Touring Cycle computer that works with cycle.travel and has wifi/bluetooth

[MrsHJ]

Question moved from the cycle.travel thread.

Current garmin touring plus not great with my cycle.travel routes (and I think may be generally not working correctly) and most importantly routes cannot be amended away from a laptop/pc unless I revert to the touring plus route planning. This caused problems when I was ill on my recent tour leading me to rely on my phone using cycle.travel and google maps.

My next tour will be in the USA so I'd prefer to rely on the cycle computer suitably preloaded with the route of an evening when I have wifi etc with google maps/4G as emergency back up to keep my roaming expenditure from exploding (I'm liking EU roaming- wasn't very good in Italy but excellent in France and Switzerland).

I'm not a huge garmin fan- it doesn't seem very intuitive to me but I get that it may be the best choice. I do not need lots of bells and whistles like heart rate, cadence rate etc I just like to know my current speed and total distance elapsed for the day and to know where I am turning next! Budget is more £200 ish than £400.

PS Next tour likely to be first section of US variation transam route next May-ish. I've decided to break it up into 4 sections as I am not sure I'll keep going for 3 months non-stop. So section one outline plan is Washington DC to St Louis, MO.

[Sweep]

Feel like a swizz sending you here MrsHJ

Read your post far too quickly and now see that you want wi fi and bluetooth connectivity.

If it hadn't been for that I would have recommended the Etrex 20 or 20x.

But it doesn't have any wireless connectivity at all.

Tempted to ask why you necessarily need it.

I use cycle travel extensively on a small tough light (no moving parts) chromebook. Easily crammed in a pannier. I need the wifi for the initial route generation, and further tinkering if I need to do it. But the gpx file editing/point labelling can be done offline. And dumping the route to the Garmin is a simple matter of connecting it to a USB port on the chromebook via a short cable.

My suggestion may be bonkers though as I don't use a smartphone by preference.

Agree with you that Garmins can seem a bit clunky - not intuitive is a polite understatement But I basically think the Etrex is great. Uses standard or recharegeable AA cells.

The small Chromebook cost me £99 and does of course have many other uses - staying in touch etc - proper keyboard.

[Paulatic]

I use a Lezyne Super GPS. superb battery life but the drawback from some it needs your smartphone to route it.
I’ve exported a number of routes from cycle,travel my experience has been ; saving as tcx the turn by turn info, although mostly timely can often be confusing. Saving as a simple gpx and following a breadcrumb has been faultless and is now my preferred way.
Method ; export from cycle.travel > save somewhere ( I use my iCloud) > download the route to Lezyne Root > you can retrieve it from here anytime useing the Lezyne Ally app you’ll need WiFi or data to do it...but you can also sync them to your phone while you’ve WiFi. Once on your phone you can Bluetooth to the device without the need for any 3G or WiFi.
So you could sync a couple of weeks routes onto your phone and never need data while on the road.
You can also let Lezyne navigate a route for you from your phone while on the road. I’ve tried it a couple of times it seems OK but I’ve not a lot of experience with it.

[Sweep]

On cycletravel I select the option to use a slimmed down file that just marks the turns.

I then navigate between those "off road" or direct. This means that the garmin isn't strained by having to do any routing at all.

You can get a long way on very few points. I don't need points or a trial along the road as I manage to resist any temptation to leave it and hop over a hedge.

[MrsHJ]

Feel like a swizz sending you here MrsHJ

Read your post far too quickly and now see that you want wi fi and bluetooth connectivity.

If it hadn't been for that I would have recommended the Etrex 20 or 20x.

But it doesn't have any wireless connectivity at all.

Tempted to ask why you necessarily need it.

I use cycle travel extensively on a small tough light (no moving parts) chromebook. Easily crammed in a pannier. I need the wifi for the initial route generation, and further tinkering if I need to do it. But the gpx file editing/point labelling can be done offline. And dumping the route to the Garmin is a simple matter of connecting it to a USB port on the chromebook via a short cable.

My suggestion may be bonkers though as I don't use a smartphone by preference.

Agree with you that Garmins can seem a bit clunky - not intuitive is a polite understatement But I basically think the Etrex is great. Uses standard or recharegeable AA cells.

The small Chromebook cost me £99 and does of course have many other uses - staying in touch etc - proper keyboard.

No worries on the bluetooth point- I really want either/or, don't need both. I have slimmed down my electronics (no junior accompanying me otherwise I'd probably have to bring his xbox and a pc) to my (work) iphone 8 plus (plus for my poor old eyes) and a kindle. So I want cycle computer that likes to interface with a smart phone for last minute changes like when I fell ill in France and reduced my route. Batteries are a good call I reckon- I had a couple of running out of charge events and it would be difficult to balance the power monkey in my handlebar bag to charge the computer on route (and it would probably stop routing) Thank you though - the etrex sounds like a really nice choice- I think I am hoping that one of the not-top of the range ones now has wireless!

[MrsHJ]

I use a Lezyne Super GPS. superb battery life but the drawback from some it needs your smartphone to route it.
I’ve exported a number of routes from cycle,travel my experience has been ; saving as tcx the turn by turn info, although mostly timely can often be confusing. Saving as a simple gpx and following a breadcrumb has been faultless and is now my preferred way.
Method ; export from cycle.travel > save somewhere ( I use my iCloud) > download the route to Lezyne Root > you can retrieve it from here anytime useing the Lezyne Ally app you’ll need WiFi or data to do it...but you can also sync them to your phone while you’ve WiFi. Once on your phone you can Bluetooth to the device without the need for any 3G or WiFi.
So you could sync a couple of weeks routes onto your phone and never need data while on the road.
You can also let Lezyne navigate a route for you from your phone while on the road. I’ve tried it a couple of times it seems OK but I’ve not a lot of experience with it.

Very interesting, thank you. Breadcrumb and wireless sounds fine- hopefully my next tour will go according to plan but I'd rather not rely on being able to download garmin connect onto some poor persons laptop if it doesn't! - off to look on wiggle etc. Hmmmm.

[MrsHJ]

On cycletravel I select the option to use a slimmed down file that just marks the turns.

I then navigate between those "off road" or direct. This means that the garmin isn't strained by having to do any routing at all.

You can get a long way on very few points. I don't need points or a trial along the road as I manage to resist any temptation to leave it and hop over a hedge.

I do like to wing it sometimes - could not recommend more heartily a route I picked out of Arles across the camargue and another down near Sete in the middle of the water (just a canal towpath in the middle of nothing).

[Sweep]

To clarify, using point to point routing, essentially a series of coloured straight lines, allows you to depart from the route and then quickly return to it after going awol to check out something interesting. I do this a lot. If I had the etrex set to do routeing it would forever be screaming at me

[Richard Fairhurst]

I haven't tried them but I think the new Garmins - like the Edge Explore - are a good bet. They have Bluetooth, so you can copy files directly from the phone to the Garmin. There's a little app you can install to work with them called routeCourse; this copies a GPX file from the web, such as one from cycle.travel, and puts it on your Garmin via Bluetooth.

(To support this, I've just added a GPX link feature to cycle.travel. Plan a route, save it - say, https://cycle.travel/map/journey/73820 - and click the 'GPS' button. There's now a link at the bottom of the popup window. You can click 'Copy' to copy that link to the clipboard, then paste that into routeCourse or any number of other apps.)

Obviously caveat emptor - Garmins do have their idiosyncracies and I wouldn't recommend buying a new one without reading reviews etc. But it looks like a promising solution.

Otherwise, the Lezyne does look good. Personally I use an Edge Touring or the MapOut app on my iPhone, but obviously that means you do need a computer and a cable to get the routes across.

[Sweep]

I didn't even know that existed Richard. I'm out of touch.

A quick spec check does seem to indicate that it has a built in battery though.

Very bad idea for anything to be used for touring in my opinion.

I need to lay up stocks of the older stuff I think.

[MrsHJ]

I didn't even know that existed Richard. I'm out of touch.

A quick spec check does seem to indicate that it has a built in battery though.

Very bad idea for anything to be used for touring in my opinion.

I need to lay up stocks of the older stuff I think.

I haven't tried my backup up power battery on my garmin ( seemed no point when it was so hopeless on this tour) but I think it would work. Not a perfect solution or a light one but would Bridge some of the running out of battery gap.

I'll take a look at that edge too, thanks Richard.

[Sweep]

Do you mean plugging it into a powerbank mrshj?

I think that works on many of them.

But some folks reckon that you could very easily damage the Garmin's USB input.

Not really built for it as I understand it.

[Psamathe]

I haven't tried them but I think the new Garmins - like the Edge Explore - are a good bet. They have Bluetooth, so you can copy files directly from the phone to the Garmin. There's a little app you can install to work with them called routeCourse; this copies a GPX file from the web, such as one from cycle.travel, and puts it on your Garmin via Bluetooth.

(To support this, I've just added a GPX link feature to cycle.travel. Plan a route, save it - say, https://cycle.travel/map/journey/73820 - and click the 'GPS' button. There's now a link at the bottom of the popup window. You can click 'Copy' to copy that link to the clipboard, then paste that into routeCourse or any number of other apps.)

Obviously caveat emptor - Garmins do have their idiosyncracies and I wouldn't recommend buying a new one without reading reviews etc. But it looks like a promising solution.

Otherwise, the Lezyne does look good. Personally I use an Edge Touring or the MapOut app on my iPhone, but obviously that means you do need a computer and a cable to get the routes across.

I've never tried it on the Garmin but interesting method using Garmin Connect app on your smartphone
https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2018/01/quickly-creating-devices.html

Another explanation for iPhone
https://medium.com/@jonhume/uploading-gpx-routes-onto-the-garmin-820-using-an-iphone-d8fb95c65101

(I'll happily have a play around and experiment if people want but life is hectic so probably not immediately and I'll only be able to go as far as loading to Garmin, not actually riding and checking Turn by Turn instructions, etc. - at least not for a week or 2).

I thought the Lezyne only displayed a route/breadcrumbs line with no underlying map (at least when I last looked in spring).

Ian

[RickH]

With an android device (I don't know if you can do the same with Apple) if you get on "On The Go" (OTG) adapter, which should cost less than £5, you can directly plug in a Garmin & access its internal memory. From, say, cycle.travel in a browser you could save a GPS file (I usually use TCX) directly into the relevant folder (Garmin/New files for most, if not all recent units).

Similar may work for other make but I've not tried as I only have a Garmin.

One tip I would recommend. It may matter less with newer models but my old edge 605 ran into problems if I had too many courses loaded onto it. There was still plenty of storage space left so it must have been a limit in the system - number of courses or space for the index.

I usually clear out all old courses & history before a trip but one time I didn't & just loaded the routes. Needless to say these new routes didn't show up in the list so I resorted to using alternative navigation. The 605 still recorded where I'd been OK & after the trip when I tried deleting/moving the other courses the one I'd wanted showed up (&I'd already checked they were actually there on the Garmin mid trip using my phone & OTG adapter). I've not encountered this problem with my 1000 but I don't tend to leave as much stuff on it (activities & courses).

I don't usually use the route planning built into the Edge 1000 but when I have tried it on route I know it has come up with something sensible even if not the precise way I would normally go. & you have got various options to tune the navigation, such as allowing off road paths & choosing to route for minimum time, distance or ascent.

I prefer to have all the mapping & routing built in so I don't need a connection of any sort if I need to work out a route in an isolated, no connection spot. (At the weekend we stopped for lunch at a spot about 10 miles as the crow flies south of Chester. Fairly flat country & not really the back of beyond but no phone signal there at all! Now I knew roughly where I was going to wing it anyway - plus I've got OS mapping on my phone - but I could have pressed the Edge into service for routing if needs be, without anything apart from a GPS signal. )

[Paulatic]

or 2).

I thought the Lezyne only displayed a route/breadcrumbs line with no underlying map (at least when I last looked in spring).

Ian

The newer Mega model shows mapping.
Using an older model I compliment it with using MapOut when I need to look at a map on the ride.
I’ve also made my gpx route using MapOut ( so fast and simple) and sent that to the device.