How do I use Garmin (eTrex touch 25)?

accountdeleted
accountdeleted Posts: 55
in Road general

Hello roadies,

I found a forgotten GPS toy (Garmin eTrex touch 25) that we bought nearly 10yrs ago for general hiking and Geocaching. And I wondered if I can use it for turn-by-turn navigation for cycling.

But oh heck, how do you get a route on this thing?! It's been fun to record the activity and upload it on to Strava retrospectively when we used to hike / Geocache (nowadays its recorded straight on to Strava... hence we forgot that we still had eTrex25...). But I just can't figure out how to plan a route and get turn-by-turn navigation on it!

I downloaded Garmin Express (to sync the divce with a PC?), Garmin Connect (looks like Garmin's equivalent to Strava, with Course route plan function), and Garmin BaseCamp (looks like route planner from 90s). I managed to plan a route on Garmin Connect and download it to the device but no turn-by-turn (just a magenta line). At some point, I managed to get turn-by-turn (I just can't figure out how I did it) but the route it automatically calculated was absolutely nonsense (gave me a 50mile route to a simple fairly straight 10mile route...).

Can anyone shed light to how to set-up turn-by-turn route on eTrex 25 (if it's even possible?), please?

Or is this device now obsolete and as good as paper weight? Shame to let go but perhaps I was expecting too much from it.

Many thanks!

Comments

  • trevor.hall12
    trevor.hall12 Posts: 496

    Turn by turn navigation was only on higher up models a few years ago it's now on most if not all new models but at a decade old I doubt it was a feature on it .

  • Mad_Malx
    Mad_Malx Posts: 5,183

    I think it is technically possible. Memory is a bit hazy with my much older Etrex 30, but think you had to use either the devices own routing (ie search for the route on the machine) or load a route (which in garmin speak is not the same as a track) via the now retired Garmin basecamp software. This was a faff. I don't think it worked with a downloaded track, which only gave a line on the map to follow.

  • trevor.hall12
    trevor.hall12 Posts: 496

    If I remember right the only way to do it with the older models was you need to put your own way point at every turn while creating the route .

  • pangolin
    pangolin Posts: 6,660

    I gave up trying to get turn by turn on my old etrex 20 and just followed the line.

    - Genesis Croix de Fer
    - Dolan Tuono
  • accountdeleted
    accountdeleted Posts: 55
    edited June 16

    Ah thanks everyone for your comments (nice to see eTrex users' experience on here as well).

    I continued with my search and I had to re-learn what waypoints, tracks, routes and courses are in Garmin's language. Oh why does it have to be so complicated. Especially BaseCamp!

    Having understood the difference between track, route, and different profile setting (car, motorbike, cycling, tour cycling etc.), I now figured out how to at least get a route and turn by turn navigation on.

    There's a limit of 50 turn by turn points on eTrex touch 50 but there's a work around that I found. I haven't done actual ride with it on but from simply loading the route at the starting point it seems to look ok.

    I'm sure the dedicated device for cycling (Edge) is more user friendly than trying to load up a ride route on eTrex, but hey it's a free GPS device that we forgot we had so in girl math, we've saved £££. Plus we re-discovered the joy of geocaching, this time with two sprogs.

    Win!

    Happy cycling everyone.

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