Garmin Navigation Questions

[spadeyo]

Hi,

Two of us doing JOGLE this August. Aiming for a fast 6/7 day trip, unsupported, using mainly A roads and as such don't want to be spending time navigating on route so looking at Garmin/GPS options.

The other guy already has an Edge 500, my understanding is you can upload a course on to it and it will follow that but that as it has no mapping it has the potential to get messy and go wrong. Anyone used a 500 for navigating before?

Also as we are unsupported, I thought that a useful feature would be to load in bike shops along the route as points of interest (am guessing this can only be done with a 705/800 if at all) so that if we hit any problems we can navigate to the nearest one. Anyone know if this is possible?

By the way we are starting from Thurso on 18th August and doing the 140 miles to Inverness on the first day, if anyone out there has similar plans then please get in touch as we would prefer to ride in a slightly bigger group.

Tom

[Mick F]

Firstly, if you're doing the trip quickly on mainly A roads, you don't need a navigation device at all, just few notes and a road atlas.

My first JOGLE was done with a road atlas and a "herring bone" system of drawings/notes detailing the main towns and villages and the major road junctions. I never got lost nor went out of my way on the whole route.

If you do want a Garmin 705 or similar, you can construct your route on BikeRouteToaster or BikeHikeUK etc and download them as TCX files. You can upload them into a 205/305/605/705/800 as a Course, and follow it easily.

The good thing about the Garmin devices is that you don't have to think. The bad thing is that you don't use your brain and your eyes.

I've done both ways - paper maps and a brain, AND a Garmin TCX.

Which do I prefer?
I don't know!
Perhaps both at the same time.

[bigfoot]

The 500 will load a course ("tcx") file, but doesn't have maps, so it is more difficult to navigate than the 705

see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAEM26w0bgg for a 500 course.

With the 705 (assuming you have maps), you would also see all the roads, so the course is much more intuitive. Finally yes you can program in bike shops - it allows you to save locations, which you can then navigate to. If you have an address, you can enter the location and save it. It also comes pre-loaded with a few locations, and will list ones near to you (food, gas stations, but no bike shops as far as I can see, It does tell me that if I needed a BetFred there is one 9 miles away - what are the odds on that )

[spadeyo]

Thanks,

Ok so in terms of sticking with the 500 and loading tcx courses in, how many courses can it hold? Can we preload the whole route broken down in to the days (or even legs) in advance, or would we have to load each course in the night before?

Cheers

[bigfoot]

Sorry don't know the capacity of the 500. My 705 with an SD card will very comfortably hold all this. If you have a 500, create a ride and copy it into the courses folder 20 times - if it copes you're OK

[rootes]

Did Lejog in 8 days on bromptons.. used edge 500 for navigation. Worked ace. And we did not use major routes so more turns as well. Uploaded course files for each day. Edge 500 has loads of memory. Easy enough for all the course files and record data each day hardly dented the memory. Can give you my tcx files... routes away from main roads. Main roads suck and our routes was hardly longer..

We also did un supported just found / stop at shops on route.

[bearonabike]

Hi all,

Long time lurker here. Great forum; all constructive stuff. Hope someone out there can help with my questions.

My LEJOG is scheduled for August, provided I can get a couple of things sorted out. Physical training is going OK, although a bit of hard work is headed my way over the next 6 weeks!

Looking at the logistics, I want to do it all on B or minor roads. Following Mick's suggestion of planning the route through BikeRouteToaster or BikeHikeUK and uploading seems straightforward. I'm not quite a technophobe, but before I invest in the GPS unit (thinking of a 605), can anyone help with a couple of queries?

1. Will the base map supplied be good enough for what I want, or will I need to invest in the card with the more detailed maps?

2. Having the attention span of a newt, I will go wrong or miss a turn at some point. How does the unit let you know when that happens and will it automatically reroute you as some car satnavs do?

3. Presumably any of the Garmins can be charged from a car's cigarette lighter?

Thanks

[rootes]

1. Will the base map supplied be good enough for what I want, or will I need to invest in the card with the more detailed maps?

2. Having the attention span of a newt, I will go wrong or miss a turn at some point. How does the unit let you know when that happens and will it automatically reroute you as some car satnavs do?

3. Presumably any of the Garmins can be charged from a car's cigarette lighter?

In terms of the Edge 500 - you get to follow a line - no mapping at all - if you go off course then it beeps and leaves a breadcrumb so you can get back to the line - it does not autoreroute like a car satnav - nor do the direction changes it alerts you to correspond to real road junctions as a car sat nav would - it just tells you about a direction change - this could be just a kink in the road

Garmin connect via a mini usb connector so you need a fag lighter to usb adapter

[bigfoot]

If you get a garmin with mapping (605, 705, 800), the basemap is little more than useless

There are now open source maps available, I'd give them a try you can always buy a map if you don't like them. There are links on here about how to use/load them.

How does the unit let you know when that happens and will it automatically reroute you as some car satnavs do?

Depends how you use it. You can "autoroute" like car sat navs, but the most popular way to use an edge is to follow a course. These are pre-created (using toaster or bikehike or similar), and show up in the map. If you go off course, you get a warning (beep as well). This can happen on-course too due to the errors in mapping of the course (for course also read "tcx" in the forum).

If you are getting one, get it now to practice. They are simple, but idiosyncratic

[sbseven]

Looking at the logistics, I want to do it all on B or minor roads. Following Mick's suggestion of planning the route through BikeRouteToaster or BikeHikeUK and uploading seems straightforward. I'm not quite a technophobe, but before I invest in the GPS unit (thinking of a 605), can anyone help with a couple of queries?

1. Will the base map supplied be good enough for what I want, or will I need to invest in the card with the more detailed maps?

2. Having the attention span of a newt, I will go wrong or miss a turn at some point. How does the unit let you know when that happens and will it automatically reroute you as some car satnavs do?

3. Presumably any of the Garmins can be charged from a car's cigarette lighter?

Answering wrt a Garmin 605/705:

1. The base map has no detail beyond trunk-roads. You'll probably want a map of some sort for visual reference and definitely for any auto-navigation you might be planning.

As mentioned above, you should have a look at the free OSM Garmin compatible maps. See: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_ ... n/Download for options available. I'd recommend either TalkyToaster or Andy Gates' MunkyMaps (Download http://www.ravenfamily.org/andyg/maps/O ... y-UKIE.zip). You'll need to copy the GMAPSUPP.IMG file onto the 605/705 (or onto a MicroSD card) and put in a folder called \Garmin. OSM has pretty good UK coverage overall but as a community effort there will be some areas still with sparse detail and some minor roads will be missing. (It's pretty good though for free and getting better all the time).

The alternative is to purchase Garmin's City Navigator NT product. You can have UK coverage for around £30-35. All of Europe for around £50-60 is a bargain IMO, if you can make good use of it. Advantages over OSM: You'll get the complete road network down to street level and a large database of POIs (pubs, hotels, b&bs, shops, gas stations etc.) and postcoded addresses, all of which are searchable / able to be navigated to.

2. It might be worth reading the following thread (if you haven't already) which has quite a lot of information buried in it about using the 605/705 with pre-prepared long distance routes created using BRT, BikeHike etc.: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35873

3. You'll only get a wall-charger with the 705. The 705 can also be charged using it's data cable via a USB port. So if you buy some sort of car cigarette-lighter attachment that provides a USB charging port then that should work.

[rootes]

Hi Tom,

as mentioned above we used a edge 500 for navigation and we used little roads etc and it worked ace.. if you are using the big roads (doesn't sound fun btw) then you will be fine with the 500... it is neat and reliable

we did it unsupported (we took a small A5 UK road atlas with the route highlighted as a back up) and used smartphone to look anything up (not that we needed to)

[Mick F]

If you get a garmin with mapping (605, 705, 800), the basemap is little more than useless

I don't disagree with that statement, but if you bought a 205 or a 305, you don't get maps at all. These can be used very satisfactorily for navigation. Not as good as a 605/705/800 with good mapping I grant you, but the 205/305 work quite well.

[Geriatrix]

I use a Garmin Colorado 450t rather than their specialist cycling units because it uses AA batteries not built in LiON . This gives you independence from charging points. The built in European maps are not suitable for navigation though so you have to buy add-on maps which is expensive.
The GPS has its limitations so I still use both maps and GPS when touring

[skicat]

The built in European maps are not suitable for navigation though so you have to buy add-on maps which is expensive.

Not necessarily. I have just started to use OSM maps (OpenStreetMap) data, which is free. There are several sites around that translate this into ready-to-use Garmin maps, and in different flavours to suit the application (e.g. driving, cycling, even skiing).

See:
http://openmtbmap.org/ for maps suitable for off-road or
http://www.velomap.org/ for more touring suitable maps

[bearonabike]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Really helpful. Just got to part with the cash & start practicing with it now!