Garmin Zumo GPS thread.

Your not the only one, happy with mine. this baby has guided me since aug through 9 states on mostly back rds and many back rd day rides over 20k. its a verry powerful gps it just takes some learning you cant us it right out of the box.big difference is does not have voice commands. it will run for days on battery power i do recommend external power cord. back light will only stay on with external power.just a side note on garmin customer service. I dropped unit last year and broke back cover, finally got around to emailing garmin about it told them how i damaged unit. instead of emailing me back 3days later a new cover was laying on my door step, great service!
i should of posted this picture earlier.

 

the tracking on these things are great and maybe alittle to much info sometimes. if you down load track on to map source you can see your speed at each corner. entry and exit speed and exact time of day. so lets just say its not a bad idea to delete tracks regularly LOL

 

Wow, I didn't know the track logging kept so much info, that is gonna be fun to look at after our summer trip. I have a couple on-board right now, I'm very curious now... hummmmm

The tracks that I was referring to in my post chomper are those that you build in MapSource or equivalent instead of a route. They don't use any calculating and the route will fail if you try. More for off road type stuff. The route actually needs to be drawn onto the map and the pgm will log enough points to keep you on the path. If the GPS tries to recalculate it will look for the nearest roads and throw your track into the bin. Being that the 60CSx is a "On the Trail" GPS as Garmin would say, it should be able to handle tracks even better than the Zumo I would think. Have you ever made any or tried them while hiking?

 

@ BonusVFR and Jasonsmith:

Definately keep that one in mind. Like what does that cost. Personally, I think what is happening with me is the mic is just too close to my mouth. Actually my lips touch the mic, so I have to try to re-position it inside the helmets somewhere and see how it works. Jason, do I see a ride coming soon?

 

For those running a mac, BaseCamp was upgraded to 3.0.1 today. No reason to use RoadTrip any more as BaseCamp is way better in all aspects.

Link: Garmin: BaseCamp for Mac Updates & Downloads

BaseCamp for Windows was also upgraded. I believe the Windows version is for DEM (Digital Elevation Model) maps only though still. Link: http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=4435

Windows MapSource is still the better than all options from what I hear.

 

I guess i was referring to bread crumb thing. when you say building tracks is that with waypoints on mapsource?the only thing iv tried while hiking for fun was just marking location every so ofton, it will back track to those locations, i guess thats the simple feature, only built rd routs on map source . I find every time i play around with this thing i find different features i just cant imagine all the doo dads on yours.

 

No waypoints chomper, there's nothing really for a waypoint to latch onto since those areas of the map usually aren't routable. I guess it's the same as what the gps does with the bread crumb thing but you are initiating it in MapSource and can make a "Track" anywhere. The only issue is that most GPS's like to recalculate upon import which is a bad thing for a track. The track thing is all new to me as well, trying to learn the ins and outs about it all. If off-roading is ever in the future using Tracks will be the way to go. I'll email you a track and you can check it out.

 

That would be great.. you must be using track draw instead of rout planning i guess, i still have so much to learn.
have you figured out in mapsource how to drag and change a rout like in google maps. if i could get mapsource to do that it would be a kick ass program.

 

You can drag a route to a different road just like Google in my mac programs, I'll fire up the windows PC and see what need to be done, It can be done.

 

Here ya go buddy.

Dragging a route with MapSource

Using the pointer tool (the arrow), click once on the magenta route. This will turn it to yellow with red arrows.

Then single click on the route again near the location where you want to change the route. This will "rubberband" the route at that point.

Now drag the route to where you want it to go and single click again.

The route will recalculate.

Repeat as needed.

 

When you rubber band a route it is best to pick a point which is a junction of two roads. You should see the roads ("C" & 1st street for instance) in the viapoint properties dialog box. The advantage to this technique, which are called" shaping points", is that these routing points are not announced or flagged on the Zumo. Thereby saving announcements for real direction changes/turns.

A route with lots of waypoints


Same Route with shaping points


While the Zumos do great recording tracks they have to convert other folks or your old tracks to routes in order to be used on the Zumo. Only your last 10K track points can be shown on the Zumo. THis is more important if you are really going off road as opposed to charted dirt roads.

 

Bonus I think that went over my head... are you talking specifically about the track logs that are pulled off the Zumo? I know I can make a fresh track in BaseCamp and send it to the 660 without it converting it to a route, is this something different that were talking about. If I let it recalculate at any point it will then try to turn it into a route no?

 

In order for a ANY track (old ones, buddies, drawn ones) to be used on the Zumo (unless it the current 10K track points) it must be converted to a route. The Zumos have a built in utility to do that. The 660s utility is probably a little better than the the 550. Now you could convert first in basecamp and then send the route to the Zumo or let the Zumo do the conversion when you import the tracks into the Zumo but as of now there has to be conversion. There are rumors that the Zumo will be able to see old and others tracks directly but .....rumors so far. THis is the biggest rub with the Zumo from the off road jocks.

I first used converted tracks when I followed some guy around Atascadero on his KTM SMoto. Had no clue where I was but used to the tracks from my ride to figure out what we did and then converted those for use later if I wanted a guided route. Recently I have been using other tracks (buddies or off the web) to identify possible back and off road possibilities. I then convert the tracks to a route for running myself.

With any tracks you get...........make sure you clean them up first. Cause based on my experience I rarely get thru the first time (gates, water, wrong turns, chicken out) as many of the tracks are a dead end.

 

Here is a track converstion on an undocumented dirt road. My original tracks are still in the system as you can see them on the screen in blue over the top of the converted route. The conversion was just about perfect in this case. I am running in off road mode and recalc is set to off.

 

k, I think where I am getting confused is the route/track thing. Is it safe to say that a route as far as the GPS is concerned is it's way of being able to tell you where to go. I've been making the assumption that a track was a track and a route was a route but I guess a GPS can't follow or guide you via a track. So... the only thing special about any GPS that can handle tracks is that it will make a route based off the track and not attempt to create a route on a road that it knows.

I just fired up the 660 and opened a track that I imported, it didn't convert it yet so when I try and run it via the simulator it just drives me off into the bushes...

 

Ok ....you are right a Route tells you where to go. Routes follow via points and the underlying roads to a destination. However in Mapsource you can route DIRECT instead of AUTO which routes directly as the crow flies to the next viapoint/wayoint/favorite etc.

The Zumo can not guide you with a track other than you looking at the track your self..and correcting. I do this sometimes when I turn around and follow my tracks back off road. Other Garmin units are more sophisticated in their use of tracks and I believe there can be some limited track following.

With most of the better track machines from garmin, the users just follow the tracks which can be displayed on the screen. And importantly you can display multiple tracks on the screen as opposed to one Route. Screw routes off road they say...they don't want no stinking conversion. The advantage of the track is that you do not have to worry about a converion routine which may get it wrong sometimes or worse recalculate. I can show you an example of a screw up on the conversion process if you want but suffice to say the only problems I have had are where I went from a mapped road to pure dirt.

Not to screw you too much but I like it when the GPS finds a road under my tracks ..........then eliminates all those freaking points (maybe thousands of them) when I convert to a route. But this is a pure street conversion. The dirt folks really do not give a crap about the street stuff.

I use the street conversion when I find a great mapped road by exploring and want to replicate it again with a route. Zumos do great with this.

 

I get ya Bonus, thanks for the education. Here is where I stand so far. I created a track in BaseCamp and we both now know the Zumo couldn't guide me (See Below). I could follow it like you suggested above but that's all.



I created the same track but converted it to a route with BaseCamp as you suggested. I noticed the whole whack of flags all of a sudden, not cool. When I sent it the Zumo I got this...



I think that happened because BaseCamp sent it to the card and not the memory so it recalculated. I tried imported to the Zumo again via RoadTrip this time and got the following...





You can see the whole ton of flags... ugly. When I let the simulator run me through it followed the route nicely but all I saw was "Approaching Track #__" over and over again to the point at where I would have been better off just following the track only option.

I used a program to try and make the via points invisible but as of now am not able to get anything other than this...



How does one keep the points to the GPS can retain the route, yet stop all the annoying pop ups??

 

There is a lot to be confused about with tracks and routes when you go off road. I have had some mind teasers. Can you auto route on those Topos?

Is there a way to attach your file with the original tracks so I can take a look at it. Not sure if your simulation can turn off recalc????

Also are you using direct or auto routing with Basecamp? Also with Mapsource you can filter a track file which eliminates many of the points to begin with. The change in accuracy depends whether you have a lot of turns or are just straightlining across the desert for instance.

 

Thanks js for that dragging rout tip. after trying it a few times on saved routs i can see what Bonus vfr is talking about, I think. it still didnt clean up all the way points on the section of rd i wanted to delete or change.
60cx as far as i can tell does not have the ability to convert tracks to routs the only option it has is track back. i have tracks that are around 700km from street rides i would like to repeat that were saved in mapsource. does mapsource have the ability to convert to a rout easily? so far iv been going over tracks with rout tool manually and it takes some time, you need to magnify every section of rout otherwise it will screwup, there must be an easier way. thanks Bonus vfr some great info!

 

Nope cannot Auto route with any of the topos that I have sadly. The simulation doesn't calculate at all, it just travels a route at a given speed for what type of road it "thinks" it is.

I'm using auto routing with BaseCamp as well. The funny thing is, is that the route created with invisible via points shows fine in BaseCamp (see below) but when transferred to the Zumo the shape goes bye bye.



That track was made with the least possible points as possible but it's quite a curvy section of logging road so there are way to many to deal with in such a short run.