Multiple utter, complete failures to get me to my destination

[Peter Huppertz]

A few months ago, I was in Utrecht centre, and I asked the MyRoute app to take me home. Initially, all looked well, but as it started to take some questionable decisions, I started to have some doubts, which were enforced when all of a sidden, my destination was 220 kms away rather than the less-than-fourty that would be expected.

So, earlier this week, I decided to give the MyRoute app another chance during a car drive. All went well until we were near Gulpen, Limburg, but then MyRoute decided to lose its mind completely again. My wife cranked up Google Maps, and we used that to guide us to our destination.

So, today, I decided to ride to Arie Molenaar Motors in IJsselstein, who were celebrating their 60 years anniversary. This was only a 25 minute ride from my house, but I decided to crank up the MyRoute app to see what would happen.

I asked MyRoute to calculate a moderately twisty route, and it said, ok, I'll take you past Linschoten and Benschop.

To cut a long story short, no matter what I did, it insisted to take me along a road called Dorp (that's the main route through Benschop), but that was a no-go, as the road was closed and dug up.
So I thought, ok, I'll just turn around and follow my way, and it'll probably figure out that this is not an option and do a recalc.

Not so. It insisted that I turn back and head for Benschop. At some point, however, I thought it had figured it out -- until it sent me back into the village, only to approach the same road from the other side!

That's when I thought, fornicate this excrement. It's not rocket science, I can see the Gerbrandytoren from here, that's where IJsselstein is, si I'll figure it out myself. And so I did.
And when I was following the ring road which I thought would lead to my destination, I saw Arie Molenaar Motors turn up left of me, and on the map I could see MyRoute's finish flag not 300 meters away.

But guess what? It told me to do a 180 on the roundabout up ahead, and continue on my way for another 21 kilometers, which seemingly would lead me back to Benschop!

Needless to say, for the way home, I cranked up TomTom, and asked it to avoid motorways.

I really, really want to like MyRoute. I got a lifetime subscription to it. But this sort of behaviour is making it very, very hard.

What on earth is happening here?

[richtea999]

@Peter-Huppertz Hello Peter, please can you share some of those 'faulty' routes so the community can see if there's anything odd about them.
[EDIT: Ah ignore me - A-B routes. My mistake!]

[RetiredWingMan]

@Peter-Huppertz MRA is terrible at navigating A to B routes. If you use a curvy option it then uses a Track and not a route. Anytime you have to deviate from an A to B route or track MRA fails to perform. I now use Google maps or Waze for simple A to B travel. The live traffic routing, alerts and navigation around blockages is something I don't think MRA will ever be able to do properly.

I love the route planning and route navigation and recently returned from a 14,200 km trip where MRA performed almost flawlessly.

[Con Hennekens]

@Peter-Huppertz, what is happening here is that you are driving tracks (destinations with curvy options and roundtrips essentially are tracks made in OSM and navigated by HERE). Since there was much ado about track navigation skipping to the finish after a deviation, it was decided that returning to the point where you left off was a better idea. That in itself is not a bad idea however when you hit the track again anywhere after driving around a closed road, it does not pick up the track there.

I hate to say this, because I really am an MRA ambassador, but this makes Turn-by-Turn track navigation for me unusable, and along with it also the curvy options and roundtrip generator. But I never fancied track navigation on other devices either.

[richtea999]

@Con-Hennekens I think tracks on the nav app may be useful for cyclists because you don't always follow roads/routes that HERE knows about.
However, the apps' battery usage with no additional power supply (other than a power bank) may stuff me.

I'll tell you in about 10 days time.

[Con Hennekens]

@richtea999, Yes of course! I have been using it a lot for hiking through the Müllerthal Trail in Luxemburg too What I meant was "for Turn-by-Turn navigation". I changed it

the apps' battery usage with no additional power supply (other than a power bank) may stuff me.

I think I can comfort you here. You already know that the high battery drain some experience is caused by the HERE map rendering routine. Well, that one is not used when you "follow-the-line" on the OSM map...

[Brian McG]

@Con-Hennekens said in Multiple utter, complete failures to get me to my destination:

however when you hit the track again anywhere after driving around a closed road, it does not pick up the track there.

This is indeed a problem with MRA. it handles track navigation poorly
Not a problem that bothers me much as I normally drive routes with lots of points

A brilliant way to navigate a track is how it is done on the Tomtom
From my understanding when the path is imported via GPX into TomTom it navigates either a route-track or track, you don't get any points transferred, just the paths

What the tomtom is excellent at is finding its way back to the track (original path) when you deviate
It does not try to take you to the original point where you left the track, it does not care about that point, what it trys to do is take you to the nearest point on the track path from your current location
I don't know how it does it but it seems to try to calculate the fastest/shortest path from your current location to the nearest point on the track path, it is some clever tangential / orthogonal algorithm & it works beautifully
Once you regain the track it very quickly recognises it is back on the correct path & just resumes the navigation as if nothing has happened

If tomtom could announce point names & handle points of interest as well as mra it would be my choice of navigation device simply because they are simple uncomplicated devices that navigate very very well,

[Peter Huppertz]

@RetiredWingMan said in Multiple utter, complete failures to get me to my destination:

MRA is terrible at navigating A to B routes. If you use a curvy option it then uses a Track and not a route.

That explains it.
I was expecting MRA to also be a generic navigation device, and apparently it isn't, and I should really be using TomTom or Google Maps.

Which is too bad -- if I snap my phone into its holder on the bike, and I ride with the sun in my back, MRA is, for some reason, the only app that is actually visible.
I suppose I'll just have to find a phone that emits more light.

[Stanisław]

@Peter-Huppertz said in Multiple utter, complete failures to get me to my destination:

I was expecting MRA to also be a generic navigation device, and apparently it isn't, and I should really be using TomTom or Google Maps.

I think MRA is very good for A to B navigation, not using the curvy road generator but simple route navigation. In this case you can have route recalculations etc. Track based navigation probably needs some improvements, I never use it.

[richtea999]

@Con-Hennekens Thanks Con. In the end I used the trip's recommended app (Guibo), mainly because it was pre-supplied with maps, it used tracks and OSM, and so there was little to be gained by using MRA. Guibo doesn't cope well if you accidentally leave the track either - it's up to you to correct your navigation.

And guess what - Guibo ran the battery dry after half a day just using a track. It's not just MRA that has battery problems! Luckily, I had anticipated this and took a power bank on holiday, as you do.

Lastly, I can recommend the north Adriatica coast (Venice -> Istria / Poreč) as a lovely area to cycle. Ice cream, seafood, quiet roads and cycle tracks everywhere.