Turn-by-turn directions

budish over 8 years ago

Under what circumstances, if any, will the 5X give turn-by-turn directions? So far I've tried the following:

Round-trip course: The watch vibrates at an upcoming turn and shows the map. The watch does not give street names for the upcoming turn, even though that information is available when you're previewing a generated route on the watch.
A Garmin Connect Course: I created a course on GC (uploaded via Garmin Express). When following the course on the 5X, the watch provided no indication about upcoming turns. I had to set the watch to the map screen and keep looking at the map. To make matters more difficult, the screen kept resetting to the distance/pace screen. When looking at the course creator on GC, I don't see a way to manually add turn indicators.

What are the other options for getting turn-by-turn directions on the 5X?

Top Replies

budish over 8 years ago +1
If I have time tomorrow, I'll try to create a short 1 mile course on GC. I will then try running that course repeatedly on the 5X in the following modes:
- Activity: Pedestrian, Courses: Follow Course…

All Replies

0 jburchm1 over 8 years ago

Does that mean if you set the routing type to cycling instead of pedestrian, even with the included maps, you'd get TbT directions? I'm not sure I'd understand why one map would give you turn-by-turn and one wouldn't. Could downloading an OSM map work?

You'll get turn by turn directions when navigating to a saved location regardless of whether you have routing set to pedestrian or cycle. The Garmin support guy didn't know what he was talking about. I mentioned that you may have to change the setting because I initially had issues until I switched the setting and then set it back. Not sure if that's a bug or just a coincidence.

Does that include routing to a PoI or routing back to start (but not using TracBack)?

I have not tried routing to a POI, but trackback has not given me turn by turn directions so far. Other symptoms I'm seeing when turn by turn doesn't work is that the navigation bug and elevation plot screens don't show up, so generally if you have those two items the turn by turn popups seem to work as well.

0 budish over 8 years ago

I have not tried routing to a POI, but trackback has not given me turn by turn directions so far. Other symptoms I'm seeing when turn by turn doesn't work is that the navigation bug and elevation plot screens don't show up, so generally if you have those two items the turn by turn popups seem to work as well.

Based on the manual, I'm not surprised that TracBack isn't giving you TbT. It sounds like you only get TbT when heading back to the start of an activity if you select "Route" instead of "TracBack" AND if your device is using a routable map AND the device is not set up to do direct routing. If all of those criteria are met, you should get TbT directions when returning to the starting point (in theory).

0 jburchm1 over 8 years ago

Yeah I'm not surprised about there being no turn-by-turn on TracBack either. For the record I did try navigating to a POI and turn-by-turn works there.

Has anyone tried saving a course generated by the Round-Trip Course feature? When I do and then attempt to navigate the saved course I have all sorts of problems. Impossible straight lines across the map and empty alerts that cover half the screen.

0 runnerboy2000 over 8 years ago

cue sheets?

Is it possible to have cue sheets on the 5x as it is on the Edge series?

0 jburchm1 over 8 years ago

It kind of creates one when you use the built-in navigation. You can access it during the activity by long pressing Menu, then selecting "Turn By Turn". There doesn't appear to be any way to have it displayed as a data screen but that'd be a really neat feature.

0 budish over 8 years ago

If I have time tomorrow, I'll try to create a short 1 mile course on GC. I will then try running that course repeatedly on the 5X in the following modes:
Activity: Pedestrian, Courses: Follow Course
Activity: Pedestrian, Courses: Use the Map
Activity: Cycling, Courses: Use the Map
Activity: Cycling, Courses: Follow Course

I managed to try out several of these variations, with mixed success. Here's what I found in my testing:

Activity: Pedestrian, Courses: Follow Course — No TbT directions. The course appears on the map, but it only indicates the total distance to the end of the course.

Activity: Pedestrian, Courses: Use the Map — You do get TbT directions similar to those that you get with the "Round Trip Course" feature. That means that during the activity the watch buzzes for upcoming turns, and it shows the next turn on the map. Similar to Round Trip Course, the watch does not list street names in the turn prompts. Unfortunately, in the process of identifying turns in the course, the watch placed a lot of waypoints on the map making the map cluttered and difficult to read. In addition, the turn arrows appeared to be smaller than those used in Round Trip Course, making it more difficult to see which way I was supposed to go at each turn. The usability of this feature could be improved significantly.

Activity: Cycling, Courses: Use the Map — The good news is that occasionally this gave me full screen notices that would show an arrow and say "Left Turn on Maple Street." That was really easy to see while running. The bad news was that most of the time it gave me unhelpful full screen notices like "Left Via Waypoint in 800" while obscuring the map. This was so unusable that I had to turn it off midway through the run. Additionally, when using cycling activity setting, the watch will only allow routes that follow traffic flow (e.g., one way streets).

Activity: Cycling, Courses: Follow Course — I didn't attempt because the previous one was so unusable in cycle mode.

Overall, "Round Trip Course" generation appears to generate the best/clearest TbT directions. It would be great if running route could give you full screen, legible instructions like "Turn Right on Maple." But I haven't yet found a method for getting that.

Lastly, lag is a big issue in all of these modes. At several points, the map updates would lag by several seconds. In locations where there were two turns in fairly quick succession, the watch sometimes skipped the second turn entirely.

0 muness over 7 years ago

Road pemex

Well turning the auto incline to off did allow me to keep the map screen up the whole run.
Yay!

I have the 24k topo for my area(north central USA) and on the Garmin website, it says mine has turn by turn directions but the 100k topos do NOT. So I assume that is why you aren't getting the TBT natively with the pre installed maps. They are the 100k topo variety, which Garmin sells regionally for $59 each(you get these all pretty much world wide, free, with the watch, and chose which ones to download when you first sync).
100k topos just have searchable POIs & terrain contours.

I bought the 24k before my watch even got here. I have a rural gravel riding bike event that is out in BFE Iowa where even cell service is spotty. I needed reliable maps. Ones that had more info. Which is why I upgraded.

NAKEDBABYTOES: Do your runs (with the 24k topo) give you TBT? Are they useful? I can't figure out how to get TBT during runs without getting dozens (over a hundred) for a ~4 mile run Via Points cluttering up the map and adding incessant vibration alerts that make TBT useless.

My hope is that if I buy the 24k topo TBT will work for runs. If you can validate that before I spend more time or money on this endeavor, I'd be grateful!

BTW, I also tried loading routable OSM topo maps without them helping.

Thanks!

0 Former Member over 7 years ago

Please excuse me for dropping in, but not much is going on with the auto gps users.

Has anyone considered that the almost deprecated 2008-2009 USA 24k Topo maps, if accurate, tend to place the road vectors in the center of the roadway, but bicyclists and pedestrians may hug the right side shoulder or beyond? Therefore exercisers with miniature devices on their bodies may need to shift their turn points and intermediate track points 30 feet or more to the right to create route files that they actually traverse? After doing so, deselecting the 24k maps on the devices may give better results? Now back to my 10 minutes per day indoor recumbent bicycle I just acquired.

0 avikoren1 over 7 years ago

The entire navigation implementation is garbage. Firstly, this whole nonsense about follow course or follow map. If you tell the watch "DO COURSE" isn't obvious that you are doing a set course loaded in the watch? When I first got the watch I had it set to FOLLOW MAP while I was doing a course. The watch kept trying to re-route me his own way which drove me crazy. Secondly, now I also have no clue when I will get TBT, it seems random. I used to get them when doing course but now I sometimes get one or two TBT, but mostly I don't get them. Garmin is just such a whachy company (I love their product but its a love hate). I had the F3 which ran perfectly as far as I was concerned and I always assume that the next gen will build on the previous and improve and time after time Garmin has proven that stuff that worked great in a previous watch will be destroyed in the next gen. My other issue is I am sure that the line width of the tracks is thinner on the F5x vs the F3. I struggle to see the course and track that overlays it where I had no issues on the F3. While I am at it one more thing regarding the auto climb. Why in the name of what is holy to you doesn't the watch revert back to the screen from which you came from prior to the climb. If I have the map on display, after every climb it defaults back to page 1 or a certain page and I need to manually change pages. Com'on Garmin, use a variable, store what page I was at just prior to the climb, once climb timeout is finished, read variable and bring me back to the place I want to be. I can keep going but maybe I shouldn't. Okay, one more, fix the alarm synch issue already.

0 mr_salty over 7 years ago

I have a 3 but keep looking at the 5X essentially just for this feature, and was coming closer to talking myself into it - but I haven't been able to track down a 5X to play with, so I'm glad I found this thread. My hope was to be able to walk around unfamiliar cites without using my phone at all. But, it doesn't sound like it's really suited for that and I should look at other options?