New User - Mysterious Problem with my Zumo XT

[Kwaka54]

Hello all,
I'm new to this forum so if my question has already been answered, I apologise!

I recently bought a Zumo XT, having used a Zumo 350 for several years.

I've used it a few times in the UK but today has been the first time I have used it on holiday, in Spain. It is connected to my Schubert C5's in-built Sena comms

My wife and I arrived in Santander on the ferry from Portsmouth this morning and I set my pre planned route into the XT. We were going along for 15 - 20 minutes, following the route shown on the display when it suddenly said to make a U turn. I couldn't understand this as we were on the route.

However, it kept on wanting us to make U turns, which I got rather fed up with so I thought I would just disable voice directions. To my surprise it still kept on telling me to make U turns, turn left or right - anything but following the planned route. Fortunately, the visual display showed the correct directions.

I then thought I would disable Bluetooth as the audio was just a nuisance. To my utter astonishment, even with Bluetooth set to disabled I still got the audio through the intercom.

Meanwhile, as I say, the visual display and the directions were correct.

I tried cancelling the route but even with no route enabled I still got the verbal instructions.

It's was as if I had missed a waypoint early on and it was determined to send me all the way back to Santander.

I had created the route using My Route-App, which I have used for several years, and I saved it as GPX 1.1 and the waypoints were all shaping points and not via points.

I guess I could try unpairing it from my intercom but I really want to know what's going on with the XT.

I have to say, I have had several strange things happen with the XT and I I have it down to my inexperience with it, but this is just bizarre to me.

This has been the first day of a two week holiday so if anyone has any ideas on how to fix this, I would be extremely grateful.

Thanks in advance.

Steve.

[jfheath]

Hello and Welcome to the Forum

It is very unlikely that this had anything to do with your your BT connection.

Since your route is entirely made up of shaping points - a missed route point would not produce this behaviour. If you have got back onto the plotted magenta route, the XT will continue to navigate you ahead.

The only thing that I can suggest is that you didn't pass through the start point - which is a Via Point, and therefore is a point that you absolutely must pass through. This is a common error - particularly when just getting off the boat. The stanav wakes up and it is looking for the satellites which should be overhead at Portsmouth at this time of day. It is now in a different time zone, the sky isn't where it should be and it is going to take it quite a while to obtain signals from satellites that are no longer where it left them !

It manages it eventually - maybe 3-5 minutes. In the meantime you have set off, and passed through the start point - but the XT hasn't noticed. So it is trying to do what it needs to do to get you to the start of the route.

The problem is caused if you put your start point too near to where you set off. It is better to place it a couple of miles away - on the road that you want to be on when you have left the town and the police have stopped blowing their whistles and hurrying you out of their town. You end up going the way that they are waving you rather than the way that you have plotted.


Too late to solve that now. For future days of this trip, before you set off - wait for the satnav to get a signal and make sure that you ride through the start point. If you are in a group and the leader hasn't been aware of this, about half of the group will be ahead of the start point and they will all have a similar problem. Make sure that you are in a position where when you set off, you will definitely ride through the start point.
(It sounds stupid, but never put the start point at the start !!).


If you haven't passed throught he start point, then you could use the Skip feature - to skip the start Via point. But it is easier to select Closest Entry Point. Stop at the side of the road. Go back to the menu and press the Stop button to stop the route. Reload the route from Saved trips, choose the route name, Select Go !

When you are asked to select the next destination, select Closest Entry Point. Ok.

Check the preview map very carefully. The green flag is your current position. Make sure that it follows the blue disc shaping points in the direction of your destinations. Then select Start.

** There have been odd circumstances where Closest Entry Point produces a route which starts off by heading in the wrong direction. This is usually because U-Turns have been disabled and you are facing in the wrong direction when you stopped. Eg you were riding south, and you pulled into a service area and parked facing north. So the satnav has got to start off heading north and it is not allowed to U turn ! If this happens - then take the satnav in your hand, turned on, walk with it heading south (say) and then start the route again. Or allow U turns. They inform you immediately if you are going off route.

Another common reason is that some of your route points haven't been checked carefully enough and have ended up on the wrong side of a dual carriageway. Very easy to do when a UK rider plans a route for continental roads. But with only shaping points in your route when you rejoin the magenta line the XT will continue to navigate ahead.

Did you create tracks from your routes ? If so you can display those on the map as well as your route. The track will never change.

If you can find a way of getting me to see the routes, I'll take a look and see if I can spot any issues. I have MRA.

[Kwaka54]

@jfheath thanks very much for your very comprehensive reply!
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said about missing the start point. Thinking back, I'm pretty sure I did. Would that have caused the strange Bluetooth behaviour though?
I don't put my start points at the actual start but certainly closer to it than the distance you recomnend. I will certainly do that in future.
I'm aware of waypoints being on the wrong side of dual carriageways or in fields as I have fallen foul of that in the past.
I'll follow your advice and hopefully not have a repeat of today's debacle.

Thanks again.
Steve

[jfheath]

The bluetooth issue. No the routing wouldn't have caused that - (unless your Xt was not connected direct to your headset)

But when you turn off BT, the XT still issues instructions. There is a speaker at the back of the XT and it uses that. Believe jt ir not, you do not realise that the sound isn't coming through your headset. It caught me out a couple of times with an earlier setup. I was trying to increase my headset volume.

The following assumes that you have a couple of channels on your headset - if you want to talk rider /pillion. If your Sena unit has Mesh, than that is much more reliable than having rider / pillion or rider / group set as BT.

Pair your headset with the XT. Only with the XT.
BT music from a phone is very dodgy in my experience.
I put any music I want into the MP3 folder on the sd card, or in internal storage and use the media player on the XT .

Break any connection you have between phone and headset. Make it forget the headset so it cannot pair again.
Make sure that works to get sound from the XT. Turn them both off, turn them in again and make sure that they pair.

Forget any bt devices that your xt is likely to try to connect to apart from the headset.
Then connect your phone by BT. to the XT. The XT should be treated as a second phone, not a gps, if you have that option.
On the XT, the BT screen will show phone, headset, and the 'drive' icon if your phone has that installed.

Any phone calls will come through via your Xt, and you can see who is calling on screen.

That is a good starting point with the XT at the centre of things.


Some people want the headset to be at the centre, ie phone and xt both connected to the headset, and that can create issues .

[Kwaka54]

@jfheath thanks again.
Mesh would be a good idea, unfortunately my wife's helmet is a Shoei Neotec 2 with the SRL2 comms, which is Bluetooth only, so it looks like we're stuck with BT.
I see what you about making the XT the centre of things so I will try that.

Last night I updated the firmware on the comms in my helmet (Sena, badged as Schuberth SC2) and, while I didn't seem to need to repair with my eife's SRL2 it didn't pair with the XT so I've had a day of blessed quiet.

I made sure I went through the start point and the XT worked well but, of course, I don't know what the audio would have been. I have re-paired the SC2 to the XT as a phone now. I have unpaired my phone and the SC2.

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

[jfheath]

Right - the Xt will only pair with one headset, so to get the Zumo to give you navigation and for you to be able to talk to your pillion, you need your headset to be paired with your pillions headset on a second channel.

Pair your headset with the XT first, then pair your headset with the other headset. Then turn them both off and make sure that they re- pair correctly - no matter which order they turn on. If it doesn't work, clear all pairings and set it up the other way - ie pair headset first, then the XT.

If doing this in your house, make sure that nothing else is grabbing the BT connection. Many BT connection issues can be solved by turning the devices on after you have left your home environment. Watch out for any other BT devices on your wrist, or in your pocket

I have to say though, I got my Cardo Packtalk edge knowing that the had 2 bluetooth channels. I was dismayed on the first reconnection, they didn't pair up after turning off. I went back to the manual and discovered the Mesh system.

I don't see why they wouldn't pair up with BT without having to work at it, but I had a different solution, so I didn't put any more effort into it.