Course sort order?

Courses are in a alphabtic order - no possibility to order them by distance.

The alphabetical order is very annoying if you do a 3 weeks tour and you have to scroll down to the 21st course.

Accidentally I have found the following "workaround" for the edge 1000:

Select
1 "Where to?" instead of "Courses"
2 "Saved"
3 "Courses" and then you find the nearest course.

With the Edge 1030 this is no longer working...

GARMIN: PLEASE ALLOW FOR SORTING BY NEAREST STARTING POINT

Thanks, Richard

I know it is a first world device, but this all sounds like a classic first world problem to me.
Have we all gotten so lazy that deleting old courses off the Garmin has become too much of a chore! :)

It might be nice to have the option for nearest start, but surely for most people having a long list of rides that start a few metres from their home is no different. And it doesn't help at all if you need to reload the course as you go along. There are enough real problems with these devices that the Garmin techs should be working on those first.

Use Delete All and Delete Multiple to keep your list short, and with a first world solution of an app to download just today's course no scrolling at all is required on the device. I'm pretty sure the app I use is sorted in nearest start as it's default.

For the 3 week tour day-by-day download of one course seems a good option, but I can understand that there might be circumstances where loading 21 before starting might be sensible. Just name them starting with D01, D02 etc. and delete one at the end of each day (or rename it Z01 if you really need to keep it on the device)! Then the next day's course will be right at the top of the list.

GARMIN: Please develop specs to allow the course list to be sorted by either name or distance from start, and put it in the folder marked "Things to work on when all devices work perfectly in their core functions"!


Cheers, Peter

I know it is a first world device, but this all sounds like a classic first world problem to me.
Have we all gotten so lazy that deleting old courses off the Garmin has become too much of a chore! :)

GARMIN: Please develop specs to allow the course list to be sorted by either name or distance from start, and put it in the folder marked "Things to work on when all devices work perfectly in their core functions"!

Cheers, Peter

Dear Peter

next spring we will cycle in the Provence region of France. We don't know yet on which day we choose one of the 15 routes (starting from different locations).
The solution ordering by day (what of course I do already for a 3 weeks tour from A to B) doesn't help.

I don't understand that a core function (for touring people like me) provided on other older garmins (oregon 600, edge 1000) just disappear.

By the way to have 21 courses isn't an issue. My old edge 800 handles that without any problems.

If for you functions like weather report or virtual races are more important than the route sorting. I accept that.

But routing and navigation is the reason why I depend on first world Garmins.

Regards, Richard

You should be more concerned about wrong elevation calculation during the courses.
Ascent remaining, ascent to next course point, they are always incorrect even to 300 %.
It looks like Garmin does not care much about it.
I suggest to remove these functions in the next update, because they are completely useless.

Dear Richard,

Thanks for the further detail, yes your planned situation could be made easier with a distance to start sorting. I actually agree it is a useful option to have, and it does seem to be a backwards step from the E1000, which I use. Perhaps Garmin have naively made the observation that they have inconsistent sort methods in different parts of the menu, or perhaps they have removed a method that requires extra computing power.

Like you, the main reason I use these Garmins is routing and navigation, but there would rarely be a ride where it performs flawlessly, and that is after already taking steps in the course planning software I use to head off some issues. Some are just annoying, but more than having to scroll a screen or two before I start riding. Many are serious, and across the spectrum it means I need to be vigilant when a navigation prompt comes up to see if the light and dark magenta lines are going in significantly different directions, and know that occasionally it will tell me "Off Course" because it didn't issue a prompt to turn.

One of the key reasons I keep my course list short (ideally one) is that reloading while underway is often the only solution to a navigation issue, so eliminating scrolling or stopping to don reading glasses is a definite plus.

Perhaps the E1030 has made a great leap forward in the method it uses to acquire and lay-out courses, and calculate navigation prompts. If so, that is great, and since it would be a software solution it should be carried back to the earlier models. I can't say I have seen anything that leads me to believe the E1030 does this any better than the E1000, but you may be seeing something different as a user of an E1030.

Cheers, Peter

Dear Peter,

My wife uses the edge 1000 and I used the oregon 600 (the most user-friendly of my garmins, but without navigation prompts).

The courses are planned with basecamp based on the very good maps provided here: http://www.openfietsmap.nl/
Routing and navigation prompts works very well with the edge 1000 (the e1000 crashes may be once a week).

I bought now the edge 1030 for the screen size and the navigation prompts.
But It seems that these advantages goes with disadvantages like course sort order or the very boring procedure to change a map.
Changing a map ist done with the oregon in a very simple way.
Every Garmin seems to have a complete different approach not keeping the good solutions.

Hopefully, the e1030 will navigate as well as the e1000...

Cheers, Richard

The alphabetical order is very annoying if you do a 3 weeks tour and you have to scroll down to the 21st course.

When I go on multi-week tours with most of the courses worked out beforehand, I name them as 01_A_to_B, 02_B_to_C, etc, and remove each day's course after it has been ridden. That means my course for the next day is always first in the list.

AuldNik, Richard has commented that he isn't doing them in a predetermined order, so a naming convention won't be a perfect solution.

Richard,
I have nowhere near the same number of crashes with my E1000. In 18 months, only one crash while riding, and one instance where it went to sleep. I think different batches have different levels of reliability.

However, routing and navigation has a number of serious shortcomings which are software related. Following simple courses in relatively sparse road networks may not reveal them, but more complex routes in 'road' networks that are dense bring those faults to the fore very regularly.

I use openfietsmap (OFM) on my Garmin and plan courses using Ride With GPS (RWGPS) using the the OSM Cycle map which is OFM. When I first encountered these issues I used Basecamp for a short while in an attempt to get a better outcome. Unfortunately, it is not the answer. Ultimately there is one significant advantage for Basecamp, it can produce a GPX file with full precision (17 significant digits), however when the Garmin is reading it in to a FIT file it appears to round it to 5 decimal places - Problem 1.

Problem 2 is that the method that the Garmin uses to calculate the route and navigation prompts from the course provided is, in my opinion, very poor. If Problem 1 didn't exist it would do a much better (possibly perfect) job. Even with Problem 1 it is clear to me that a much better method should be available to calculate the route and navigation prompts from the course provided.

So please enjoy your E1030 in the knowledge that it will probably give you a good navigation outcome that is no worse than the E1000, that is, you will on occasion curse Garmin's programmers and might head off most problems by closely observing the prompts that are presented to you.

Cheers, Peter