First 4 hours with my new Garmin GPSmap 60Csx GPS unit and City europe mapping

[MockCyclist]

Ah, you don't have a Routing tab because you don't have a routable map in MapSource - you have the basic mapping. So ignore me on that one. You're using Direct Routes by default.

I think you should be able to do a successful gps navigation of your existing loop route, as long as the corrrect options are set. When you pick the route and select Navigate, the gps should not calculate anything at all - if it does, something is wrong. You should be able to cycle your loop, see the roads on the map and the pink route line. It will beep when you approach a waypoint, other than that, it's up to you to follow the line and compare it with the map.

The gps pointer will show where you actually are, which will be the road of course, but it won't necessarily be following the pink line precisely. Only when you get to a waypoint will it correspond.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

I tried plotting a route in mapsource without using bikeroutetoaster first...so I just used the basic map, put in some waypoints at the towns en the route and then used the routing tool to link the waypoints by following the red line on the map as closely as I could between the waypoints/towns. I then took it into the gPS (without th etracks because there were none), however all I get in there is the pink/purple straightline route line overlayed on th emap but no line that closely follows the smaller roads ,or indeed any roads at all. I couldnt navigate to that.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

so ...I then went back into Bikeroute toaster and plotted the route (or is it a track?) in there without adding any waypoints except at the start and end (but it shows over a thousand track points in the summary page).
I then saved the GPX file and took it into Mapsource, where I didnt have to use the routing tool because it automatically came up as a pink (route) line. Here is what I saw at each stage:


BRT view just before I saved to GPX

Mapsource view just before I saved to the GPS

When saving to the GPS I could not select th etrack option as it was blocked. Just route and waypoint were ticked.

In the gPS I then went to routes>Friedrichshafen>enter and up came a map of where i live in Essex!...I used the toggle button to go over to Germany and found Friedrichshafen and zoomed in. However again I see only the pink route line overliad on the map and no detailed track following the roads I plotted in BRT (!st pic above)...so again I can 't navigate to that.

I've missed something here I know it...only I dont know what 'IT' is


I want to have the GPS guide me along the same track path that I plotted in BRT...street by street...I would like to use the 'Highway' view on the gPS whilst riding and just have it playback the track I plotted in BRT as I ride along it. At the moment that pink line over th emap is too 'high level'....to be honest i may as well jus thave a paper map on a bar bag and a rough marker pen line roughly drawn on the plastic cover map holder....I mean it would work, but I bought the gPS so that I dont have to stop all the time to read a map...I just want to follow the line on the highway option and enjoy the scenery.

..so i then went back and re plotted the track in BRT and took it into mapsource which then looked like this just before I took it into the GPS:



In the gPS i then went to Tracks and selected the only track listed (track 001)...I selected a fetching green for the track line and ticked 'show on map'. When I select the map I see the black dotted line overlaid in green running street my street, and a purple/pink 'route line' roughly following it (strange as I didnt use the route tool in mapsource this time)...I am guessing that this pink line relates to the previous time when I took the 'route ' into the GPS...Under the route icon I see just one listed, I called it 'friedrichshafen'....perhaps that is why? (if I select 'backtrack'..I see the same lines...but I cannot get his to navigate itself on the track page.

...(takes a breather) ..So...that is where I guess I need to use the route tool in mapsource and take a route in and not just atracl right?...so i hav eit 'navigate ' the route which is actually a detailed street by street 'route' (..man all this terminology...)


Then I went back to mapsource and added some waypoints and used th erouting tool to connect them up. This is what i saw just before trying to upload it to the GPS:



The GPS recievd the info and I had it 'navigate' the route...it started but then I got a route calculation error message saying that there was not enough memory (again).

So....thats where i am at 2:38 in the morning after another full day in the GPS saddle!

So what did I do wrong here....'cos I'm thinking neither routes or tracks are working...I know it's pilot error and not the machine, but blimey, this is WAY WAY to complicated.

 

[yello]

Hang in there btfb! You're on that learning curve and I reckon you're doing bloody well! I reckon you've just about cracked it.

I'm following this with interest and learning stuff too. So thanks for asking the questions!

 

[piedwagtail91]

you're making life very hard for yourself converting a usable track from br toaster to a route.
try a ride without planning anything, switch on the gps and let it record your ride.when you get back transfer the tracklog you've just made to waypoint manager and br toaster, it should fit perfectly over the roads in br toaster.(i've never used brt so am guessing)thats a track log it works both ways, gps to pc and pc/brt to gps.
you could plan your tour using 500 trackpoint sections, send them all to the gps as tracks, select them all to be shown on screen and highlight them the same colour.
on tour you wont have to do anything other than change the battery and switch the gps on , your ride will be displayed for the entire tour.

 

[MockCyclist]

There's something going on here I don't understand. You say screenshot 2 is MapSource with the brt gpx file loaded - but MapSource is showing a Route.

Then in screenshot 3 you say you loaded MapSource up with another brt route, but this time it's a Track.

How do you do that ?

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

you could plan your tour using 500 trackpoint sections, send them all to the gps as tracks, select them all to be shown on screen and highlight them the same colour.
on tour you wont have to do anything other than change the battery and switch the gps on , your ride will be displayed for the entire tour.

This sounds likewhat i want...a simple life...so I could store 10+ 100km rides say as tracks and simply have the gps navigate me along those tracks each day? is that what you mean?...That is what i need
Thing is I just tried that by plotting the track in BRT and taking it into Mapsource and, without changing anyhting in mapsource, straight away took it into the GPS (see above pics)...I couldnt manage to get the gps to navigate along the track it imported though...(back to the manual BTFB)..I will try the ride thing when it stops raining.

here's something going on here I don't understand. You say screenshot 2 is MapSource with the brt gpx file loaded - but MapSource is showing a Route.

Then in screenshot 3 you say you loaded MapSource up with another brt route, but this time it's a Track.

How do you do that ?

Dunno...as soon as I took the GPX file into mapsource it automatically displayed the line as a pink route line. (EDIT)...I just mchecked my settings in BRT (see pic above) and I had it on autu routing to follow the roads easier when plotting. Could that be the reason??

I am going to go through both processes again this morning...I'm not going to surrender

(edit):

Ok I went back to BRT and removed the auto routing. Then I plotted a (I am going to call it a line) by clicking on each junction and turn in the road to keep it as close to the road as possible. I saw this in mapsource just before taking it into the GPS:




In the gPS I went to tracks and selected this track. I changed the colour to green (easier to see) and selected map. I now see the map with the loop (as above) super imposed onto the city europe map in the GPS...but I still cannot get the gPS to navigate me along that track at all...how do I do that?


ANOTHER question if i may:

Is there any way I can by pass mapsource and take th etrack/route directly into the gPS from the pc? I cannot see any option for this in BRT...how about if I plotted the route on some other site...say google maps/earth....? I am thinking that if I can do that then I will be able to use cyber cafes en route to plan and upload rides to the GPS?

And another

How do i delete INDIVIDUAL routes & tracks from the GPS? Currently I only see an option to delete ALL of the routes or tracks.


And another
What should my map settings in the gPS be? Currently I have them set like this:
Orientation Track up
Below 8m
Auto zoom on
Detail Normal
Lock on road on

...getting there..getting there...

 

[piedwagtail91]

not sure about routes but if you go to the saved tracklog screen and highlight a track you get the option to delete just that tack.
my setting are
track up
below 3m
zoom off
detail most
lock on road off

I've Had a quick go on brtoaster and like you say there doesn't seem to be an option for save to gps only to a file.

 

[MockCyclist]

Hmmm ... I tried creating a route in b r toaster with Auto Routing to see if that made the difference - it didn't. So I just don't understand how you ended up with a Route (although that's what I'm aiming for !)

Your last try and it's a track again ... as I would expect.

I think what piedwagtail91 is getting at is to just follow the dotted line on the gps screen. That's fine, if that's what you want to do. I've never done that as such, except by default really when I've gone back on somewhere I've just been.

You have capacity for 20 tracks of 500 points each, a bit less than 50 routes of 250 points each. Aukweb says: "...20 tracks of up to 500 points each - enough to cover about 1000km in total, in normal circumstances".

and of routes it says

"...50 Routes of 250 Routepoints each, totalling 12,500 points which equates to about 12,500km of navigated road"


But - when following a track, you don't get some of the gps features, you don't get Distance to Next, Distance to Destination, and probably some other stuff. Tracks aren't meant for navigating.

Re uploading from a cyber cafe, I don't know ... we had the earlier post that said you can use gpsbabel, I've never used it for upload to gps, but I agree that it runs stand-alone so if you can get it on a memory stick it might work. But then, what if cyber cafe doesn't have the Garmin gps drivers in Windows, you could run into some insurmountable problem that spoils it.

Any better?

Can you get back to this, which is a Route, upload it and follow it, using Off Road ?



You can delete an individual route, I think you highlight it in the route list, press Menu and Delete.

What should my map settings in the gPS be? Currently I have them set like this:
Orientation Track up
Below 8m
Auto zoom on
Detail Normal
Lock on road on

I much prefer orientaton with North up. The map doesn't annoyingly rotate and you know at a glance whether you are pedalling North South, etc.

Auto zoom - turn it OFF. Another annoying feature. Just use In and Out on the gps till the scale suits you..

Lock on Road - I have it turned OFF. Hmmm, I wonder if that feature will compensate for the difference between your straight Route line and the twisty road? I'll try it sometime, but I doubt it will work when my route follow a canal towpath which my mapping doesn't know about.

I still think you can navigate the above Route.



Unless you can tell me how you got the b r toaster to appear as a Route, my workflow will be:

1) Prepare route using B R Toaster, without Auto-Routing. Limit 250 points. Save as gpx
2) Open gpx file in gpsbabel, convert Track file to Route file (easy)
3) Open converted gpx file in MapSource, it should appear under Routes.
4) Transfer Route to gps
5) Navigate using Off-Road


I've got to know if your navigation of your circular Route will work for you, as you expect.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

Ok...I am reading and 'digesting' that last post...meantime...I wonder if you would have any idea why I am unable to upload these POI files to my gPS? I am unsure what format my GPS needs for POI files and if these are compatable?



http://www.gps-data-team.com/poi/germany/accommodation/ACSI_DE.html

http://www.gps-data-team.com/poi/france/accommodation/Camping_fr.html

http://www.gps-data-team.com/poi/france/accommodation/Aire_Camping_Car.html

 

[piedwagtail91]

i would disagree that tracks aren't meant for navigating, they're far less hassle than routes.
most of the stuff down loadable from the internet is a track/tracklog.
if you use a track in conjunction with waypoints for poi, cafes shops or whatever you can get the distance to the next waypoint on the route, providing the gps is set up correctly.
the advantage is that you don't have to start putting waypoints in at turns and having a gps full of redundant waypoints afterwards.
I've used all the gps features following our clubs 150 mile ride, i had all the summits in as well as stops and it wasn't a problem getting the info.
but I as using a saved track, not a route.
the only waypoints I've ever needed are cafes summits and bike shops ,along with a few poi's.
a clubmate. before he emigrated, would ring midweek and say plan a ride in the peak district/lake district/wales and give a few place names to visit, so i'd waypoint them on tracklogs and then join them up into a 50 mile ride and save it as a tracklog. when we drove out to the start it was a case of switch on the gps and follow the trail, we never got lost or took a wrong turn.
most of the time we didn't use the navigate a route feature, i just looked at the screen when a junction came into view and followed the track displayed on the screen.it couldn't be easier.

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

You have capacity for 20 tracks of 500 points each, a bit less than 50 routes of 250 points each. Aukweb says: "...20 tracks of up to 500 points each - enough to cover about 1000km in total, in normal circumstances".

and of routes it says

"...50 Routes of 250 Routepoints each, totalling 12,500 points which equates to about 12,500km of navigated road"

Ok...so (correct me if I am wrong)...this means that I can plot 20 tracks in BRT with a maximum of 500 track point markers in each track (ride lets say) and save then all to my GPS? This would allow me to follow (manually) the green track line on my GPS but not allow my to hav eit navigate me along those tracks right?

As i need the GPS to navigate me along my pre programmed 'rides' am I right then to say that the only way I can achieve this is to use th erouting tool and plot the route points in mapsource before taking into the gPS?

If this is the case then I would need to know the maximum number of track points in BRT, AND th emax number of waypoints on the map source route I can use per 'ride'. That way i can ensure that the GPS can accept a series of rides/routes that i can then have it navigate me along each day.

Does that make sense??

 

[yello]

You've got me reaching for my 305 manual now! I'm not sure which I use; track, route or course! After sending the gpx to the 305, I look it up under 'courses' so I'd always assumed that was what it was! Maybe 'course' is specific terminology to Garmin? I don't bother with waypoints/trackpoints or anything, if there's a turning ahead I just look at the unit and see which way the breadcrumbs go.

Darn you btfb, you've got me playing with GPSs now!!

 

[Bigtallfatbloke]

..I havent ridden my bike properly since I got this thing!

...piedwagtail...thanks for helping.
Can i ask...with your 'method' are you simply looking at the screen on your gps and following the track line or is the map moving as you move?

The way i understand what you are doing is that it is the same as taking a paper map, marking where you want to ride on it with a marker pen and then simply looking at tit at each junction...am i right?

I can do that...no problem but I bought the gPS unit so that I didnt have to stop to look at maps as I rode. I want it to navigate along a pre programmed 'ride' so that the map is moving as I ride along the green line.

Can i have the unit navigate me along my ride by using tracks like you suggest? I cannot get mine to do that.

 

[just jim]

I love this thread! It's like the Da Vinci Code but for GPS. Or something.