Garmin 665LM no voice prompts

[Steel_Gin]

Working on learning Base Camp in advance of a couple trips and loading custom routes back and forth to work. The last two routes I created, one wasn't giving me turn by turn voice prompts at all. When I looked at the GPS (Garmin 665LM) the prompt to turn was in a pop up window on the screen, after I turned the pop up close and returned to the map of the route I was using. I created a route yesterday going to work, I got voice prompts the first half then I had no voice prompt to get off at my exit but after that I got voice prompts for the remaining part of the route. I am trying to figure out what I did differently compared to the others I have done and not seeing it. The three or four I have done leading up to this the voice prompts always happened and very consistent. Just trying to learn what I did wrong so when I'm on a trip if this happens again I know how to fix it in Base Camp and/or if it can be fixed on the GPS after the route has been imported.

Looking at the route details I have compared settings between the routes with voice prompts and the ones that don't and I'm not seeing any differences. I have won't alert on all the waypoints on both good and bad routes. The routes I first made still have voice prompts at every turn. I'm guessing there is a setting buried someplace.

So you have the whole picture, last week there was one big change I made to the GPS that I would find strange if they were related. Because the internal memory was very low I went through the process of moving the map file to the SD card. (No routes or music were ever loaded to internal memory. All the space was getting taken up by the system and map files.) After that move the next route I created in base camp and exported to the GPS is when the no voice prompt started.

 

[Mr_Canoehead]

I run my maps off the SD card with no issues and I plan all my routes in basecamp. My Garmin 660 sometimes stops talking to me and that usually indicates the she needs a hard (battery out) reboot. I don't think I have ever had her stop talking to me for a few turns and then start again.

Did you try a forced recalculate?

 

[Fred W]

In basecamp, double click on your route in the list on the left side to open the properties pop-up. In that properties tab will be a list of all the route shaping via points as well as any way points that are used as via points. You will notice that some via points appear in normal black font and some others are gray. The black ones will be announced. The gray ones will not be announced.

To change that setting, right click on the via point in the properties list and you'll find either "Alert on Arrival" for the gray ones, or "Don't Alert on Arrival" if it is black. You can also select multiple via points and set them all to announce or not announce simultaneously.

Note that the "don't alert on arrival" feature only works with some of the newer GPSes. My old zumo 550 seems to like to alert on every via point, which can get tedious at times. Don't recall if that worked on my zumo 660 when I had it.

 

[Steel_Gin]

I run my maps off the SD card with no issues and I plan all my routes in basecamp. My Garmin 660 sometimes stops talking to me and that usually indicates the she needs a hard (battery out) reboot. I don't think I have ever had her stop talking to me for a few turns and then start again.
Did you try a forced recalculate?

Thanks Mr_C. I have not tried a forced recalculate. Should I?

The battery has been out of for a good old fashioned reset. Power isn't an issue, the hard wire base is installed and do not see the batter icon indicating it's running on battery.

In basecamp, double click on your route in the list on the left side to open the properties pop-up. In that properties tab will be a list of all the route shaping via points as well as any way points that are used as via points. You will notice that some via points appear in normal black font and some others are gray. The black ones will be announced. The gray ones will not be announced.
To change that setting, right click on the via point in the properties list and you'll find either "Alert on Arrival" for the gray ones, or "Don't Alert on Arrival" if it is black. You can also select multiple via points and set them all to announce or not announce simultaneously.

Note that the "don't alert on arrival" feature only works with some of the newer GPSes. My old zumo 550 seems to like to alert on every via point, which can get tedious at times. Don't recall if that worked on my zumo 660 when I had it.

I'll switch them to Alert on Arrival, see what happens and report back.

=======

I just came in from a short test walk with it. Now that I'm not on the bike I can provide a little more detail as to what is not on the screen that I didn't notice before. Since the first turn is 100 yards down the road I walked to it with the GPS in hand. 1st) when I hit Go on the route I don't see calculating and I don't hear the voice say "Please drive the highlighted route". The ones that work correctly I see and hear both of these things. 2nd) the name of the street isn't show up in the green bar at the top. The green bar is there but it's blank. 3rd) When I am coming up to the turn I need to make a window pops up and only says "Approaching" and I can hit OK which I didn't do. I make the turn and the pop up window closes and returns to route.

A setting got changed someplace and beats me which on it is.

 

[Steel_Gin]

Turning on Alert on Arrival didn't help. Starting to think a call to Garmin is going to happen.

Another thing I tried: Took a route that created in Base Camp that is work fine on the GPS, in Base Camp I copied it and added a gas stop on the route. Exported it to the GPS, imported and no voice & the green bar at the top is empty.

 

[Fred W]

I don't think that you are supposed to export it to the device. Just use the "send to device".

 

[RossKean]

Garmin is not particularly known to be exceptionally helpful, especially with "obsolete" devices. Try the Zumo forum. Either ask the question or search.

https://www.zumoforums.com/

(You have to join)

 

[Fred W]

Actually, I always just used Mapsource with my zumo 660LM and it always worked as it was supposed to. The few times that I used basecamp it would send to the device and auto import fine.

 

[Mr_Canoehead]

At the BMW MOA rally, there was a guy talking about Basecamp and the 660/665 series - he said that Garmin considers these units to be obsolete and some Basecamp features will no longer work correctly, including route transfers. He said Garmin now uses an enhanced GPS file that the older devices can't read properly. Mapsource might be a better option - it seems to always work.

I had a similar issue to the OP the trip to the rally - the damn thing wouldn't calculate the route one day and treated each waypoint as the start of the route - giving that popup. It happened on a day where I knew the route pretty well so it wasn't a big deal but I deleted and re-transferred all my routes after making sure all my waypoints got transferred first and it seemed to fix the issue, although I still had a couple of "Garmin Moments" on the trip.

I wondered at the time if it was because I selected "curvy road" as my routing method in Basecamp and that method doesn't appear on the 660 screen but I couldn't validate that hypothesis.

The speaker also mentioned that Garmin has now stopped development on Basecamp and he recommended using Furkot.com instead. YMMV.

 

[Steel_Gin]

I don't think that you are supposed to export it to the device. Just use the "send to device".

Misspoke there, I am sending to device. Then when I turn the unit on I see the prompt to import.

I have played around with this alot today and noticed after it imports I looked at waypoints and there were only two, the start and the end of the route. So statement that it's no longer supported looks to be true. Next shot will be Mapsource and see what happens.

Thanks for the info everyone!! I will post up how I make out with Mapsource.

 

[Fred W]

I'm fairly certain that map source will still work with your old GPS, as it does with mine.

One important "trick" with Garmin routes is to never let a route recalculate more than once. In their infinite wisdom, Garmin strips the unannounced via points from the route when it is (re)calculated the first time on the device. That is how the points go unannounced.

If you recalculate the route a second time the route will be whatever the fastest route (or shortest distance) is between the remaining waypoints. Maybe this is related to what you have been seeing with basecap?

 

[Steel_Gin]

Ok it looks like I figured it out. First I have to eat some of my words, I don't think its due to moving the map to the SD card. Well, it was.

As Fred suggested, in another post, back everything up and I'm glad I did. This morning I put the original map back on internal memory, deleted the route off the device, did Send To in Basecamp, booted the GPS, got the prompt to import new route and I now get the voice, see the directions in the green bar at the top plus see all of the way points between the start and end of the route.

One other thing I noticed when I was trying to run the map off the SD card, I couldn't put in an address to navigate to. When I selected Address a window would pop open saying No Data. Plus there were other little strange things it would do to the route after I imported it.

This was painful yet kind of glad I went through it. I got to know my GPS and BaseCamp really well. (I learn the best with a lot of reps and I got a lot of them going through this.

) I went to bed thinking the Christmas present I got was unusable and a few hundred bucks were down the drain. Now I hope having a little over 100 MBs free will not cause low memory errors. Until that happens it works and I'm going to ride.

Thanks a ton for your help and getting me through this frustrating experience.