Questions on user profiles and ETAs

Ive noticed this too, but only when I'm doing "direct" routing under Hiking or Walking profiles. Very annoying because I want to use it where there are no established trails. I'd love to create a profile "forest bushwhacking" and, put at least an estimated min or max speed (say 50 yards per minute). Then I could figure out how long it might take me to visit X number of waypoints (game cameras perhaps), or do stuff like "if I have 3 hours, how many (and which) waypoints can I visit and be back in time?"

I see...so the issue(s) that I'm having are more a function of the fact that there are no route-able trails on my map?

Automatic routes must follow routable map features and must contain all of the user entered points (the ones under the Properties tab). All profiles except Direct create automatic routes. Most devices will accept ca. 50 user entered points (the ones under the properties tab). The total number of points in the calculated route can be quite large, but I do not know what the limit is.

Direct routes contain only the points entered by the user. They do not have to follow routable features, and if they do, they will ignore information associated with that feature (e.g. speed for a residential road). That is why planning features like Elapsed Time do not work with direct routes in BaseCamp. Direct routes can contain more user entered points (the ones under the Properties tab). The maximum number may vary by device, but I think it is around 250.

A believer that ETA on your device is different from Trip Time in BaseCamp. ETA is based on your current speed and remaining distance. It does not use information from routable map features or stop times you enter in BaseCamp. Of course, different devices may worked differently, but I am pretty sure that is how yours works. So, if you want an ETA while hiking, you should check while you are walking, not while you are stopped.

Your device will also navigate a Track. Tracks can contain up to 10000 points. I am not sure if all of the trip computer features (e.g. ETA) work while navigating a track.

Oh, ok. So the ETAs on my device are not necessarily related to the points from my BaseCamp map. So maybe I should be creating my routes on the device and not on BaseCamp.

No, you don’t quite understand. Routable maps have different classes of roads (highway, residential road etc.). An activity profile assigns one speed to each class of road. In addition, a user can add stop times (say for lunch at a restaurant entered into the route). This probably isn’t exactly how it is done, but the logic will be correct. For each segment of the route, BaseCamp will calculate the distance of each class of road. The distance for each class of road in that segment will be divided by the speed for that class to give a time value for each class. The sum of these values will give the time of travel for each segment. The sum of all segment times gives the Elapsed Time for the trip. Arrival times are done similarly, but they will include any layover times entered by the use.

All of the above is great for planning to ensure you don’t try to travel too far.

ETA on you device is a different kind of calculation. I have not paid enough attention to know the sophistication of the software. For a first pass, ETA could be calculated by calculating the remaining distance in your route and dividing by your current speed. Your ETA will change as conditions change (city streets to highway, detour off highway, traffic jam etc.). The device is capable of updating ETA every second, but I suspect that would be overkill. In addition you probably wouldn’t want the value bouncing around wildly. This could be aided by using a running average of x number of consecutive speed values. Combining both would result in slow transition of ETA from say highway speeds to residential speeds and prevent rapid fluctuations at stop lights. However it is done, it is based on actual speed values and remaining distance.

In both cases, the points in your routes are used to calculate distance. For a Direct route, only the points you enter comprise the route. In an Automatic route (any profile but Direct), the route is comprised of the points you enter plus points provided by the software.

BTLAAKE -

That was a VERY helpful explanation. Thank you for that.

I think that the only question I have now is how to set routes in BaseCamp to do what I would like. Please bear with me as I explain...

As I said in my original post, I have a Track that I downloaded and turned into a Route. I inserted Waypoints into the Route and made everything else a "shaping point". (see pic below)

https://sites.google.com/site/misclinkeroos/basecamp/Picture4.png?attredirects=0

It was my understanding that by doing this, only the items that were NOT shaping points would be announced on my device. Now, when I send that route to my device and take a look at the first point to navigate to, it is showing one of the shaping points, not one of the waypoints. Also, the destination is the last shaping point, not the last waypoint. (see pic below)

https://sites.google.com/site/misclinkeroos/basecamp/Picture5.png?attredirects=0

I think I'm safe in assuming that once I arrived at B1TF, the next point shown would be shaping point BT1F1, then shaping point BT1F2, etc.

So, some questions...

1. Am I missing something as far as what shaping points are supposed to do?
2. Do I have this set up correctly in BaseCamp?
3. Does the GPSMAP 62sc support shaping points? (I'm asking this because while searching the forum I saw that some devices do not, but I could not find confirmation that mine does.)

Thanks again!!

As I understand it very few devices support 'shaping points'. Personally I've never bothered to find out, being quite happy to be alerted :)

If I run this route as-is from BaseCamp, I am alerted approx every 200 - 500 feet. (see pic below)

https://sites.google.com/site/misclinkeroos/basecamp/Picture6.png?attredirects=0


That seems excessive to me. Also, for my use (off road, non-routeable trails) it would be more helpful to have only certain user-selected points be the ones that the unit is "looking for." By that, I mean that when I start this route at the parking area at the top, the "next" location could be the "JCT to BeverPdLeanto" instead of some random point 45 feet away. Thus, I could know that the next meaningful landmark is XX miles away and should take me approx XX time to get there. (see pic below)

https://sites.google.com/site/misclinkeroos/basecamp/Picture7.png?attredirects=0

It would seem to me like this should be doable. Am I asking the system to do something it cannot?

Just an update...

I'm now trying to figure out if I can take the track and convert it in some way to a shapefile and thus make it routable. All of this is fairly over my head, but I like a challenge. I noticed when I do a track, my GPSMAP62sc shows the "Next" point as the beginning of the track and the "End" point at the end of the track. So, it's clearly ignoring all of the via points in the middle. So, I'm trying to see if there is a way to add my custom waypoints into the middle of the track. We'll see!