zumo 660 and basecamp route transferring problems

Former Member over 11 years ago

I need some advice, as I'm planning an europe motorcycle trip next april, and the main reason I bought the zumo 660 was planning the routes on my mac, then transfer them to the device.
I have the most recent fimware on my device (4.90), and the map (City Navigator Europe NT 2014.30) on the device and in basecamp too.
I planned a route, approx. 5000kms, 35 stops, then I transferred it to the zumo. First, when I imported it, it appeared to be ok, then turned out, that it contains only the first 12 stops..
I recreated the route a couple of times the past 3 days, used exact via points (not road crossings, not next to the routes, but on them) but never happened to see the route I've made in Basecamp. In addition to that, when it was recalculating the route (WHY? - as i had the same motorcycle mode, same route planning and avoidances!!) the zumo turned off unexpectedly EVERYTIME! (once at a glance i saw something, like "memory full" befote it shut down)

I tried to recreate the route on the device using the via points (saved as favourites) but failed again during recalculation..

Finally and desperately i reinstalled the firmware and the maps, and started the routing from scratch - deleted even the favourites, and searched for all the via points in the zumo. The result was: the route is too long, navigation starts when I'll be closer to the waypoints.

Is there any solution for my problem? Why route transferring doesn't work? Why must de device recalculate the route, basecamp already calculated? Is there any limitation in length of the planned routes (according to kms or max stops?)

Please help me, as I feel I've thrown a lot of money out of the window..

0 SUSSAMB over 11 years ago

Route length and complexity both affect whether a zumo/nuvi can deal with a route and there's no hard and fast rule from Garmin. 5000kms and 35 stops will though I'm sure defeat it :)

You'll need to break your route into smaller sections.

As for recalculation, most nuvis and some zumos recalculate routes sent from Basecamp or indeed any other way. I don't have a 660 so I'm not sure how it works, but you may indeed find you must insert via points to ensure it goes the way you want.

0 danham_ over 11 years ago

SUSSAMB has offered excellent advice. I'll add that there are several things I've done with my 660 that make this process more reliable.

* split your trip into one (or more) routes for each day. Do not try to do the whole trip as one route. Even if the 660 could handle it (it usually cannot), any problem with the route while you are out on the road would affect the entire trip.

* export each route from BC as an individual GPX file and store that file in the Garmin/GPX folder on the SD card in your zumo. That way you have a fresh, untouched copy of the route you can import on the road in case the one in active storage on your 660 becomes corrupted.

* some people have worked out ways to import routes to their 660 without a recalc and they do not allow the 660 ever to recalc while riding. This can work, but I find the tradeoffs unacceptable. instead, I prefer to include enough waypoints or vias ("forcing" points) to make sure the GPS will go the way I want it to no matter how often it recalcs if I go off route. However, I set the 660 to prompt before recalculating and if I can still see the way to regain my route if I've made a wrong turn (the purple stripe), I will tell it not to recalc.

* after any map or firmware update, do a master reset (press lower right corner of screen while powering on). This helps prevent all sorts of odd behavior. Yes, it's a royal pain to re-do all the prefs and restore your "Favorites," but so is having a route malfunction on your trip.

Hope this helps,

-dan

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

Thank You guys for the quick answers, i'll try then replanning my route. The hard thing is to plan it day by day, since it'll be quite a wandering through those countries (bonsia, croatia, slovenia, italy and malta) and we're just taking a tent and sleeping bags, so we don't have a crystal clear plan, where and when to stop exactly. Maybe I'll take a piece of paper with the names of the cities I'd like to visit, then just type the next into the zumo :)
As I didn't have a gps before, I thought 5000km isn't a big deal to a device, which was built to navigate. In the meantime i also talked to a friend of mine, whos working at nav'n'go, and he told me, that there's no gps, which could handle such a route..and told me also, why haven't i downloaded a gps app to my phone, as they are 4 times stronger in hardware (iphone 4), than my zumo.. what do you think? is that true? I prefer having a specific device for this to an iphone app.

0 SUSSAMB over 11 years ago

Well I wouldn't use an iphone app for this. Not sure even they would handle a 5000 km route.

There's really no need to do it day by day either unless it suits you. Just mangeable chunks of say around 200 to 300 miles? When I do something similar using Basecamp I just ensure route 1 overlaps with route 2 etc etc. By this I mean that the end of route 1 will be ten miles or so past the start of route 2, same with route 2 and 3 and so on. Then at some point during the overlap I'll switch from route 1 to route 2 etc etc ...

0 danham_ over 11 years ago

I love my iPhone 5s and it does make a better pedestrian nav than my zumo. Its screen is much more responsive and its processor is way faster. But I would never depend on it for motorcycle nav. It is not waterproof, is not as resistant to vibration, is harder to use with gloves on, and is less able to pinpoint its exact location when cell signals are weak or missing.

If days are not a logical break point for your routes, there are many other ways to do it. Lunch-to-lunch or city-to-city come to mind. While there's nothing wrong with doing an arbitrary number of miles, I find it handy to have an arrival time displayed for something worth arriving at, like lunch. ;-)

In any case have a fun, safe trip.

-dan

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

Thanks again guys, for your help, I'll work it out somehow!:) I like my zumo already!