers. They had a "this is just the way it is" mentality. A regional bank I was working with at the time also had a problematic web interface for a treasury management product but they were transparent enough to admit that it was a third party product that they had little control over. It makes me wonder the extent to which Garmin is outsourcing their programming and how much control they have over the end products.

[Stu]

@Peobody one thing I also noticed is that route calculated differently to MyRoute App despite having the same settings!

It was that which led me to ignore the XT's calculations!

[colirv]

I have to say this has reinforced my long-held practice of never allowing recalculations on the road!

[Peobody]

I have to say this has reinforced my long-held practice of never allowing recalculations on the road!

What is your procedure for avoiding that in the event that you need to skip a stop?

[jfheath]

I am undecided about allowing / not allowing recalculations, but since recalculating creates more issues than it solves I have recently started to turn it off.

I create the majority of my route points as Waypoints since I got the XT. The reason is that the XT will often change the name of my route points to something else that I may not recognise. However, it never changes the name of points that were first created as Waypoints. I like to add the mileage to the name of my route points. So I have to create Waypoints to ensure that the name is kept.

Once in the route, I set most of the points to be Shaping points, including my stopping places. I also make an additional Waypoint just after the stopping place. This is set as a Via Point and it is placed a mile or so down the road that I will take whether or not I decide to sto for coffee.

I am assuming that the coffee stop requires a short detour into a town or village.

So I will have:
123 Coffee Stop as a Shaping Point
125 Coffee Exit as a Via Point.



This gives me a number of options:

1. I can ignore the instructions to head for the 123 Coffee Stop. XT will navigate me to the 123, and if recalc is on it will keep telling me to go back, or it may find another way to get me to 123. If recalc is off, the XT will go silent, and I will be no longer on the magenta line.
   Whatever I do, I will be passing through 125 Coffee Exit, but before I reach that, I will meet the original route from the shaping point at 123 Coffee Stop as it heads to 125 Coffee Exit.
   Whether autorecalc is on or off, the navigation continues ahead. The XT doesn't care that I missed a shaping point, as long as I am on the route.
   
   In this situation I don't have to do anything except make my own way towards the Via Point at 125 Coffee Exit
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2. I can press Skip. The name of the next route point in the XT's list is displayed. I can opt to skip it or not. If I skip, then the entire route is recalculated uisng my current position and the remaining route points. This happens whether auto-recalc is turned on or off.
   -
3. I can press Edit Route. This allows me to skip the next Shaping Point or the next Via Point. It doesn't tell you which comes next in its list though - so having the mileage as part of the name of the point is very useful in this situation. WHichever you choose to skip, it removes that route point from its trip list, and uses your current position and the remainign route points to calculate all of the remaining sections. This happens whether auto-recalc is turned on or off.
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4. If things really get messy on the XT, I can stop, restart the route and select closest entry point. This will take me from where I am to the nearest point on the route. It is important to check the preview map when using CEP - it can produce weird results which will be obviously wrong on the map. It is alway worth tapping Skip after tapping Go. Not to skip the point, but to see the name of the point that the XT is heading for next. Having recognisable names and the milage really helps.
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5. At the 123 Coffee Stop, I will often check out the route on the satnav, and it is not unknown for me to mess it up. The tiuch sensitive screen gets very sensitive when the XT gets warm - like when it has been in my pocket - and it responds to my finger before i touch the screen. Too late. I've messed up the route.
   
   But the route can always be restarted. It used to be that this loaded up the version that I have just messed up, but it seems that this has now been fixed. Check it though.
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6. If you have the copy of the transferred route (before it was imported), then you can delete the present route from the XT, and re-import the original. Start the route and select the 125 Coffee Exit from the list of displayed Via Points. (Normally the original route is retained - but Basecamp transfers the routes to internal storage to a file called temp.gpx and that gets over-written everytime you transfer additional routes after re-connecting the USB cable. So if you have extra stuff to transfer and you need to re-establish the USB connection, transfer everything again if it is going to internal storage.
   
   Routes transferred via Drive, from MRA, by sharing, placed directly in the GPX folder, or transferred from BAsecamp to SD card are all safe.)
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7. I've come back to add this point, that I forgot to include. On the XT Trip list it is possible to change any shaping point to a Via Point. The XT makes this alteration correctly, and the point will then show up in the list of destinations when you start the route.
   
   It doesn't work so well if you change a Via Point to a Shaping Point. The XT is very likely to give it a new name, and position the shaping point in a different location. Garmin have reproduced this fault and acknowledged it as a fault, but as yet have not fixed it as of V6.50.

Even if AutoRecalc is turned off, if you press Skip, the route has to be recalculated - so that still happens.

[fatfeet]

Once in the route, I set most of the points to be Shaping points, including my stopping places. I also make an additional Waypoint just after the stopping place. This is set as a Via Point and it is placed a mile or so down the road that I will take whether or not I decide to sto for coffee.

I am assuming that the coffee stop requires a short detour into a town or village.

So I will have:
123 Coffee Stop as a Shaping Point
125 Coffee Exit as a Via Point.

this is exactly how I use my XT, I did try to explain it in another thread, but the above is much better. also the rest of jfheath's post explains it well, I used this technique recently while away on a tour of Wales, Eire and Scotland.

if you can get your head around this way of doing things it works a treat, but I believe we both use BC, which in itself causes less issues. I mean this in relation to planning and using routes.

[Peobody]

if you can get your head around this way of doing things it works a treat...

I am struggling with this To my thinking, shaping points are not visible on the XT other than as blue dots and as a point that can be skipped. They don't appear as stops in any of the ways the I know of to look into how far away coffee or lunch is. Also, as shaping points, the name is not displayed. If I see a place called Coffee Cup on the left and one called Yummy Donuts up ahead on the right is it up to me to remember which one I selected as the stop? This is important because I do research into coffee and lunch stops for wife appropriateness, but I route plan in BC so many weeks ahead that I don't remember the name of every planned coffee and lunch place. This process may be one of those things that I must try in order to understand.

[fatfeet]

They don't appear as stops in any of the ways the I know of to look into how far away coffee or lunch is.

once you have planned the route,
1. change all points to shaping points within that planned route, (not alert on arrival)
2. then all the points 1m after your scheduled stops, change them to announced. (alert on arrival) these will then become via points and show up as green flags,
and if you have this set up in trip data view it will show as next stop.

on my screen in trip data, I have,
1. arrival time to end of trip, and
2. hours and minutes to next stop (via point) and
3. miles to end of route (for fuel etc)

As a point to note, what I usually do is; once I have uploaded the route, I then disconnect and scroll through all points (actually on the XT not on BC) and see if, and what the via points have been changed to, I then make a note of these. you then will only have 3 or 4 via points on your route, every 1h 30m for example.

like I've wrote, once you've mastered it, it does work well, until of course it doesn't.
I have learned like others to NEVER EVER press recalculate, if you are in an area you don't know it be a complete pain in the arse.

[fatfeet]

to add to my above post, I usually do the same for the start of each trip. I usually put the first point around 1 mile from my actual location and make that a via point.

when I then start this route when asked where to go first I always chose that first via point.

if you are on a multi day trip, I always have my end of day via point at the place where I am staying and then when I get up the next day, after many beers, I can then start the new route from where I am and chose my first via point a mile away and I let the XT take me to that point any which way it wants.

these are my recent findings of how XT reacts to via point and closest entry point
on a recent trip when I started a route and chose "closest entry point" it routed me to a completely different place than my first via point, even though the via point was closer. I recognised this as it was in my local area.

explain below
my first via point from home was just the other side of buxton, heading toward cat and fiddle, around 10 miles away
from where I live there are two routes to get there, one over long hill and one along A6 and through Buxton.
when I chose closest entry point the XT routed me out toward Cheshire, M56 and M6 and picked up route somewhere near Crewe, this was no where near my actual first via point, this took me to about 25-30 miles along my route.
when I chose the first via point, which I had named when making the route (and noted the name in case it had changed) it routed me direct over long hill to the via point. although long hill was shut but I knew that.

worth considering when using closest entry point