Learning Base Camp

[Steel_Gin]

I have a solution for you, Dean: Ride more places so you can use your GPS more! You can thank me later.

On a more serious note, I use my GPS every time that I ride, even just locally. I'm a total GPS addict, and use one most of the time in the car too. Even if I'm not running a route, I have the GPS map screen up (track up display) so that if I come up on an unfamiliar blind corner or hill crest I can get an idea of what's around the bend or over the hill. I also have my mobile phone patched thru the GPS so I can call screen while riding. If it is something important (like one of my family members) I can take it, otherwise I press reject and let it go to voice mail. I also use the internal MP3 player for music entertainment about 50% of the time. Other times I just listen to the voices in my head.

Thanks Fred!! If I end up dropping that kind of cash I probably will have it mounted all the time, if for no other reason to have an accurate speed reading. I always knew the speedo registered high, but its off/whacked a bit more than I realized. On my ride up last weekend I discovered 40 and below it registers 3 mph high, above 55 it's 5 too high.

 

[Fred W]

You don't have to buy the latest and greatest 590LM for mega bux to get the full functionality of a made for motorcycles GPS. I'm still running a zumo 550 on my FJR and I still think it is superior to even the latest models in terms of how visible the screen is, and the functionality of it suits me fine. You could pick one of those up for very short money these days as people "upgrade" to the newer models.

If you will be bluetoothing to your helmet you could get a zumo 660LM for < $300 at GPS City as a factory refurb, or get a brand new one for just a few dollars more there too. That's a darned good GPS at less than half of what they want for the 590.

 

[dravnx]

Love my Zumo 550. Does everything I need it to do. I regularly up load routes and way points using Tyre. Its waterproof and glove friendly and the screen is very bright. I've never thought about having to install a sun shield. I bought it used from an inmate on another forum for $150 including the mount, charger and a bunch of other accessories.

 

[Steel_Gin]

Thanks again Fred for the money savings idea!! Dropping that much money on the current model would have been more expensive than I wanted to go, not that $300-350 range is chump change but is much easier to do than $600 plus. The 660 is definitely going on the Xmas list.

 

[deagle]

I have the 660. Don't have much to compare it to but have been really happy with it.

 

[Laser Dude]

I have a basic question about GPS use when used in conjunction with Basecamp. I haven't messed with it recently, so I decided to give it another try. I mapped a short route from my work to my home and dragged the route around so it didn't take the obvious path. I saved it as a route in Basecamp and then exported that to my GPS (not a Zumo). I was able to locate the route and make it active, but when I left work, to get onto a main road, I went around a block that's congested with traffic. It had me going through the congested block. I thought it would recalculate since I picked the route up 1 block away. Nope. It tried rerouting me back to the original route the entire trip. It never recalculated the entire trip, just kept telling me to make a u-turn and go back to the very start of the route, even though I rode the entire route except for that first block.

Is that normal behavior of it? Or perhaps the way I clicked and dragged things in Basecamp, I might have been using the wrong tool and set actual waypoints or something?

Seems like it would be a real pain if I were to make a 6 hour route and end up having to stop to take a break, get gas, or look for food. If I restarted the route from there, it would be telling me to go back to the starting point. I'm hoping I just did something incorrectly.

Any insight?

 

[petey]

I'm going to watch for replies/answer on this one...

 

[mcatrophy]

I have a basic question about GPS use when used in conjunction with Basecamp. I haven't messed with it recently, so I decided to give it another try. I mapped a short route from my work to my home and dragged the route around so it didn't take the obvious path. I saved it as a route in Basecamp and then exported that to my GPS (not a Zumo). I was able to locate the route and make it active, but when I left work, to get onto a main road, I went around a block that's congested with traffic. It had me going through the congested block. I thought it would recalculate since I picked the route up 1 block away. Nope. It tried rerouting me back to the original route the entire trip. It never recalculated the entire trip, just kept telling me to make a u-turn and go back to the very start of the route, even though I rode the entire route except for that first block.
Is that normal behavior of it? Or perhaps the way I clicked and dragged things in Basecamp, I might have been using the wrong tool and set actual waypoints or something?

Seems like it would be a real pain if I were to make a 6 hour route and end up having to stop to take a break, get gas, or look for food. If I restarted the route from there, it would be telling me to go back to the starting point. I'm hoping I just did something incorrectly.

Any insight?

I can tell you that with my Tomtom, if it's given an itinerary to follow, it will insist on going through every waypoint. If you want to divert, and don't want to go through a waypoint, you have to tell it, usually by marking the (now unwanted) waypoint as "Visited". It may also have the provision to simply ignore the next waypoint, but I've not used this.

 

[RossKean]

This is a GPS issue, not Basecamp - although you have to understand the difference between waypoints and shaping points when you program. The waypoint is an intermediate destination and it really tries to get you there. When you import, I believe you are just bringing the points over and the route is recalculated on your Garmin. At least on my Zumo 665, if I am not at the beginning of a route when I am starting out, the device will ask me if I want to navigate to the beginning of the route. Answer is no.

 

[Fred W]

As Ross says, how your GPS follows a saved route is entirely dependent on the software running on your GPS. Different GPS devices deal with routes in different ways, even within one device manufacturer.

For instance, on my Garmin zumo 550, if I am somewhere other than at the start of a route when I call the route up, the device pops up with a question: "Would you like to navigate to beginning of the route?" Not all GPS devices do that. If you say no you can just go to anywhere on the route and it will pick right up giving turn by turn directions from there on.

Under the Navigation settings I have the "Recalculation Mode" set to "Prompted" so that if I happen to go off route I will get an audio announcement and on screen pop-up question: "Off Route. Recalculate?" To which one should always, always, always answer "No" or else the recalculated route will be nothing like the original one that you were trying to follow. If I do go off route (and answer no) and then come back to the route after skipping some route shaping via points or waypoints the GPS just picks up the route from there on. I believe that my zumo 660 behaved pretty much the same way when I had it.

OTOH, on BigOgre's zumo 590LM (a much newer model) if you skip any of the route shaping viapoints or waypoints it will continue to try to get you back to those skipped points unless you go in to the route and explicitly tell it to skip them. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to change the behavior of that. It is one "feature" keeping me from upgrading my old 550.

 

[rbentnail]

My very old nuvi will do the same thing Laser. It always wants to send me back to pass through ALL the shaping and way points in a kind of screwy way. Sometimes it wants me to go backwards and sometimes forwards. I think it depends on which direction is the closer to the way point. For your example it's not a big deal b/c you're familiar but out on the road it's a hassle. Here's what I do, kind of a combination of things, with my ancient nuvi:

Menu button so the 'Where To?' and "View Map" screen is up. Stop route. Then 'Where to?', 'Routes', and pick the same route again. The Garmin will ask as Fred describes, "do you want to navigate to the beginning....?" Pick no. Then it calculates from where you are now to get you to your NEXT way or shaping point on your route.

It also helps to ignore the directions and touch the screen so the overall map not just the route pops up. Then you can pick a point and add it as a via point if you want to choose your own way back to the initial route.

 

[Laser Dude]

I was wondering if maybe I did something in wrong when I exported it, like selecting the wrong thing. Last time I tried this experiment, it just upload the beginning and end point and calculated it's own path on my GPS. I thought I was making progress this time when I exported because it seemed to export the whole route into my GPS, which was great. I was hoping that I was just doing some step wrong in Basecamp, like making waypoints instead of something else, like just clicking on reference points. I don't know enough about it to know if I'm going about it wrong or if it's just the limitation of my GPS, which might be quite possible.

 

[BigOgre]

LD, which GPS are you using?

I'm guessing Fred pretty much outlined what you may be dealing with. Depending on which GPS you're using you may be coming up against particular quirks. If you're experimenting maybe try this. Make up the same route in BC that you did (or re-open and select Duplicate) but this time insert two Waypoints, one about a third and the other about two thirds through. Export and follow the route again. Pass the first Waypoint and then deliberately go off route like you did to avoid the traffic. See how your unit reacts to this. Does it still try to send you back to the beginning? Or maybe to the first Waypoint you passed? Does it ask you what you want to do? Seems silly but these little steps will get you familiar with how your unit operates and get you comfortable for larger routes. As with most things, the more you use it the more proficient you'll be with it.

As said above my 590 doesn't like when I pass Waypoints and after I tell it not to recalculate. (Small clarification - passing via-points doesn't seem to have this effect.) It's almost like it breaks my route into segments (my word) using Waypoints as the start and end of each. Once I go off route and pass a Waypoint it needs to be told by me to head towards the next Waypoint on the route or it'll just wait until I go back to get the passed one. Note this only impacts the turn-by-turn directions and calculated things like Time of Arrival, etc. which remains locked onto that missed Waypoint. The highlighted route will still show and I can easily follow the colored line for the remainder of the trip if I so choose.

 

[Laser Dude]

Interesting! I'll have to continue to test it out. Hopefully I can get it figured out. Would love to be able to plan my rides on a computer and then move them over. I'm using a Garmin 2689LMT and it's all updated to the most current everything. Basecamp is also updated and current.

 

[exskibum]

Stupid question from an old MapSource user who bought a 595LM:

Where does one get Basecamp?

A CD came with my 2720 Streetpilot, and IIRC, it had MapSource and all I needed to install to the computer I would be routing on. Not so with the 595LM.

 

[Ndv21]

Stupid question from an old MapSource user who bought a 595LM:
Where does one get Basecamp?

A CD came with my 2720 Streetpilot, and IIRC, it had MapSource and all I needed to install to the computer I would be routing on. Not so with the 595LM.

Just google "basecamp" you can download it for free

 

[K_Flyer]

Garmin states that BaseCamp is not compatible with the 660 (and probably some other of their units) and you need to use MapSource to load routes. Unfortunately, BaseCamp has a lot of nice features compared to MapSource. The trick is to use BaseCamp for your route planning, save the routes in .gdb (MapSource) format, open that file in MapSource, check to be sure all looks good, then load to the 660. Twice when I did this, it showed a routing error that was not obvious in BaseCamp, but showed when looked at in MapSource. Went back and corrected the error in BaseCamp, re-saved and the route was good. [bTW, the error was that, when you click on a divided highway, you may end up selecting the lane in the wrong direction so BaseCamp takes you to an intersection to change direction, then to the previous intersection to get you going in the right direction for the overall route!]

 

[RossKean]

Garmin states that BaseCamp is not compatible with the 660 (and probably some other of their units) and you need to use MapSource to load routes.

They say that but I have been using Basecamp for a few years on the Garmin 665. There are occasional issues but I make very sure to carefully check ANY routes transferred to the GPS - whether from Basecamp or Mapsource (or the old MS Streets and Trips which is still useful for route planning and optimization). Especially if the routes are critical or complex. Sometimes you can't predict what Garmin might think is a good route - for some, you would be hard pressed to do it on foot with good hiking boots or hip waders.

 

[BigOgre]

[bTW, the error was that, when you click on a divided highway, you may end up selecting the lane in the wrong direction so BaseCamp takes you to an intersection to change direction, then to the previous intersection to get you going in the right direction for the overall route!]

That's a good lesson for less experienced users. BC seems to take your points literally and not make assumptions about how you want to route. I've learned to zoom in almost completely before inserting any points. It will however nicely change these points should you choose to Invert the route.

 

[Blind Squirrel]

[bTW, the error was that, when you click on a divided highway, you may end up selecting the lane in the wrong direction so BaseCamp takes you to an intersection to change direction, then to the previous intersection to get you going in the right direction for the overall route!]

That's a good lesson for less experienced users. BC seems to take your points literally and not make assumptions about how you want to route. I've learned to zoom in almost completely before inserting any points. It will however nicely change these points should you choose to Invert the route.

I make my route with all the waypoints then zoom in all the way to each one to make sure they are where I want them to be.