bit of a Garmin moan/rant plus Garmin Edge 500 route questio

englander

I'm having significant troubles myself with this, and I just found this very recent update on the Garmin forum.

https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.ph ... resolution

Apparently Garmin Connect has been tweaked so that individual course points are not more than 100m apart, so in theory, creating a route with Garmin Connect should no longer cause problems.

Who wants to test it first?

ben-----

Hmm, doesn't sound so good/hopeful to me. 1. From that link, it seems they haven't fixed the problem in the 500 at all, they've just tweaked the route data the way it's generated (which is basically where I've got to already), 2. that's not the only problem with the 500's navigation.

Using GPSies with set course points evenly option, plus my nifty bit of code which reassigns the cue points from RwG's version of the route to the GPSies version of the route, it sounds like that, what I've just described, will amount to the same as using Garmin Connect to do the route - which I don't particularly want to use.

500's other problems are:
- course disappears for brief periods
- route display freezes for some seconds after each cue point, right when you want to see where to go
- when you go off course the route display just freezes. While off course it 100% gives up and is unable to show any decent version of the route. On the 200, when you go off course, it plots your route as you go off the course with a little line of dots veering off from the route line, and most usefully/importantly, keeps the route oriented appropriately to the direction you're going, and zooms reasonably appropriately, thus aiding you get back on course. The 500 will resume showing the route properly only once and if you get back on route, but it ain't going to help you do that.

Just infuriating. Even though I've managed to get the route not to disappear for long periods I still think I'm going to have to get a 200 again for its navigation because 500's is not good. The only thing left which I haven't tried is, someone mentioned software version 3.4, and mine's on 3.3. 3.4 seems not downloadable directly, but you need to do it via Garmin's application, so that needs downloaded first, which I don't particularly fancy doing, but looks like I'll have to if I want to get 3.4. 3.4 probably won't make any difference but you never know.

hegyestomi

ben----- wrote:

.....The only thing left which I haven't tried is, someone mentioned software version 3.4, and mine's on 3.3. 3.4 seems not downloadable directly, but you need to do it via Garmin's application, so that needs downloaded first, which I don't particularly fancy doing, but looks like I'll have to if I want to get 3.4. 3.4 probably won't make any difference but you never know.

Just visit a friend house who already installed it and you can update it in a sec.
Well, that is if you got a friend

englander

ben----- wrote:

Hmm, doesn't sound so good/hopeful to me. 1. From that link, it seems they haven't fixed the problem in the 500 at all, they've just tweaked the route data the way it's generated (which is basically where I've got to already), 2. that's not the only problem with the 500's navigation.

Using GPSies with set course points evenly option, plus my nifty bit of code which reassigns the cue points from RwG's version of the route to the GPSies version of the route, it sounds like that, what I've just described, will amount to the same as using Garmin Connect to do the route - which I don't particularly want to use.

500's other problems are:
- course disappears for brief periods
- route display freezes for some seconds after each cue point, right when you want to see where to go
- when you go off course the route display just freezes. While off course it 100% gives up and is unable to show any decent version of the route. On the 200, when you go off course, it plots your route as you go off the course with a little line of dots veering off from the route line, and most usefully/importantly, keeps the route oriented appropriately to the direction you're going, and zooms reasonably appropriately, thus aiding you get back on course. The 500 will resume showing the route properly only once and if you get back on route, but it ain't going to help you do that.

Just infuriating. Even though I've managed to get the route not to disappear for long periods I still think I'm going to have to get a 200 again for its navigation because 500's is not good. The only thing left which I haven't tried is, someone mentioned software version 3.4, and mine's on 3.3. 3.4 seems not downloadable directly, but you need to do it via Garmin's application, so that needs downloaded first, which I don't particularly fancy doing, but looks like I'll have to if I want to get 3.4. 3.4 probably won't make any difference but you never know.

I'm not sure what was being mentioned about version 3.4 - Garmin Express is telling me that 3.3 is still the latest.

You are quite right - Garmin haven't actually fixed the problem, they've only produced a work around, which may or may not at least make navigation usable.

It is a great shame, navigation is fantastic on the Edge 200, I then upgraded to the 500 for HRM support but the trade off is the loss of a very important feature for me. Whatever happens, I need a workaround by a couple of weeks from now when I go and venture into new territory in the Cotswolds.

englander

Goodness, just tried the Garmin Connect route creator for the first time ever. It tries to cut just about every corner, goes the wrong way around roundabouts, jumps me from one side of the road to the other, takes me on a death defying route into oncoming traffic around (through the middle of) Parliament Square... Please someone tell me I've missed a really obvious setting which turns on the ability to obey the most fundamental rules of the road?

ben-----

Yup, that's why I was seriously dragging my feet on trying to upgrade to (what turns out to be the entirely non-existent) 3.4 software version. And why I didn't want to touch Garmin route creator. I want to use as little as absolutely possible anything which involves software and Garmin.

I think the best you're going to get with the 500 is use ridewithgps to do the route, download it as a tcx, upload it to gpsies, turn on the set course points evenly option (and possibly the simplify option, but I don't bother with that one), and download that as a tcx. Then, if you want the cue points which was in the ridewithgps route which gpsies removes, let me know, and I'll PM you the address of my code which reinserts them from the rwg route into the gpsies route.

edit: just noticed gpsies has an option to include cue points! silly me. so it doesn't necessarily remove them.

Well there's not a lot else to say or do, further to: the 500's navigation is pretty crap, semi working at best. I just noticed in the bargains thread Aldi are doing 200's for £70 soon.

Moldy

Finally got round to checking, I'm on 3.3. Did a new route home today too, 25 miles planned on ridewithgps. Lost signal a few times (off course and then on course again a few seconds later) but that's fairly normal in my experience. Turn beeps and everything else worked fine

Rob

pastryboy

I've got a short route that works fine made with ridewithgps. Tried one downloaded off the internet and the course lines shows for a few seconds then disappears and doesn't come back. The only way to get it back is to scroll through the screens and it will re-appear for a few seconds again. It still gives off course warnings so it's definitely in the system.

It's a pain as I was riding with someone who has a 200 and theirs worked fine with the same download.