No Turn by Turn Notifications when hiking (walking activity)

I have used my 6x on about 4 or 5 hikes now. Last week I updated the firmware to 4.30 and the next day did a hike - and the Turn By Turn notifications worked perfectly. I was quite excited! Then did another one this weekend and as usual, no TBT.

In all cases, even the one where it worked, I created the route in Plotaroute, exported it as a FIT file, then copied it to the /newfiles folder on the watch. It was my understanding that the watch generates the TBT as it imports the route. There are no Waypoints.

These are all about 10km hikes around local trails, with a lot of turns.

I actually use a Walk type activity renamed to Hiking. In all other respects, the watch navigates around the route ok.

  •  You can swap any trackpoints (points which defines shape of the track) to TBT instruction by holding finger on the track while on route planner and then select icon with arrow to change the point to TBT. 

     Strange that you have such experience. I don't have problem with Locus Map routing. Something is probably wrong in your case, if BRouter gives you that bad results. On which country did you try to use it if I might ask? Seems like BRouter has bad background data on your location.

  • I am in Australia. I agree that there could be something wrong with the background data. But other programs get the routing correct, like Basecamp and Plotaroute. 

  • Yep - spent weeks on Locus (I still use it, just not for planning). It is a very unintuitive system but I understand how to use it. I am still convinced it has serious bugs as well. Things simply go wrong all the time and you have to start again. Points duplicate themselves. It is impossible to locate the correct points. So many wrong cues (most, in fact). Losing GPS. Many problems. I have spent hours on one short route...not a word of a lie. 

    One thing it IS good for is showing you the turn cues. Use plotaroute to generate your route and TBT notifications. Export as FIT and then import into Locus. It shows you a blue dot for every turn cue. It even shows the prewarning plotaroute generates. Lovely. Mind you, it stuffs up the actual labels (truncates them). The Fenix 6x does not - it shows the full label, which is very useful. But just seeing where all the TBT notifications are is nice.

  • Locus turn generation not functional ? Design method (not tapping near junctions) was ok ?

  • I spent weeks on Locus - dozens, perhaps hundreds of attempts to plot a route. Often the same route dozens of times. Plotting a simple route from A to B is not a problem. Does a good job and probably fine for car travel. But plotting a route in the bush and then doubling back over the same route to the start is well nigh impossible. And trying to edit that route even worse. Trust me, I tried this many, many, many times. And on the PC using BlueStacks, of course. How anyone creates a complex hiking route on a phone baffles me. 

    I don't use any Garmin apps for route plotting. Garmin Connect is too basic. Garmin Explore slightly better and Basecamp fairly good. Pretty good route plotting (certainly better than Locus), but poor TBT notifications stuff. 

    I guess it all depends on what sorts of routes you want. Hiking is not the same as a car trip. I have used Locus on point to point routes in the car, and it worked just fine for that. Even the GPS dropouts did not matter (after you turned the warning off). But hiking is different. There are a lot of intricate turns, often offtrack, and it HAS to be correct. You are way out in the remote bush, and navigation is critical! And you often loop back to the start using parts of the same route out. A planner has to be able to handle that.

    I have an Edge as well, but never use it for navigation. I have no idea how any of these planners work with a bike route as I have never tried it. 

  • This might be deemed off topic, since I have a 5X+, but in case it helps......

    Yesterday I planned a freehand route (follow roads not possible for an off road course) in Garmin Connect on the web. I sent it to my watch with Garmin Connect Mobile. Today I started a "walk" activity and selected the course. The map and route were displayed and off we set. Following the route (course) was easy enough, but the watch only sounded turn alerts for the more extreme course alterations of around 90 degrees. Small deviations, say 20 degrees or so did not trigger an alert. I don't know if there is a specific threshold above which an alert is triggered, or a more complicated algorithm, but it seemed pretty predictable when to expect and not expect the alerts.

  • If you use a route planner like Plotaroute or Basecamp (and others, eh Locus) you can actually see the TBT notifications and what they are. You can even add/delete/edit these notifications. They are part of the route file and not generated by the watch. 

    The process of importing the route file can strip out any notifications you may have had, so it is not a simple thing. I believe Garmin Connect strips these out and puts in it's own. Basecamp generates its own as well, but you can see them easily enough. I think it also matters what file format you use. GPX does not support them (I think), TCX does, and FIT supports them. Best to use FIT as that is the Garmin format. 

  • Locus gpx can. Exact & precise navigation as by tcx_fit  course files.