Zumo User Forums

Maybe I have a Friday night one but my new Zumo XT is just utter garbage.
The software is just appalling. Sure it has a good screen and you can turn your central heating on with it but as a navigation device for offroad??? They are having a laff.

I bought it because the nature of the ad implied it could do offroad but it clearly cannot with the installed maps as it can only show tracks and if you try and do a trip planer it just bugs out as obviously the map doesn't have some of the route displayed on the map.
Tbh I can do this with a cheap modded Chinese sat nav running OSM maps. I am quite adept at off road mapping but this Zumo effort is in a class of its own in glitchy poorly thought out software. I know this works as I navigated half of Europe on road with a £26 sat nav taped up and sealed behind the screen of my Blackbird running navigator11 and OSM maps. The same system I modded to use on my dirtbike. Its shows lanes okay but navigating involves too much OSM mapping tweaks as you have to do that to get the sat nav to recognise the legal lanes but then some dullard comes along later and reassigns the lane to a footpath again. Basically I gave up.
As for the Zumo

When connecting with Garmin Drive because the piece of junk can't communicate directly with Garmin Explore (who the hell designed this feature,,a chimp?) it frequently has to think about it or doesn't connect at all. It will show on my phones bluetooth but heyho will it work sometimes? Will it ****.

After turning off and on eventually you can get it to do that and occasionally it even manages to sync with explore except often if you wing across a gpx file well it might show up but clicking on it then says it doesn't exist . and slow....did they use a processor from a food processor?

So that doesn't really work so well, one minute is does then it don't. Full marks for trying to make it wireless but zero for execution. I have reset the thing which has deleted all the stuff I put on i and also removed everthing from Explore otherwise it will try and resync if I reconnect again but am seriously thinking of giving up and sending it back

I am within my 30 days so Garmin have okayed this, I haven't used it as such other than tried to set it up. They suggested I buy a Montana 700 or something else can't remember what I was too busy laughing that was marginally cheaper at £499. Really? I rather stick pins in my eyes.

So connect to the PC and use Basecamp
What a fiasco. Most of the time it doesn't show on the Basecamp. it might after about 5 mins if your lucky, my guess is if you have Garmin drive and explore and bluetooth on at the same time the software throws a wobbly. Bad programming?

So after the reset I may have one more try but really feel I am flogging a dead horse with this. It quite simply doesn't fit the bill.

Any thoughts before I return it?
?

Hilarious
Yes, it has glitches, but I suspect that your unit can be defective.
Montana is more terrain/off-road oriented, but cost over half more above the XT. Most people are using the XT for on road.
Yes, the old pre 2012 units had simple software and less features but were more reliable. We have to put up with all of the shortcomings, but it works for the most part ok.
Maybe you can exchange it and see if that'll work before completely giving up.

hi @FBF

this forum is an excellent place to find information @jfheath has written a book so to speak on all things XT.

I had a nightmare when I first bought an XT and thought the same as you, but stick with it and you can make it work.

the first thing to do is delete the drive app from your phone/tablet or whatever you use, then reinstall it, when you get to the place where it asks about installing/using explore, click maybe later. and never use explore again. it causes all sorts of issues.

do you use base camp, or MRA, https://www.myrouteapp.com/routelab to plan your routes. I could direct you to a specific thread in the mRA forum, which would help a lot. there are different files namely 1.0gpx, 1.1gpx and 1.2gpx not sure if this link will work https://forum.myrouteapp.com/topic/2719/gpx-1-1-vs-1-2

there is loads of info on here and the MRA forum in relation to planning importing and using routes and tracks. I had an absolute nightmare importing routes and like you they would disappear, since I stopped the dreaded explore from loading it all stopped.

this thread below was started by me, the context changed a bit from the title but this will explain what happened.
viewtopic.php?t=2113

also to add

So connect to the PC and use Basecamp
What a fiasco. Most of the time it doesn't show on the Basecamp. it might after about 5 mins if your lucky, my guess is if you have Garmin drive and explore and bluetooth on at the same time the software throws a wobbly. Bad programming?

if you have Garmin express running at the same time as basecamp, they do not work well together, in other words, make sure one is completely closed down before starting the other. especially Garmin express as it runs in the background, on Mac there is a small black triangle in the menu bar you have to click this and close from there, not sure on a PC


don't give up just yet.

In my opinion, you unnecessarily bought this device. You shouldn't have believed blindly in the assurances in the advertisement. It would seem that a grown man does not believe in this marketing nonsense. However, it is apparent that there is always someone naive, who, in addition, can not analyze their mistakes and like a child gets angry at an inanimate object that he does not understand.

Okay thanks for the help Fatfeet, its really appreciated. I have binned Garmin Explore and reloaded the Drive app omitting the link to Explore. Within Garmin express the settings has a feature to stop it running in the background and connecting. Just to make sure i removed the device from Express.

I can see how this would present problems even though you are told to connect these additional apps but in truth the Zumo should show up as soon as the countdown stops when connected but it doesn't always. In fact at the moment in about 20 attempts it hasn't shown up on Basecamp at all and frequently doesn't show up as a drive. I am suspecting like fxwheels said, it could be faulty.

If I plug the zumo into the PC after about 2 or three goes it decides to show the drive on the PC but rarely shows on Basecamp, I am using the supplied usb cable and tried another 2 just in case. It seems to frequently drop the Drive app on its own which maybe when I plug it into the PC or could be totally random, maybe the bluetooth is intermittent? Does the drive app need to be connected when using the PC as I would have thought it doesn't need to be? Would I be better of not using Basecamp at all as its a bit clunky tbh.

To be fair Zumek I did do my homework before purchasing this, I joined the forum before I bought it too, and I can see the good things that this can do and also there are several youtube vids explaining how the Zumo can be used offroad so in answer to your snide remark everyone is entitled to their opinion even if they are wrong which you are.
What is happening here is Garmins poor software options conflicting with each other and either a faulty unit (which it is unlikely but could be) or Garmins failure to market a ready to use and reliable setup with an appropriate mapping software.

I reset the Zumo again clearing all data and in the setup procedure skipped all additional apps. Didn't even connect to wifi.

When I connected it to the PC this time it showed up straight away as a Zumo drive and after closing and restarting basecamp it showed up on basecamp no problem.

I dropped a gpx file which I knew will work okay directly into the gpx folder on the zumo and it converted that sucessfully to a trip. That seems okay

It wouldn't show up on basecamp until I closed the app and reopened, however after I disconnected the usb and again reconnected while basecamp was running it showed up fine the second time and was able to use the full maps from the Zumo rather than the basic default basecamp one as its pretty useless. I get that Garmin need to protect map data but it doesn't make it possible to plan a route unless its connected to a gps with maps.

I will try again in the morning as I suspect something in a gpx file maybe causing it to malfunction in some way, I did load quite a lot of track data at first showing the green lanes in Devon and part surrounding counties on the maps which may have caused it to play up, however I didn't load these the sfirst time I reset but possibly it may have wirelessly put them on. Since my cheap Chinese sat nav can deal with all the lanes for Cornwall Devon Somerset and Dorset around 2600 tracks then if this is causing a problem its pretty poor form. I am of course not running Garmin software on that but a modded Navigator app.

@FBF

Note once you update your map on your Zumo you can use Express to add a map to your PC for BaseCamp to use so can plan without having your device plugged in. If you've already done a map update run Express again and choose the Install to computer option.