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"Guide Text" option bug?

Former Member over 8 years ago

In my first attempt to follow a pre-saved course on my Edge 820 (software 3.10), after selecting the course, it prompted as usual “Navigate to the beginning of the course?”, to which I replied “No”, as I usual do in my previous Edge 800. But it slowly started “Calculating 1%..4%…10%…”? Calculating what, if I do not want turn by turn navigation? Worse, it hanged exactly after reaching 99%. It take me several attempts and precious riding time to solve this issue. I had all navigation options off, so I did not understand this useless "calculation" stage. The unit was completely unresponsive and even the normal power off was not working -- I presume that this was due to the "calculation phase" was stuck at 99%. I had to make a forced power off (push power button for 10s) to switch off and on again. Hopefully, the route was already there and no more “calculating” phase was required. I attempted the same sequence a few times later, and in fact it did not hang again at 99%, but it still went through this slow and (apparently) unjustifiable "calculation" phase.

When I returned home I tried to understand this “Calculating..” stuff. It seems in fact a quite annoying and disturbing bug, resulting from an (apparently) unrelated feature. In the profile/navigation/map there is an option to turn off or on the “Guide Text”. I was happy when I found this option, since it enabled me to get rid of the information on the top of the map screen stating “Riding on road”, "riding west" (or equivalent). It eats out almost 1/4 of the (small) map screen and it is mostly useless. What I discover is that (1) If "Guide text" is ON, it ALWAYS slowly re-calculates something (I presume a route), even if you do not ask for it (2) If "Guide text" is off, it NEVER computes the route, even if you ask to navigate to an address or POI. So far as understood, "Guide text" should only be related with the visibility of the message on the top of the screen, but should not affect navigation options.

If I am wrong (and maybe I am), any help or clarification will be welcomed.

0 DavidBiddle over 8 years ago

Hi.
I have a thread on this already - probably a few pages deep now. Anyway after about 4-5 emails to Garmin support I have their response.

Garmin:

I can confirm that with the guide text to never display this will not show the course calculating percentage on the screen. With this feature on this will display the percentage.

In order to use and follow a course you will need to wait for the percentage to reach 100% before starting the ride as the device is calculating and loading map detail for that course. The device will not proceed to record the ride until it has reached this 100%.

With regards to your device, when you have mentioned that there is a lag with this process, how long on average are you having to wait for this to reach to 100%?

Depending on the length of the course and the signal strength this option will normally take on average around 2-3 mins to calculate. This can be different if the course is longer or contains more detail

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Guide text: Clarified

I can confirm that with the guide text to never display this will not show the course calculating percentage on the screen. With this feature on this will display the percentage.

In order to use and follow a course you will need to wait for the percentage to reach 100% before starting the ride as the device is calculating and loading map detail for that course. The device will not proceed to record the ride until it has reached this 100%.

Hello David,

Thanks a lot. Before my post I also thaught that was just a problem with the visibility of the "calculating" message, so I wait what I thaught it was the required time. My mistake. It happens that the unit is slow and without the message the time seems much slower :-). It was a perception error. After reading your post I repeated the experience, this time with a chronometer at hand. It takes about 25 seconds for an address 15Km away and, with the guide text off, the route in fact appears after 25 seconds. So my mistake, Garmin (and you) are right regarding this point.

I still do not understand when I load a pre saved route and select NOT navigating to the beginning of the course why it has to go through the "calculating" stage. But this is clearly other issue, unrelated with the "Gide text" option.

Anyway, this suggests that, even with the "guide text" off, it would be advisable to keep the "calculating" message always visible. Contrary to the "riding on the road" or "riding north", which are mostly useless and clutter the screen, the calculating message is relevant and informative -- and since you are not yet riding, not so bad if it occupies part of the screen.

Thanks once more and rgds,

Fernando

0 looigi over 8 years ago

...The device will not proceed to record the ride until it has reached this 100%...

That's kinda bogus. My old 705 would record the ride while calculating, so you could just start riding instead of sitting around waiting for it to finish. Of course you can still start riding, you just won't get the first few minutes recorded.

0 DavidBiddle over 8 years ago

I still do not understand when I load a pre saved route and select NOT navigating to the beginning of the course why it has to go through the "calculating" stage. But this is clearly other issue, unrelated with the "Gide text" option.

Fernando

Hi Fernando.

This bug is so easily reproducible, what was more annoying was the fact Garmin took several emails to recognise this happened.

What you mention (quoted) is normal as it appears to guide you to the start of the course if you aren't in the immediate area. So if you select 'No' then it calculates the turn points of the course and if 'Yes' it just takes that bit longer to prepare the device as it adds the extra navigation to the route.

0 DavidBiddle over 8 years ago

That's kinda bogus. My old 705 would record the ride while calculating, so you could just start riding instead of sitting around waiting for it to finish. Of course you can still start riding, you just won't get the first few minutes recorded.

I think it still does record the route if you press the manual start button and start riding. The map just doesn't redraw and freezes until it had processed the course.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Long calculating phase without turn by turn navigation

Hi Fernando.
So if you select 'No' then it calculates the turn points of the course and if 'Yes' it just takes that bit longer to prepare the device as it adds the extra navigation to the route.

Hi David,

Thanks once more. Nevertheless, it seems too much "calculating" for the "No" option. To be more clear, my routes never have many turning points: I always build a plain GPX (no turn point at all) and then I "promote" a few intermediate points to "Turning points" (those that appear in the "cue sheet"), just to have intermediate distances, and only at this stage I export it to a TCX file. So, if I cross 4 villages, for example, I just mark 4 turning points in the whole route. Of course, they are not real "turning points", just intermediate "reference spots". In the case I first reported, I had just four turning points in a course of 55Km, so the slow calculating phase seems difficult to understand. Furthermore, I do not remember my Edge 800 to have to go through this "calculating" phase in the same scenario. The 800 just goes through the "calculation" phase whenever you request turn by turn direction to a given address or location (as it happens in car GPSs), which makes sense since it has to compute the shortest distance based on the map.

BTW, I started following this procedure of having only a few "turning points" in my routes because I noticed that when I used all real turning points produced by a standard map application (sometimes several hundreds) my old Edge 800 quite often got lost if I was off course for a while and returned to the course a few kilometres ahead. When I returned to the course, it tried to re-calculate the "next" turning point rebuilding all the path since the beginning and it sometimes failed if there were too many turning points. Hopefully, it still displayed the correct distance to the end, but it was not able to find the distance to the "next" turning point in the course (it reported the distance to the "next" equal to the "distance to destination"). I just discovered that, by reducing the number of turning points, the probability of this happen is quite lower. Moreover, I also felt that having only intermediate distances to a few selected locations is much more useful in long rides than to know that you have to turn right in 200 meters (at least in bikes).

Rgds,

Fernando