Zumo 660 - Request for Information Please

[jfheath]

I once owned and loved a Zumo 660.

I've been looking through the notes and tests that I carried out when I was trying to understand its behaviour, and they are not complete - partly because I got lured by the possibility of trading it in for a 590, before I finished the tests !

At the time, Basecamp was the product to use for producing maps on the 660 - we were constantly told by Garmin to use Basecamp. Basecamp (to me) was rather an unruly beast at the time, and frequently died on me. But then it went through some upgrades. It is now upgraded beyond the capabilities of the 660, so Mapsource is once again the tool to use. If BC is used, the navigation 'may' behave very oddly.

I know that the 660 recognises the BC Via and Shaping points - but any point can be 'ignored' if you rejoin the mageanta line (just like shaping poinnts in the 590 and later zumos). Shaping points do not announce, Via Points do.

Yet Mapsource has no facility to specify via/shaping or alerting/not-alerting. From my test notes, the behaviour seems to depend on where the points fall when you place them. If there is no named feature where the point is dropped, it is a shaping point and appears as a small square in the trip list - and will not announce. If it has a name, it becomes a Via point and appears as a green disc in the trip list - and will announce. Larger towns have larger discs. The same is true in the later Zumos - but you can change them. The 660 refers to both kinds of points as Vias.

But I could really use a couple of pieces of information - if anyone can provide any detail please.

1. A screen shot of a route on the 660 showing any mid-route points. I cannot remember how they appeared on the screen - if at all.
2. If using Basecamp to create a route, is it better for the 660 to use all Via Points ?
3. Can tracks be displayed at the same time as maps on the Zumo 660 screen ?

Many thanks if you are able to provide me with answers to any of the above three questions.

[Les]

I'm a long term user of a 660 and Mapsource, so probably no help to you, I just create routes and then drag it to where I want to go, works a treat.

Don't need or use announcements, and unlike the two 'Nuvi' units I also use, if I go off route, the Zumo doesn't automatically re-route.

Any 'Shaping' or 'Via' points show up on the route as a number.

[jfheath]

Thanks for reposnding @Les

I'm a long term user of a 660 and Mapsource, so probably no help to you, I just create routes and then drag it to where I want to go, works a treat.

On the contrary - I'm trying to remember what it used to display. Untypically, I have very few screen shots. I remember that I liked it. I remember my display was more angular than that shown in the manual. I've used too many other Zumos to remember the other stuff - I've been hunting through YouTube videos and google images for screen shots of routes in action - without success.

Any 'Shaping' or 'Via' points show up on the route as a number.

Do they ? Crikey - I don't remember that at all.

[MSTOCK27370]

I'm not a 660 owner or user, so take this cautiously. I do use two newer Zumos, and also currently use a 550.

With Mapsource for routing on the 550 (I think the 660 will do the same), if I place the routing point directly ON an intersection it gets treated as a shaping point and it is NOT announced. You can see this in the route when the point will be described as First St and Second St. If I place the point just AFTER the intersection, the route will treat it as a Via point and it will be announced. You will see this point as an address, not an intersection of two streets. I place my points after the intersection so that the route will give me accurate disctances to the next turn. Immediately after making the turn, it will display the distance to the Via point, usually just a few hundred feet the way I place them. Then after I pass the Via point, I get the correct distance to the next turn.

If you just use shaping points, then you shouldn't recalculate the route, because all of the shaping points will be ignored and you'll get a direct route calculated to your end of the route. If you use Via points, the route should allow for recalculation as long as the settings used on Mapsource and the Zumo are the same - and you have enough Via points.

[jfheath]

If you just use shaping points, then you shouldn't recalculate the route, because all of the shaping points will be ignored and you'll get a direct route calculated to your end of the route. If you use Via points, the route should allow for recalculation as long as the settings used on Mapsource and the Zumo are the same - and you have enough Via points.

That is an interesting comment, thank you. I hadn't encountered that on the 660. It doesn't tally with the notes that I wrote myself a few years ago. But I may not have been looking for that at the time. So if that happens, I wasn't aware of it. I've been looking at video 'training' on the 660. No one delves that far into it - they explain the simple stuff that you can learn just by using it, they don't venture into running routes and following route points. Not even Garmin - not that I have found, anyway.

I had noted a distinction between 'placed' points - where the point placed coincided with a known location or road, and a 'drag and drop' point where there was no particular name. The placed points had a green disc icon in the route list. The drag and drop point had a small dot/square. Only the placed points announced. The drag and drop points didn't. Basecamp does the same sort of thing - but of course, with BC you can change via/shaping. On the 660, All points could be by-passed if you rejoined the magenta line later. But my notes say that the route was trying to get me to go back to either point if I missed them.

This isn't an argument, 'cos I don't know. Its just relaying the result of the only tests that I ever carried out on the 660 when leaving the route.

[danham]

I have to work from memory because my 660 was retired a lot of brain cells ago. But I did do a lot of riding with it, so this may help...

In general, shaping points created in BC, especially ones created by dragging the route, were often unreliable. Garmin always claimed that BC and the 660 are incompatible, so I learned to "flight test" routes very carefully before relying on them. I set the 660 to ask before recalculating and would almost never say Yes, preferring to use the purple stripe to visually guide me back onto my route.

All of this worked fairly well for most routes, and many of them consisted of mostly shaping points, with a "hard" Via thrown in if the flight test on the 660 showed a shaping point misbehaving. But there were some routes that the 660 refused to import or navigate or recalculated without permission and butchered. I learned to keep them on the SD card so I could cancel, delete and re-import on the road, which sometimes cured the problem.

My 660 battery is totally dead, so I'm charging it to see if it recovers enough for the GPS to boot, in which case I'll try for some pix.

-dan

[danham]

Still not enough juice to disconnect and connect to my computer for a screen shot, but I can verify that the preview map for a route shows orange flags for every shaping point (even though the 660 screen calls them Via Points).

-dan