MRA to Zumo xt ??

Stuart McIntosh

I sent a route from MRA to my Zumo xt but there is no turn by turn when I load it up on my Zumo xt, just the route itself, can this be resolved ??

Con Hennekens

@Stuart-McIntosh, Apparently you transferred a track to your Zumo. You need to convert the track to a trip in your Zumo.

Stuart McIntosh

@Con-Hennekens Well every day is a school day, thank you so much.

Mzokk

@Stuart-McIntosh I've used Garmin Units for motorcycle navigation for 20 Years and still use a Zumo XT with basecamp and MRA. The Zumo XT has different routing behaviour compared to the older units. To mitigate this I

I put a shaping point on every road I want to be on and use more shaping points than I previously would have if planning routes in basecamp or increasingly MRA routeplanner
Always make a track and display the track and the route on the device so that I can spot any deviation(s).
Have recalculation on prompted rather than automatic and use it sparingly
Any route I'm using gets saved as an "Active Route" to avoid any issues with repeated u-turns if I have used recalculation at some point in the route.
Put your starting point some way away from your location so that the unit has to drive through it. Likewise with your finishing point.

Don't convert a Track to a route create a route. If you convert a track and go off route and the unit recalculates the Garmin will route your directly to the endpoint......usually by main roads.

Don't use Garmin explore its garbage.

I use GPX 1.1 to transfer routes from MRA to my unit. It lets you see your shaping points and allows you to enter additional points if required to pin your route to the track.

Good Luck!

Nomko Nomden

@Mzokk >

Don't use Garmin explore its garbage.

I'm using Garmin Explore, never had any problems until this day. So, i'm very curious why you think Explore is garbage.

Con Hennekens

@Mzokk said in MRA to Zumo xt ??:

Don't convert a Track to a route create a route.

If you only have a track, you will need to convert it to a trip in your Zumo. That is apparently the situation for @Stuart-McIntosh. Many club tour planners still seem to be convinced tracks are what they need to offer to their members...

Mzokk

@Nomko-Nomden

As a planning tool for motorcycle routes I find Explore flawed because it won't work with motorways and major roads i.e you can't put a shaping point on a motorway.

I don't find it user friendly.

The structure for routes and tracks and selecting them on the website or the XT unit is clunky and may or may not work depending on the connection to Garmin servers via wifi or 4 g. This may result in tracks on your map that you can't switch off if you are in an area with no coverage, or worse the inability to load a route or track that you might rely on.

I effectively use MRA as a substitute for Explore and use basecamp and MRA to construct routes. (I don't use any of the automatic features of the XT unit or MRA to create routes).

I like to be able to switch individual tracks on and off on the unit and not rely on a connection to explore.

I use Garmin Drive to transfer routes and tracks to the XT unit and always display the track and route during a journey because of the XT's odd routing behaviour for "Fastest Time" routes. (Compared to a Streetpilot 2610, BMW navIV Zumo 340 and 390 units I've used for the last 20 years).

I still use the Zumo 340 and 390 on another motorcycle and as pure navigation devices I find them much better than the XT.

Stuart McIntosh

@Mzokk

This has turned into an interesting discussion.

I also had a 390 and truth be told wish I'd kept it. The xt is giving me a very hard time and although I accept a fair bit of operator error today I am having exactly what has been described in the previous posting and I'm fairly struggling with it.

Marinus van Deudekom

@Nomko-Nomden If you use Explore you can't display org.tracks in an XT because it's fighting with Drive. It's a thing from Garmin real oldscool.

Mzokk

@Marinus-van-Deudekom Officially (From Garmin) the Garmin Explore app never was compatible with the Zumo XT!

The Zumo XT has a small/rough version of Garmin Explore built into it's firmware and communication to the device is via by the Garmin Drive app and also communication and with the Garmin Explore cloud - there is no direct connection between the Zumo XT and the Garmin Explore app!

If you change anything with the Garmin Explore app, the changes will be sent to the Garmin Explore cloud and then be sent to the Garmin Zumo XT via the Garmin Drive app - that's what Garmin said and that's why the Garmin Explore app was never officially 'Zumo XT compatible'. If anyone is using explore successfully and gets on with it good luck to them. I have reconnected my XT to explore a few times to try it again and have found (for me) its more trouble than its worth. I now like the XT and have used it successfully in Tours in Ireland Scotland England, France and Spain.

However, it has two major flaws. Routing "Fastest Time" means fastest roads (unlike the older units) and this requires more shaping points to ensure the unit does not take you on an extended tour of main roads to avoid using a backroad linking elements of your route. In the example below you can see that the Yellow track (the intended route) between two waypoints is subverted by the unit following "Faster Roads" (the Magenta Line) because there is no shaping point on the B128 which is a faster route overall and more fun and twisty for motorcycles.

The second issue with the XT and I believe the XT2 is occasional repeated u turn behaviour (RUT)when a shaping point is missed on an "Imported" rather than "Saved" route. You can get round this glitch by starting a route and then saving it as an "Active" route. The unit will then not display RUT behaviour rather it will route via the next shaping point.

All of that said now that I understand the XT and it foibles I like using it. It has taught me more about GPS navigation than all of my previous Garmin Sat Nav's (which just worked) and has led me here to this community and seriously good route planning and navigation Software from MRA.

Mzokk

@Con-Hennekens If you were going to route with a track in a Garmin Zumo XT you'd be better off not converting it to a route in the unit and just following the track on the screen. As I said if you convert a track it will take you straight to the end if you miss a turn and have the unit set to automatically recalculate. This is particularly problematic if its an out and back/circular route. There is a work around in basecamp (Not sure if there is one in MRA I've never tried) In basecamp you convert the track to a route using the "Direct" profile. If you do this a dialog box pops up asking how many shaping points you want so say for a 300km circular route I'd put in 70 or so. you then get a route that follows the track but in little straight lines. You then change the Basecamp user profile back to "Motorcycle" and recalculate. This pins the straight lines back to the roads but leaves the 70 "Shaping points" in Garmin speak (Rather than just a Start and End if you do the conversion in the unit.). For me to help the situation I convert a couple of the farthest Shaping points to "Waypoints"/via points in MRA speak, to ensure that a recalculation does not join the return route until after the waypoint/via point has been reached at the farthest extent.

Mzokk

@Con-Hennekens Just did a conversion of track to route in MRA.........much easier than Basecamp!!

Marinus van Deudekom

@Mzokk if you start up an XT the first Time it tries to get you to install explore. Once you’Ve do that the Drive app only works partionally. It prevents that the track you send along with the route from within MRA to recognize the track so it can’t be shown under the route. As we all know the XT has a habbit messing up routes it is good to have the track underneight it. Once you’ve installed explore that is Out of the window. So don’t please

Mzokk

@Marinus-van-Deudekom No I don't use Explore at all and with the XT I always display the track beneath the route so that if the route diverges from the track you can see what is going on. I have a bespoke theme for the track width so that it can be seen either side of the magenta line.

Lynchy67

@Stuart-McIntosh

I'm happily using my XT2 with Garmin Express.

Works flawlessly.
Personally I dont like the Tread app either.

Con Hennekens

@Mzokk, in the older Zumo devices we had to convert a track to a trip in order to get turn-by-turn navigation. It did not reroute to the end, but made the track navigationable. Maybe more has changed since the introduction of the XT series, my knowledge ends there

Mzokk

@Mzokk said in MRA to Zumo xt ??:

As I said if you convert a track it will take you straight to the end if you miss a turn and have the unit set to automatically recalculate.

So in this example we have a track on a Garmin Zumo340LM

We convert it to a trip so that we get turn by turn directions.

We end up with only two waypoints (Via points in MRA speak)

If we start the route and don't turn auto recalculate off the unit calculates the shortest route to the next waypoint........which is the end. If we turn recalculation off the unit will go silent (No directions until we reacquire the magenta line.

So if converting a track to a route in any Garmin Device turn off recalculation. Or convert the track in Basecamp using the Direct method mentioned above or in MRA, which means that Shaping/Waypoints/Via points can be introduced meaning that the unit will not take you straight to the end "if you miss a turn and have the unit set to automatically recalculate."

You would think that in this example you could add a new waypoint to the route to pin the farthest reaches of the intended route. The unit allows you to do this but recalculates the whole of the route when the new waypoint is added. Therefore in this case the unit would not route you round the big lake in Northern Ireland as intended but out to the farthest point in the route and straight back.

This scenario applies to all Garmin devices up to the XT I'm not sure how the XT2 converts tracks to routes but I'd doubt Garmin have changed it.

Guzt

@Mzokk why on earth should one convert a route into a track and then reconvert it again into a route in a gps? Learn how to make descent routes with waypoints in it for all your stops (coffee, fuel, lunch,....) with a minimum of shaping points necessary, using the track as reference and the toolkit route optimization (fastest vs shortest) and adjust your route accordingly to the track. I wrote a complete description covering this months ago. Perhaps you missed it?
And no, creating a route from a track is for more easier in BC than in the MRA application.

Mzokk

@Guzt If you read the whole thread you would find that I was trying to explain the pitfalls of converting a track that was sent to you into a route on a Garmin unit i.e you only end up with two waypoints via points Start and End and therefore if you go off route the unit will only recalculate you to the end. Nowhere do i suggest that you should convert a route to a track and back again. I rarely use tracks for navigation. I only use them to confirm that the route is following that which was intended.......given the Garmin Xt's sometimes odd routing behaviour.

Also if you convert a route to a track in Basecamp you run into the same issue as you do doing the conversion in the Zumo unit.......only a start and end Waypoint/Viapoint. If you look at the thread above you can see that I have included a way to introduce shaping points into a converted track by first using the direct profile and specifying the number of shaping points and then using the motorcycling profile to recalculate the direct route that then retains the shaping points. Perhaps something is getting lost in translation??

Guzt

@Mzokk I also only use a track as an underlying reference while driving a route. Probably I didn't read your aswer correctly for which I apologize.

When you choose the direct routing profile before converting a track in BC to a route, you have the possibility to enter how many shaping points you want to use as you mentioned in your reply (probably missed that picture as I only saw the track to route convertion ones). I normally use about 45 to 50 for a 300 km track. Once recalculated with faster time, I drag the route to the track where it differs, then I recalculate the route with shortest distance and do the same (I have 2 motorbiking profiles in BC with the same avoidances one with faster time and one with shortest distance). If I see that there are too many shaping points on a straight road, I delete them as they have no use. Recalculation mode on my zumo stays on automatic. Never had a problem when diverting from the route as a new route to the next shaping point is calculated. You can even use the skip button without any problems. I have been using this method since 2016 and every zumo can be set to automatic recalculation without any problems.
Optimizing a route in MRA as above is a real hassle as you first have to save the route as a track before you can import it again in your track logs and use it as an underlay before you start using the toolkit to first set the number of shaping points to '50' i.s.o 99 and start optimizing your route the same as above or change mapset. I've been asking for moths for a 1-click track creation from the route in order to avoid all this hassle. Perhaps it will come some sunny day?