XT all over the place in Belgium, Luxembourg and France

[Wapping123]

I have just come back from Belgium, Luxembourg and France.

Running properly created routes, made in MyRoute, my XT was:

A. Regularly showing the positional cursor about 100 yards off the road I was riding along.

B. Regularly losing satellite connection.

I would say that today alone, on the journey from Vianden to Calais, these two problems occurred at least 20 times. As the total distance from Vianden to Calais is 288 miles, that is a failure roughly every 14 miles.

As a check, I asked the XT to take me home in London from the Chunnel ie. The device created the route itself. It behaved perfectly. I am left with the only conclusion being that the XT is struggling to run the bespoke routes, its memory and processing powers being therefore diminished. The diminishing is sufficient for it to lose track of its position and / or it cannot simultaneously track satellites.

My 1600, running the same routes (at the same time) through my smart phone and TFT screen on the bike, behaved perfectly. This tells me that it has to be an XT problem.

Similarly, the XT’s speed indicator (which should be very accurate) sometimes showed me riding at say 55 mph, when I was closer to 75 mph on the motorway. That can only be down to the device being unable to process the data relayed by the satellites properly.

[sussamb]

Assuming you don't have 2 maps loaded covering the same area, as that can cause some of the issues you mention, you should try a master reset, the issues you describe certainly aren't typical

[Wapping123]

Thank you.

My fist task on the first evening was to check that I hadn’t inadvertently selected some OSM maps, which I had loaded onto an SD card in the device.

They were all unticked.

I agree it is far from normal, not least as I can’t find anything on the internet where anyone has experienced a similar problem.

I am a long term user of Garmin GPS devices, right back to the Quest and earlier with other companies’ efforts. I think I am (modestly) pretty good on what makes them tick. The only time I have encountered anything similar before was when one BMW branded Navigator IV lost its ability to track satellites and when the brand new 660 series, needed a rapid software update from Garmin not long after launch.

It really is very strange what I am seeing on the XT. The device is still in warranty and the seller has agreed a full refund, as clearly something is wrong with it. Pending the refund, I have ordered a new XT. I can then try it out, using the same bike and the same routes. If it works, great; it was indeed a one off. If it doesn’t and it displays the same faults, then the problem has to be something else. We shall see.

[Oop North John]

There does seem to be a problem with routes which aren't A to B ie have external planned waypoints in them causing all sorts of stupid routing if you dare to go off the planned route. When it happens, in my experience, the breadcrumb track recording is adversely affected.

Not seen it loose the plot over where it is, almost as if the rubber banding to the roads has been lost?

[Wapping123]

It is not a routing problem that I encountered.

It is a problem whereby the device loses satellite fixes and / or shows the cursor’s position several tens of yards off the road.

As soon as it wakes up and finds the satellites again, everything goes back to normal for a few miles, until it repeats. And so on, all day long.

[jfheath]

Hi @Wapping123 .

I don't have an answer to your question, but I'm sure interested in the circumstances that might have caused this.
Any chance you can send me a copy if the gpx file created by MRA please ?

Do you know which maps you used in MRA ?

When you started the route did you select Closest Entry Point or the start point.
If you chose the start point, did you ride through it after setting off.

[rbentnail]

Have you looked at the satellite tracking data? Touch and hold the top left corner. I'd compare when it's working well and not.

[sussamb]

Do you have a 'dashcam' running? I had a cheap one once which interfered with routing etc on my satnav. Replacing it with a more expensive version solved the issue

[Wapping123]

I don’t have a dash cam.

[Wapping123]

Hi @Wapping123 .

I don't have an answer to your question, but I'm sure interested in the circumstances that might have caused this.
Any chance you can send me a copy if the gpx file created by MRA please ?

Do you know which maps you used in MRA ?

When you started the route did you select Closest Entry Point or the start point.
If you chose the start point, did you ride through it after setting off.

Hello Jeff, good to hear from you.

Later this week, I’ll dig out the GPX files of the routes where the device malfunctioned.

When I am away I generally know where I’ll be staying the night before. For example, I know I’ll be staying in town ABC in hotel XYZ. For the next day’s ride, I will create a route starting say, half a mile from the hotel’s front door. As a rule I give this point the name ‘Start’. As it’s (in Garmin’s terminology) a via point, I can select it as as point for the XT to take me to, from where the rest of the day’s route will run normally thereafter. I do find this method very reliable. I rarely if ever, create a route that starts exactly at the front door of where I am staying.

From time to time, I do also use the ‘Closest entry point’ method, too. I find that, if I have created the route in MyRoute’s HERE map, that the XT will usually direct me to a reasonably sensible point on the route and everything works as it should thereafter.

I cannot for the life of me work out why my XT malfunctioned, regularly losing satellite connection and / or regularly saying I was ‘off route, recalculate yes or no’ when I was plainly on the route and / or sometimes showing the bike’s positional cursor perhaps 50 yards off the route.

The only logical reason I can think of, is that I have mounted the XT on a mount on my new 1600, this mount screwing into where the BMW roundel caps off the steering column tube. I am wondering if some electrical interference is affecting the device? I only wonder this as I know, from experience, that if I put my smart phone (running BMW’s Connected navigation app, the route being displayed on the 1600’s large TFT screen) in the bike’s dedicated phone cubby hole, it will often lose it’s GPS position, too. If though I put the phone into my tank bag, it will perform perfectly. See this:

https://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthrea ... hole-thing

That though does not explain why my XT ran perfectly when I was back in the UK, running an A to B route, from the Chunnel to my house in central London, that route being created by the XT by me saying to it ‘Take me home’. I ran this as a specific test, including going off route deliberately. It performed well.

https://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthrea ... ost6394223

As you will see in post #38, there was though still one very odd thing the device did do, right at the end of the route, generating a very strange road name. I have never seen it do that before.