Yet Another Cycling Forum

General Category => The Knowledge => GPS => Topic started by: TPMB12 on 03 July, 2018, 09:07:40 am

Title: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: TPMB12 on 03 July, 2018, 09:07:40 am
What is the cheapest way to view gpx routes on maps without using your phone when on tour with limited charging capability?

I'm guessing a dedicated GPS unit with AA batteries, but how cheaply can you get this.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Samuel D on 03 July, 2018, 09:12:17 am
Don’t know, but do you need it to be much cheaper than the eTrex 20x? Because that is not just fairly cheap but good at doing what you wish. A used eTrex 20 would be cheaper and also likely good (I have this one).
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 03 July, 2018, 09:17:41 am
Better in fact because the 'improved' x models have a dimmer display.

But this depends on context.  If it's for surveying/browsing your route and surroundings during stops or in the evenings, a 2x1 GPS screen with uninspiring wire-frame maps simply isn't going to cut it.  You need a large phone or small tablet, or a paper map.  Conversely, for actual reliable navigation on the go, day in day out on a long tour, an Etrex can't be beat.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 03 July, 2018, 11:50:39 am
Print them out before you leave?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 18 July, 2018, 08:47:05 am
+1 for the Etrex 20.

Excellent for on the bike routing - you need no more - in fact always amuses me that the Garmin "touring" is, from what I can tell, far far worse than the Etrex 20 for, er, touring.

Fair point from frankie about it being a bit of fag to see the bigger picture of an evening on the Etrex 20.

For this I'd recommend an el cheap Android Lenovo 7 or 8 inch tab with OSMand plus on it. You can have your gpx rootes superimposed on the offline maps.

You can even route offline with OSMand plus and then in theory transfer them by cable to the Etrex. This can be a bit wobbly though because of power issues.

If in a friendly power and wifi friendly pub (I recommend spoons for UK wandering) you can construct extra routes on tour on a small chromebook (recently picked up a new 11.6 inch one for £99 for this job) and transferring from there to the Etrex is trouble free via USB. The Chromebook is also handy for storing a library of routes.

Also handy as in very very very rare cases the Etrex CAN appear to lose all of its waypoints and routes. They are still there though, just a screwy indexing problem. With a small laptop of some sort, and a Chromebook is fine, it's a job of not many seconds to sort the issue.

So, the good news is you don't have to spend a lot.

Save the phone for making phone calls.

In fact I think you could just take an "old fashioned" non smart phone if there are no pressing business issues.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 19 July, 2018, 10:32:28 am
Also handy as in very very very rare cases the Etrex CAN appear to lose all of its waypoints and routes.

I used to have that problem a lot, across three different Etrex 30s.  Since adopting a policy of putting my GPX files onto the device itself, and not onto the mSD card, I've completely eradicated the problem.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 19 July, 2018, 10:41:47 am
I think the cheapest way would be to use your phone. Get a premium account to Ride With GPS – I think this costs about £5 or £10 a year. This allows you to download all the routes and maps as tiles on your phone, meaning you can view them off-line. No data costs, vastly increased battery life compared to on-line. And no need to buy or carry or charge an additional device. Your phone does need GPS signal, of course.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Greenbank on 19 July, 2018, 11:07:51 am
Get a premium account to Ride With GPS – I think this costs about £5 or £10 a year.

Premium is USD80/year or USD10/month: https://ridewithgps.com/help/compare-plans
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 19 July, 2018, 11:44:51 am
Also handy as in very very very rare cases the Etrex CAN appear to lose all of its waypoints and routes.

I used to have that problem a lot, across three different Etrex 30s.  Since adopting a policy of putting my GPX files onto the device itself, and not onto the mSD card, I've completely eradicated the problem.

My gpxs, waypoints and route, ARE on the device itself. I use the card for the maps. I understand that this is good practice as, apart from the issue of storage space, it allows any boot-up issues caused by a wonky map file to be sorted by taking the card out.

I do use quite an old firmware version on my Etrex20 though - maybe a newer one solved this issue but I have always been wary of system updates for all sorts of reasons.

I stress that with my unit this issue is exceptionally rare.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 19 July, 2018, 11:47:10 am
Get a premium account to Ride With GPS – I think this costs about £5 or £10 a year.

Premium is USD80/year or USD10/month: https://ridewithgps.com/help/compare-plans

I think they are about to implement a price increase - not sure if you have incorporated that into your figures. In truth I have never understood why anyone uses that platform's paid for options. Never been tempted by even the free functionality.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 19 July, 2018, 12:02:14 pm
The paid Basic also gives offline maps for $6 a month or $50 p.a. Not sure if it's worth it overall but if you're only interested in the cheapest way to store routes for a one-month or less tour, $6 is a lot less than any GPS device. Whether it's cheaper than printing out pdfs depends on your printing facilities and how many pages you'd need.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 19 July, 2018, 12:07:01 pm
thanks for that cudz.

In that case I'd recommend OSMand.

Free.


Unlimited offline maps for a fiver for a lifetime unless I missed something when I signed up/downloaded it from googleplay.

Seem to remember that a year or so ago they were even doing it for half price.

You can even do routes offline - I have done it atent.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 19 July, 2018, 12:09:31 pm
Seconded.  Does fail spectacularly on the 'not using your phone' aspect, unless you bring some other Android along for the purpose.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Greenbank on 19 July, 2018, 12:09:51 pm
Get a premium account to Ride With GPS – I think this costs about £5 or £10 a year.

Premium is USD80/year or USD10/month: https://ridewithgps.com/help/compare-plans

I think they are about to implement a price increase - not sure if you have incorporated that into your figures. In truth I have never understood why anyone uses that platform's paid for options. Never been tempted by even the free functionality.

No, the prices are staying the same but they're moving some features from the free and basic plans to the premium plan. Thing like the advanced planning tools (currently basic plan), and adding POIs and customised cuesheets (currently free).

I can see why some people pay for it (especially the offline map functionality), but I'm happy with the various free utilities (although many suggest a donation) and getting my hands dirty myself.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 19 July, 2018, 12:17:50 pm
Seconded.  Does fail spectacularly on the 'not using your phone' aspect, unless you bring some other Android along for the purpose.

PST, whisper it quietly Kim, I do not use a smartphone.

I take an android 7 inch tab.

I do take a phone but that is spectacularly incapable of plotting routes - it's an old fashioned phone with a mega battery life. Very good at making phone calls though.

all the best
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 19 July, 2018, 12:21:06 pm
+1 for the Etrex 20.

Excellent for on the bike routing - you need no more - in fact always amuses me that the Garmin "touring" is, from what I can tell, far far worse than the Etrex 20 for, er, touring.

Having played with cycleman's Edge Touring, I came to the conclusion that the "make me a circular route from here" feature was pretty nifty, and it has Edge cycling-specific features that the generic outdoor models lack, but otherwise agree.

The whole concept of starting and stopping recording, for one thing.  Handy on a race track, but a liability for recording audax/touring rides.  And don't get me started about internal batteries...

I've yet to see anything that's markedly better than my eTrex 30.  Everything Garmin have come up with since seems like a retrograde step (touchscreens!), and the other manufacturers seem to be mainly competing with the Edge.  Humbug.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 19 July, 2018, 12:26:02 pm
thanks for that cudz.

In that case I'd recommend OSMand.

Free.


Unlimited offline maps for a fiver for a lifetime unless I missed something when I signed up/downloaded it from googleplay.

Seem to remember that a year or so ago they were even doing it for half price.

You can even do routes offline - I have done it atent.
That does sound interesting. Going to have to investigate.  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 19 July, 2018, 12:27:48 pm
I take an android 7 inch tab.

I do take a phone but that is spectacularly incapable of plotting routes - it's an old fashioned phone with a mega battery life. Very good at making phone calls though.

I used to use this approach, but since I don't really do phone calls, my old-fashioned phone really needs to be able to do useful basic communications things like IRC[1] and email, as well as just SMS.  The Nokia E52 was brilliant (smart enough to be useful, dumb enough that it fitted in your pocket and the battery lasted forever), until Microsoft killed off some server that it turns out the email app depended on, even when configured to use an arbitrary IMAP account.

Now I use an older Android phone that's increasingly underpowered for modern apps and has okay-for-a-smartphone battery life, and a tablet with a proper keyboard for more serious communication and map type stuff (a combination of Viewranger and OSMAnd for just-in-time planning, with occasional dips into Google Maps for things like finding shops).


[1] Barakta and I use IRC the way hearing people use voice calls.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 19 July, 2018, 12:32:50 pm
We had a little Garmin discussion on yesterday's ride. I have an Etrex 20 and I'm very happy with it. My only criticism it its name makes me think of 1970s margarine! Someone else had an Edge – not sure which model but it's a quite common, small white one. It's had two "screen bleeds" in slightly less than the time I've had my Etrex. And there was an Edge Touring, which looked impressive to me due to its larger screen (smartphone size!), but the owner wasn't impressed with its mapping, which seems a major letdown,  or its touchscreen. And as Kim says, running on AA batteries is a big plus when touring.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 19 July, 2018, 01:56:00 pm
  And don't get me started about internal batteries...


oh go one Kim - kill kill :)

too many folk still fall for them.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 19 July, 2018, 02:04:36 pm
thanks for that cudz.

In that case I'd recommend OSMand.

Free.


Unlimited offline maps for a fiver for a lifetime unless I missed something when I signed up/downloaded it from googleplay.

Seem to remember that a year or so ago they were even doing it for half price.

You can even do routes offline - I have done it atent.
That does sound interesting. Going to have to investigate.  :thumbsup:

You can try it for ever for free as I understand it - just a limited number of areas you can download.

Paying allows you to download everything. Though you wouldn't have it all loaded up at the same time.

The maps can be updated every month.

There is an additional payment if you want to download OSM map updates every day or whatever but I can't think why you would want/need to do that. You're  supposed to be out riding :)

Also additional payments for other stuff but it's all stuff I don't need/really want.

The interface can be a bit odd but there's a wealth of stuff in the POIs**. You can import your own gpx route files to show up offline. And you can also import your own POI files to show up offline - I have done that with a list of spoons thanks to a tool a friendly whizz on here provided for extracting the file from the spoons file (they no longer offer a gpx).

** you can even (and I must remember how to do it) search for and superimpose on the map showers. And I think it maybe shows the opening times of toilets in some entries. By the by, and I really really cannot remember how I discovered this, it will even show "brothels" on the map as a separate category.

Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 20 July, 2018, 08:02:19 am
Going back to the question of RWGPS's popularity, I think two reasons are that because it allows you to select a variety of different maps (and mix and match mapping within one route) it is flexible in its routing algorithms, and that it makes sharing routes easy.

Going back to the original question of viewing routes without a phone, if you do go for the option of planning at home then printing out on paper, a good one to use is cycle.travel, which is made by a cyclist!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 23 July, 2018, 01:24:13 am
Going back to the question of RWGPS's popularity, I think two reasons are that because it allows you to select a variety of different maps (and mix and match mapping within one route) it is flexible in its routing algorithms, and that it makes sharing routes easy.

I use the ridewithgps planner quite a bit, particularly for longer rides. The main reason being that it seems to understand ferries. The strava route planner doesn't in this regard, which is a right pain... But then round here ferries exist a bit like bridges in many parts of the world. I used 2 on yesterdays BRM300, and that's quite low for a long ride.

I wish it had more route planning options tho, things like "avoid gravel", and surprisingly for a cycle route planner "avoid stairs" On a ride in Belgium I discovered much to my surprise that the bridge over one canal was infact a foot bridge with stairs both sides (with gutter for bikes). It was an official cycle route, but I'd hate to have met it on anything other than an upwrong. Last week on a 200k DIY I found a stair case on the cycle path that ride with gps had routed me down, fortunately I didn't find it at speed...

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 23 July, 2018, 01:25:49 am

Quick question for the etrex users, do the 20, 30, and edge tours etc... have silly limits on number of track points in a GPX track? The 250 point limit on my etrex 10 is a right utter pain in the arse.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 23 July, 2018, 08:42:08 am

Quick question for the etrex users, do the 20, 30, and edge tours etc... have silly limits on number of track points in a GPX track? The 250 point limit on my etrex 10 is a right utter pain in the arse.

J
Don't know. Can check later. Never encountered any problem.

As for Strava and ferries, Strava's not particularly good as a route planner anyway.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 23 July, 2018, 10:08:54 am
Quick question for the etrex users, do the 20, 30, and edge tours etc... have silly limits on number of track points in a GPX track? The 250 point limit on my etrex 10 is a right utter pain in the arse.

The 20 and 30 have a limit of 10,000 points per Track.
They have a limit of 250 points per Route (assuming direct or off-road routing methods, the limit is much lower if autorouting).

Possibly your 'GPX track' is being saved as a GPX Route?  Some online planners are not clear enough about this distinction.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 23 July, 2018, 05:48:39 pm
Quick question for the etrex users, do the 20, 30, and edge tours etc... have silly limits on number of track points in a GPX track? The 250 point limit on my etrex 10 is a right utter pain in the arse.

The 20 and 30 have a limit of 10,000 points per Track.
They have a limit of 250 points per Route (assuming direct or off-road routing methods, the limit is much lower if autorouting).

Possibly your 'GPX track' is being saved as a GPX Route?  Some online planners are not clear enough about this distinction.

I am in fact thinking of GPX route's not tracks.

The 250 point limit is a right pain. It has stopped me using my etrex 10 pretty much.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 24 July, 2018, 10:59:24 am
Route = fewer points, intelligently placed further apart
Track = many more points, placed closer together
there is some overlap but that's the general idea.  Either or both can be contained in a GPX file.

Without any autorouting (which I don't think the E10 can do anyway) and without even a base map, I would say in typical UK laney terrain, an average of 1 point per km is easily good enough to navigate by.  (More in towns, less in open country, obviously, but presumably most cycling is done out of towns.) 
So 250km is a good long day's riding by anyone's standards.  And the Etrex can store a lot of Routes, and it's easy to swap from one to the next.  Good enough for a month-long cycle tour, IME.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 24 July, 2018, 11:04:54 am
You need about the same number of routepoints with autorouting, if you don't want it to take you on a magical Garmin mystery tour (and even then, it will inevitably fail where you do something cyclisty like ride up a dead-end street, get off and cross a dual cabbageway as a pedestrian, then continue on the dead-end street on the other side).  Main difference is that the strategy for positioning the points will be different.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 24 July, 2018, 07:43:47 pm
Route = fewer points, intelligently placed further apart
Track = many more points, placed closer together
there is some overlap but that's the general idea.  Either or both can be contained in a GPX file.

Without any autorouting (which I don't think the E10 can do anyway) and without even a base map, I would say in typical UK laney terrain, an average of 1 point per km is easily good enough to navigate by.  (More in towns, less in open country, obviously, but presumably most cycling is done out of towns.) 
So 250km is a good long day's riding by anyone's standards.  And the Etrex can store a lot of Routes, and it's easy to swap from one to the next.  Good enough for a month-long cycle tour, IME.

Meanwhile in the civilised world outside the UK. I think that is excessively niave...

Ditto if you're not on road.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Genosse Brymbo on 24 July, 2018, 08:10:28 pm
Also handy as in very very very rare cases the Etrex CAN appear to lose all of its waypoints and routes.

I used to have that problem a lot, across three different Etrex 30s.  Since adopting a policy of putting my GPX files onto the device itself, and not onto the mSD card, I've completely eradicated the problem.
A little bit off topic, but where exactly do you place the files in the folder hierarchy of the device?  I have an Etrex 20 and assume it has the same folder structure as a 30.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Pingu on 24 July, 2018, 08:34:08 pm
eTrex\Garmin\GPX
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: LittleWheelsandBig on 24 July, 2018, 08:57:52 pm
QG, FF's approach works in lots of Europe and in India. Just ask his partner.

Why do you need so many points on a route? I've never felt the need, though I almost exclusively use tracks now.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 25 July, 2018, 09:14:49 am
Sheila uses (and distributes) Tracks exclusively, with waypoints to mark daily destinations and lunch stops.

I do prefer to use Routes personally (in direct/off-road mode), but Tracks are a lot less trouble and they work very well on modern Etrexes, so I too tend to stick with tracks mostly these days.

Most 'civilised' places have a much less dense road network than the UK, and so in central France for example, the 1-point-per-kilometre average rule of thumb stretches out to more like -per-5km - a single 250 point Route can take you well over 1000kms in terrain like that.

This is all off-topic btw, probably my fault, sorry.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 25 July, 2018, 09:57:05 am
You need about the same number of routepoints with autorouting, if you don't want it to take you on a magical Garmin mystery tour (and even then, it will inevitably fail where you do something cyclisty like ride up a dead-end street, get off and cross a dual cabbageway as a pedestrian, then continue on the dead-end street on the other side).  Main difference is that the strategy for positioning the points will be different.

What is your strategy for route points?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 25 July, 2018, 10:45:06 am
Below is the northbound leg of the Flatlands 600, so 326km.  The track has 1688 points, the route has 49 points.  The route has minor differences in a couple of places but otherwise follows the same roads.   The filtering strategy for the route points is the same as I use for tracks.  I might just bung a route creation / filter into my Simple GPX, so it will additionally create a filtered route to complement the tracks if one is not already in the GPX.


Route
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/63zzn5m9b2l94in/route.JPG?raw=1)
Track
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/15ho1axqontewos/track.JPG?raw=1)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 25 July, 2018, 12:00:12 pm
You need about the same number of routepoints with autorouting, if you don't want it to take you on a magical Garmin mystery tour (and even then, it will inevitably fail where you do something cyclisty like ride up a dead-end street, get off and cross a dual cabbageway as a pedestrian, then continue on the dead-end street on the other side).  Main difference is that the strategy for positioning the points will be different.

What is your strategy for route points?

As a general rule, if you're autorouting, the route points usually need to be in the middle of the sections of road that you want to use, rather than at the start of them (as you'd do to make junction exists unambiguous in off-road routing).  Sometimes you'll find bits of road that it really doesn't like to use, and you'll have to sprinkle additional points around to persuade it.  It's all about second-guessing the algorithm, and because Garmin are idiots, Basecamp doesn't use the same algorithm as the unit itself, so just because it does the right thing there doesn't mean it won't do something random on the unit.  Checking is possible, but deeply tedious.

What you should never do is plot a route for auto-routing using anything but the map that's going to be on the unit (eg. using some website or other, rather than Basecamp/Mapsource).  That's just going to end in a world of pain.

Personally, I do use autorouting for the more visible instructions (the Garmin screen's a long way away on my touring recumbent), but if it's an audax or something, I'll back it up with a visible Track.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 25 July, 2018, 01:01:10 pm
As per frankie and others, the 250 limit is no problem at all so relax geek. And also look for civilisatio in the UK.

I use point to point "off road" routing (of course I'm usually cycling on road) with the numbered points placed at significant turns and, now and again, additional points mid-road to act as minimal "shaping" points, make the line point in vaguely the right way so that it is clear which way I am meant to go at those junctions/points.

The points are numbered to help me if I go off route on a trip to explore something. Usually I could see the line on the screen to get back on route, but if that is ambiguous, I just get the Etrex to autoroute to a numbered point I know is overhead.

By putting the points at the junctions, the "off road" routes also pretty much always still work/are just as clear when I am using the route reversed.

250 points covers pretty much any day trip I am likely to make. If not, no problem at all to have two routes for the day. I may do this if doing a circuit - one for the outward route and another for the return by a different bunch of roads.

I was a late convert to GPSs - for ages used route sheets I had typed out - but the discipline of that fed into me creating gpx routes which are economical on points. In short, you only need to put a point whetre there is a divergence from what you would take to be the normal onward road. Hence not all junctions need to be marked at all.

So, relax, geek - and embrace your Etrex.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 26 July, 2018, 05:27:34 pm
As per frankie and others, the 250 limit is no problem at all so relax geek. And also look for civilisatio in the UK.

I'm so sorry that I imagined my etrex 10 only showing the first 250 points of a ride and thus leaving me with navigational improvisation to do the remaining leg of my journey...  so glad that it isn't a problem I had in 34 °C weather in Luxembourg.

I'll find civilisation in the UK about the same time the UK decides to be sensible...

Quote
I use point to point "off road" routing (of course I'm usually cycling on road) with the numbered points placed at significant turns and, now and again, additional points mid-road to act as minimal "shaping" points, make the line point in vaguely the right way so that it is clear which way I am meant to go at those junctions/points.

The points are numbered to help me if I go off route on a trip to explore something. Usually I could see the line on the screen to get back on route, but if that is ambiguous, I just get the Etrex to autoroute to a numbered point I know is overhead.

My etrex has no autoroute, it just draws a straight line from each routepoint. That makes following it hard if the road isn't dead straight, or the points are too far apart. It can also make things ambiguous at junctions with more than 4 roads meeting.

On my wahoo, if I didn't have way points on the roads to provide shape, then it would beep at me for being off route every 200 yards. That would drive me nuts.

Quote
By putting the points at the junctions, the "off road" routes also pretty much always still work/are just as clear when I am using the route reversed.

250 points covers pretty much any day trip I am likely to make. If not, no problem at all to have two routes for the day. I may do this if doing a circuit - one for the outward route and another for the return by a different bunch of roads.

We do very different day trips it seems...

The file for tomorrow night's ride, as it comes out of ridewithgps has 4073 trkpt items in it.

Quote
I was a late convert to GPSs - for ages used route sheets I had typed out - but the discipline of that fed into me creating gpx routes which are economical on points. In short, you only need to put a point whetre there is a divergence from what you would take to be the normal onward road. Hence not all junctions need to be marked at all.

So, relax, geek - and embrace your Etrex.

Why? it drives me nuts that I can't load a route with more than 250 points, that seems a silly limit. It goes against the zero, one, infinity rule of good computer software design.

Now what this discussion has highlighted to me is a misunderstanding I had about tracks vs route. I thought a route was a collection of way points outlining a Route that you were going to follow, while a track outlines a series of way points tracking where you've been...

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 26 July, 2018, 06:08:14 pm
I'm so sorry that I imagined my etrex 10 only showing the first 250 points of a ride and thus leaving me with navigational improvisation to do the remaining leg of my journey...  so glad that it isn't a problem I had in 34 °C weather in Luxembourg.

Some might call that inadequate preparation on your part (RTFM applies).

Quote
My etrex has no autoroute, it just draws a straight line from each routepoint. That makes following it hard if the road isn't dead straight, or the points are too far apart. It can also make things ambiguous at junctions with more than 4 roads meeting.

Autorouting is only a feature on fairly recent models AIUI. You'd be better off using tracks if you want to follow a specific route.

Quote
The file for tomorrow night's ride, as it comes out of ridewithgps has 4073 trkpt items in it.

RWGPS is notorious for producing bloated tracks. You can use Phil W's app to slim them down:
https://simple-gpx.herokuapp.com/

The track for the 1000km ride I did recently had 5166 points, and even that was far more than it really needed.

Quote
Why? it drives me nuts that I can't load a route with more than 250 points, that seems a silly limit. It goes against the zero, one, infinity rule of good computer software design.

Presumably due to the low processing power and memory of mobile GPS devices. In any case, railing against the designers isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to learn to live with the limitations, just as others have done.

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Now what this discussion has highlighted to me is a misunderstanding I had about tracks vs route. I thought a route was a collection of way points outlining a Route that you were going to follow, while a track outlines a series of way points tracking where you've been...

Tracks can perform both roles. I've never used routes and my GPS device (Edge 510) doesn't support them anyway, but that's not a problem because I get on fine with tracks.

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=v0rJAHy2hq3prHjRlxdRw5&searchType=noProduct
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 26 July, 2018, 06:53:45 pm
The file for tomorrow night's ride, as it comes out of ridewithgps has 4073 trkpt items in it.

A Track file.  So this is largely a misunderstanding arising from the sloppy semantics in use (by nearly all of us) surrounding:
1. route - dictionary definition, a way to get from one place to another
2. Route - (my capital) a type of GPS file and navigation method, can be used to describe a route
3. Track - (my capital) a type of GPS file and navigation method, can be used to describe a route
4. tracklog - a Track that has been recorded by a moving GPS.

If people could use the terms correctly instead of interchangeably, a lot of these discussions would go away.  As I mentioned upthread, a lot of the blame for this must lie with some of the online planning sites such as BikeHike and RWGPS and others, who use the word 'route' as in (1) above, but in a GPS-ey context it's easy to suppose that they actually mean (2). Or even (3).  And it's catching!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: grams on 26 July, 2018, 07:16:35 pm
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Presumably due to the low processing power and memory of mobile GPS devices.

I have a circa 2002 eTrex Legend with the same limitations. Since then there’ve been orders of magnitude improvements in mobile processing power technology, *especially* in low power battery devices. And it’s apparently entirely passed Garmin by.

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In any case, railing against the designers isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to learn to live with the limitations, just as others have done.

You can stop giving money to this godawful company.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 26 July, 2018, 07:42:27 pm
Quote
Presumably due to the low processing power and memory of mobile GPS devices.

I have a circa 2002 eTrex Legend with the same limitations. Since then there’ve been orders of magnitude improvements in mobile processing power technology, *especially* in low power battery devices. And it’s apparently entirely passed Garmin by.

Exactly, the current state of the art is such that there is no excuse for such arbitrary limits memory is cheap, cpu is cheap, in fact it's often more expensive to get something with less power, less memory, and lower power use than it is to get something with less.

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In any case, railing against the designers isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to learn to live with the limitations, just as others have done.

You can stop giving money to this godawful company.

Exactly, this is why now I have a Wahoo Elemnt bolt. It's not perfect, but it has met my needs admirably. I primarily looked at the wahoo based on the sheer number of reports of ultra racers who had their rides compromised by failing garmin's.

The file for tomorrow night's ride, as it comes out of ridewithgps has 4073 trkpt items in it.

A Track file.  So this is largely a misunderstanding arising from the sloppy semantics in use (by nearly all of us) surrounding:
1. route - dictionary definition, a way to get from one place to another
2. Route - (my capital) a type of GPS file and navigation method, can be used to describe a route

Up to this point it all makes complete sense.

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3. Track - (my capital) a type of GPS file and navigation method, can be used to describe a route
4. tracklog - a Track that has been recorded by a moving GPS.

This is where it just makes no bloomin' sense at all. What is the point then of having the different terms of route and track? It makes no sense.

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If people could use the terms correctly instead of interchangeably, a lot of these discussions would go away.  As I mentioned upthread, a lot of the blame for this must lie with some of the online planning sites such as BikeHike and RWGPS and others, who use the word 'route' as in (1) above, but in a GPS-ey context it's easy to suppose that they actually mean (2). Or even (3).  And it's catching!

Well yes, the terminology doesn't seem to go out of it's way to make it clear. Not helped by the fact that apparently modern gps devices have a limit on the number of route points, but a much more reasonable limit on the number of track points...

I'm so sorry that I imagined my etrex 10 only showing the first 250 points of a ride and thus leaving me with navigational improvisation to do the remaining leg of my journey...  so glad that it isn't a problem I had in 34 °C weather in Luxembourg.

Some might call that inadequate preparation on your part (RTFM applies).

It was inadequate preparation on my part to not check that the device I had bought didn't have some silly built in limit that makes no sense. That I conseed.

However, as someone with a background in embedded computer system development, I think that it is poor workmanship on those who made the device to go against simple tenats of good design such as the zero, one, infinity rule. I have spent my professional life trying to avoid falling for such traps and design out the need to.

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Autorouting is only a feature on fairly recent models AIUI. You'd be better off using tracks if you want to follow a specific route.

And this is why it's so fscking crazy. To follow a specific route I need to use a track? What brain damaged moron thought this was a good way of doing the terminology?

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RWGPS is notorious for producing bloated tracks. You can use Phil W's app to slim them down:
https://simple-gpx.herokuapp.com/

The track for the 1000km ride I did recently had 5166 points, and even that was far more than it really needed.

As do all the route planners. By having more track points, you can also have a more accurate impression of the total distance you're going to ride, this helps with better planning and better riding.

The track for the Race round the Netherlands, 1670km, has over 15000 track points. What's your point?

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Why? it drives me nuts that I can't load a route with more than 250 points, that seems a silly limit. It goes against the zero, one, infinity rule of good computer software design.

Presumably due to the low processing power and memory of mobile GPS devices. In any case, railing against the designers isn't going to get you anywhere. You need to learn to live with the limitations, just as others have done.

Low power and memory? it's 2018.

I am not going to learn to live with a stupid limitation, I'm going to take my money elsewhere, it's the only vote I can have here. Why accept the inadequate? Why accept poor design? Why accept limitations that are entirely needless?

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Tracks can perform both roles. I've never used routes and my GPS device (Edge 510) doesn't support them anyway, but that's not a problem because I get on fine with tracks.

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=v0rJAHy2hq3prHjRlxdRw5&searchType=noProduct


See above for why this terminology is just brain dead.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 26 July, 2018, 07:54:57 pm
I haven't used Phil W's app so can't compare them, but another way to slim down RWGPS files is to load them into Bikehike then download from that. This also lets you add POIs, eg control locations on an audax or cafes or whatever interests you, which RWGPS doesn't (at least with the free account).
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 26 July, 2018, 08:08:33 pm
I haven't used Phil W's app so can't compare them, but another way to slim down RWGPS files is to load them into Bikehike then download from that. This also lets you add POIs, eg control locations on an audax or cafes or whatever interests you, which RWGPS doesn't (at least with the free account).

Or just don't use a poorly designed Garmin...

I have a paid RWGPS account anyway.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 26 July, 2018, 11:16:32 pm
As do all the route planners. By having more track points, you can also have a more accurate impression of the total distance you're going to ride, this helps with better planning and better riding.

The track for the Race round the Netherlands, 1670km, has over 15000 track points. What's your point?

That’s a wildly excessive number of trackpoints. The idea that you need that level of “accuracy” is misguided.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: grams on 26 July, 2018, 11:20:07 pm
If people could use the terms correctly instead of interchangeably, a lot of these discussions would go away.  As I mentioned upthread, a lot of the blame for this must lie with some of the online planning sites such as BikeHike and RWGPS and others, who use the word 'route' as in (1) above, but in a GPS-ey context it's easy to suppose that they actually mean (2). Or even (3).  And it's catching!

No, again I think it's fucking Garmin.

AIUI in the beginning a route file was a thing you uploaded to your device to follow, and a track file was a thing you recorded and downloaded afterwards.

Then at some point Garmin added a feature to follow a recorded track as if it were a route.

Then not long after that people figured out that - because of Garmin's artificial limitations on how routes work - the best way to navigate a detailed route was to upload not a route but a track to your Garmin!

With the result that the original distinction between them no longer made sense.

(although tbh I'm not sure there's any real need to differentiate them, except to make Garmin's software happy. The GPX format treats them as two entirely separate things - but it was invented *after* the events above)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 26 July, 2018, 11:27:23 pm
The file for tomorrow night's ride, as it comes out of ridewithgps has 4073 trkpt items in it.

A Track file.  So this is largely a misunderstanding arising from the sloppy semantics in use (by nearly all of us) surrounding:
1. route - dictionary definition, a way to get from one place to another
2. Route - (my capital) a type of GPS file and navigation method, can be used to describe a route

Up to this point it all makes complete sense.

Quote
3. Track - (my capital) a type of GPS file and navigation method, can be used to describe a route
4. tracklog - a Track that has been recorded by a moving GPS.

This is where it just makes no bloomin' sense at all. What is the point then of having the different terms of route and track? It makes no sense.

Hysterical Raisins.  It made sense in the early days of handhelds, when a Route was a list of maybe a dozen waypoints you programmed in on clicky buttons, and a Track was what the device recorded as you moved around.

Navigating along a Track in order to find your way back to wherever you came from was also a logical thing to do, and the limitations of 1990s tech probably meant this was a fundamentally different process in the software

At some point somebody made a bad decision and didn't tidy all this up (perhaps simply by having sensible limits and requiring that Tracks be converted to Routes in order to be navigated) at around the time a GPX file became a thing.  AIUI in Garmins there's still a semantic difference with routepoints referring to waypoints or things on the map, and trackpoints referring to arbitrary coordinates.


Most of the problems with Garmin GPS devices seem to result from keeping those 1990s handheld GPS paradigms alive long after they'd served their purpose.  And I say that as someone who quite likes a GPS receiver that's designed for a user who knows what they're doing with a map and compass.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: L CC on 27 July, 2018, 05:14:51 am
For a long time Garmin was the only game in town. Early adopters learnt to work with the limitations of their devices, as it was that or nothing.
I too had a Legend, and with my paid (actually free, I beta tested their phone app) RWGPS account almost always used Routes. Keeping them within the limits was straightforward enough, as I could check that on Mapsource. You can load up both Route and Track and have directions and a comforting line, but having been 'raised' on routesheets, I didn't need a Track. Follow the road unless you're told to turn is a pretty easy thing to do - you don't actually need to be on that line all the time. I went through 3 devices which all suffered through hardware failure - the charging socket just isn't robust enough. Now I use an Edge 520, I thought I would be doing more training than I've actually ever managed (bloody work) and load up tcx files which work as a Route. The 520 doesn't have anywhere near a big enough memory for maps and no expandable memory, so it's fundamentally unsuitable for long (400km+) distances and I suspect I'll dust off an old Legend when I get back into the long stuff.
The lack of user friendliness for Garmin devices is legendary. Their manuals aren't even in Chinese English. That said, I have not been tempted yet by the alternatives. They all have limitations in one way or another. Smartphones are so smart now I'm not even sure I'd bother with a dedicated GPS device if I was new to all this. My phone is waterproof, shockproof and has a massive capacity. You can get pretty good mounts and cache batteries are cheap, OTG charging easy. Why bother with the frustration of learning some esoteric new device?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 27 July, 2018, 10:16:01 am
Depends whether you prefer eating with proper cutlery or with a spork, I suppose.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: grams on 27 July, 2018, 10:21:57 am
When the fork in the proper cutlery only has one tine and we’re told any more than that is excessive and bloated, I’ll take the bloody spork.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 27 July, 2018, 10:36:51 am
For a long time Garmin was the only game in town. Early adopters learnt to work with the limitations of their devices, as it was that or nothing.

Indeed. Last time I gave any money to this godawful company, there was no such thing as the Wahoo Elemnt. Even the Rflkt hadn't been invented yet.

The only realistic alternatives for a while were Bryton and Mio. I did know someone who had a Mio and he was quite the evangelist for it, but I think that's only because he was trying to convince himself. He uses an Edge 1000 these days.

If I were in the market again today, I certainly wouldn't be looking exclusively at Garmin, but I'm in no hurry to upgrade/replace my Edge 510, which still does everything I need it to do very well, despite people constantly trying to tell me otherwise.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 27 July, 2018, 10:44:39 am
My favourite eating utensils are my fingers. Chapati is good too.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 27 July, 2018, 10:59:16 am
Paper maps for you then.

Garmin don't have any real competition unless you don't mind going out on a limb.  Their traditional competitors (such as Magellan, Lowrance) don't compete in the leisure market, at least not outside the US.  Newer options like Satmap, Bryton, Memory Map, Lezyne etc are just underwhelming.  The Wahoo (and possibly Hammerhead) devices seem strange to me because of their phone-dependence, but I think the higher-end Garmin Edge models are heading the same way, so obviously that symbiosis which is unappealing to me makes sense for others.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 27 July, 2018, 11:00:57 am
Paper maps for you then.

Won't the rice pudding make them soggy?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Pingu on 27 July, 2018, 11:01:54 am
...Why bother with the frustration of learning some esoteric new device?

For me, the smartphone would the esoteric new device  ;D
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: L CC on 27 July, 2018, 11:03:39 am
Depends whether you prefer eating with proper cutlery or with a spork, I suppose.
If you already own a spork, why would you splash out on a silver fishknife?

For a long time Garmin was the only game in town. Early adopters learnt to work with the limitations of their devices, as it was that or nothing.

Indeed. Last time I gave any money to this godawful company, there was no such thing as the Wahoo Elemnt. Even the Rflkt hadn't been invented yet.
I don't think I'll ever give money to a company who are so mean with their vowels. Tssrs.

I resent the Garmin learning curve. At least the new players are trying to make life easy for their customers (even if they can't spll).
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Samuel D on 27 July, 2018, 11:09:45 am
Even though Garmin is so thoroughly incompetent that only historical lack of competition permits its continued survival, most of us have struggled for years with its products and learned an array of tricks and workflows to get around the pointless limitations and arcane complexity.

If you go with another product, all that knowledge is wasted and you have to start from scratch. I’d do that if another product was vastly better and likely to be developed for the next decade, but they all seem to have their own problems when examined closely and I don’t trust some of the companies making them.

The least frustrating Garmins are perhaps the eTrex models. They are hideously complex, but they are pretty reliable at showing a line on a north-up map (that’s all I care about for navigation; instructions to turn left on Who_cares Street in 100 m, etc., seem pointless to me) and they can run for about 20 hours on two eneloop AA cells including through the night with a dim backlight.

Unfortunately the eTrex is bulky and has a poor bicycle mount that relies on zip ties. It’s ugly, as you can see in this photo of my rig in Dieppe:

(https://imageshack.com/a/img924/7906/zDX0JA.jpg) (https://imageshack.com/a/img924/7906/zDX0JA.jpg)

… but it got me there without bother, which is more than the shown Edge 520 would have done without a load of babysitting, battery charging in the middle of the night, etc.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 11:14:36 am
Wahoos are as equally underpowereed as Garmins. As one of their design considerations is battery life.   Battery density has not really advanced all that much in the last 15 years, if only there was an equivalent Moore's law for that.  Wahoo solved the routing issue on a low power / cpu device by getting the onlne routing web servers to do it (RWGPS). Correct me if I am wrong but Wahoos cannot do on the fly routing without the connected phone app.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 27 July, 2018, 12:02:25 pm
Wahoos are as equally underpowereed as Garmins. As one of their design considerations is battery life.   Battery density has not really advanced all that much in the last 15 years, if only there was an equivalent Moore's law for that.  Wahoo solved the routing issue on a low power / cpu device by getting the onlne routing web servers to do it (RWGPS). Correct me if I am wrong but Wahoos cannot do on the fly routing without the connected phone app.

You are not wrong, you have to use the phone app to do the routing. But if you have a GPX file, you can just load it up and it works. Even when that file has 15000+ points.

It's a good way of doing it. The majority of people are carrying a super computer in their pockets, so why stick needless complexity into the unit, when you can offload it to the pocket supercomputer most people have. Sure it might not be as good as "you have deviated from your route, recalculating". But it still provides a lot useful info, you have the line you're supposed to be on, you have a basic map. You can then do your own routing back to it.

The main features I find missing from my bolt are:

- single way point nav. Just draw a straight line from my present location to the destination way point. I'll do the rest thanks
- Load in a db of POI, and flag when I am close to them, this would be useful as I could then load in the water fountain info from OSM...
- Autozoom - Zoom in more when route is fiddlier, and zoom our when it's not.

The wahoo is not perfect, but it seems to be better than the Garmin's. It'll be interesting to see how many TCR riders this year are screwed over by Garmin failures...

It's actually an interesting one how ultra racers, and audaxers are good at finding bugs in these devices. Often a bug won't manifest itself for a number of hours, and most "normal" cyclists don't do many rides longer than 3-8 hours. So a bug that only appears at 15 or 20 hours run time just doesn't often show up in testing. But these bugs are surprisingly common in many systems (free the goddamn mallocs()!), and a sod to debug.

Incidentally, regarding battery density. It has come along, we just don't realise it. The energy density of a battery that you can put in a modern device is considerably better than even a year ago. and orders of magnitude better than 2 years ago. The main thing that stops us realising that batteries have improved, is that cpu power requirements have gone up to match the battery improvements. If you took a low power cpu from 15 years ago, and plug it into a modern  battery, the life would be amazing. This comes back to the issue of most rides being quite short. Wahoo claim a 15 hour battery life, which is great. But I've done 3 rides in the last 6 months that were longer than 15 hours. But then, as with the rest of my life, I am an edge case for these devices, just like most people round here are...

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 12:26:19 pm
Wahoos are as equally underpowereed as Garmins. As one of their design considerations is battery life.   Battery density has not really advanced all that much in the last 15 years, if only there was an equivalent Moore's law for that.  Wahoo solved the routing issue on a low power / cpu device by getting the onlne routing web servers to do it (RWGPS). Correct me if I am wrong but Wahoos cannot do on the fly routing without the connected phone app.

You are not wrong, you have to use the phone app to do the routing. But if you have a GPX file, you can just load it up and it works. Even when that file has 15000+ points.

It's a good way of doing it. The majority of people are carrying a super computer in their pockets,

No they are not. The phone is not a super computer and the routing is not done on the phone it is done on the RWGPS web servers.  The phone just acts as an intermediary to pass the routing data across.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 27 July, 2018, 12:33:25 pm
No they are not. The phone is not a super computer and the routing is not done on the phone it is done on the RWGPS web servers.  The phone just acts as an intermediary to pass the routing data across.

The definition of supercomputer has been updated over the years, but around the turn of the century, a super computer was classified by the US government as being able to do >2000MTOPS (Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second). As such the Apple G4 computer fell fowl of US export restrictions, being that it did just under 2500MTOPS, these being the same export restrictions that controlled weapons/arms exports. The US government has updated the threshold of MTOPS to be classified as a super computer, but your average smart phone easily does over 2500MTOPS. So by a 18 year old definition, we do carry a super computer in our pocket[1].

I stand corrected on the pass through to RWGPS servers.

J

[1] Also a calculator, take that year 8 maths teacher who said we wouldn't always have a calculator in our pocket!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 12:42:39 pm
Super computer performance was (and still is as far as I am aware) defined in terms of floating point operations per second (FLOPS) so not quite sure where you got this TOPS figure from.  Even in 2000 super computers were hitting 10 power 12 FLOPS.  Tell me, does your phone hit that figure?

Widely off topic as we have strayed.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 27 July, 2018, 12:58:16 pm
Super computer performance was (and still is as far as I am aware) defined in terms of floating point operations per second (FLOPS) so not quite sure where you got this TOPS figure from.  Even in 2000 super computers were hitting 10 power 12 FLOPS.  Tell me, does your phone hit that figure?

Widely off topic as we have strayed.

At the top end they were. At the low end of what was classified as a super computer?

The Apple G4 was classified as a super computer, it had 500Mhz single core cpu. My phone has an octacore cpu at 2ghz, plus a 3d accelerator. Modern phones are as powerful as desktop machines of nearly 20 years ago.

Yes it's an isoteric way of looking at the definitions and it's abusing terms, but it is technically the case.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 01:11:17 pm
As do all the route planners. By having more track points, you can also have a more accurate impression of the total distance you're going to ride, this helps with better planning and better riding.

The track for the Race round the Netherlands, 1670km, has over 15000 track points. What's your point?

That’s a wildly excessive number of trackpoints. The idea that you need that level of “accuracy” is misguided.


It is really excessive for the route and distance and a prime example of bloat. 

I just downloaded the Race around the Netherlands GPX and the track has 31,814 track points.  Far more than necessary.  I loaded that into my Etrex 20, and also loaded one filtered down to 10,000 points.   The original takes 40 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate, the filtered version takes 8 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate.  Over 30 extra seconds processing the extra track points it does not need by any stretch of the imagination.  If I passed through 30 controls I have already lost 15 minutes just awaiting for the GPS to be ready.  Plus it will be slower updating the map.
 
Does not need the trackpoints? Well I made both tracks visible on the GPS map screen and zoomed right in to see where they deviated.  Note the zoom and tell me where you can see the original track (it is red) on the screen grabs?  I usually have my GPS set at 200m zoom but zoomed right in to show you there is really is no differece in what you see.

(https://www.dropbox.com/s/em2vo10vd3hvnt1/1033.bmp?raw=1)
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/gc6r2z445vvdt8b/1043.bmp?raw=1)
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/p8wh1rbv0kdt8u9/1059.bmp?raw=1)
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/u10s4fnze1jjvzn/1074.bmp?raw=1)
(https://www.dropbox.com/s/irxqd1kidtqqd0c/1104.bmp?raw=1)

A track with thousands of track points it does not need is wasteful and bit like someone handing me a 100 page A4 manual of directions when I asked how to get to the local shops.

Throwing increasing amounts of power at a problem is not always the answer.  I know a company who used to do this and it cost them a million pounds a year in hardware upgrades every single bloody year.  Sometimes you have to look at the efficiency of the software and the appropriateness of the data you supply.

For instance here is a trackpoint from the Round Netherlands GPX. Tell me what precsion those lat / lon and elevation are claiming. 

<trkpt lat="51.999610000000004" lon="5.466810000000001">
    <ele>19.000000000000004</ele>
   </trkpt>

Truth is the Round Netherlands track could have been navigated as a single track but not the bloatware they provided.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 01:15:50 pm
Super computer performance was (and still is as far as I am aware) defined in terms of floating point operations per second (FLOPS) so not quite sure where you got this TOPS figure from.  Even in 2000 super computers were hitting 10 power 12 FLOPS.  Tell me, does your phone hit that figure?

Widely off topic as we have strayed.

At the top end they were. At the low end of what was classified as a super computer?


The Apple G4 was classified as a super computer, it had 500Mhz single core cpu. My phone has an octacore cpu at 2ghz, plus a 3d accelerator. Modern phones are as powerful as desktop machines of nearly 20 years ago.

Yes it's an isoteric way of looking at the definitions and it's abusing terms, but it is technically the case.

J

It is technically the case that in 2018 your phone is not classed as a super computer.

In 2000 US export restrictions limited Internet Explorer to 40 bit SSL encyption. Anything stronger was classed a munitions. Presumably now you will tell us that this is strong encyption or that browsers are munitions in 2018?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 27 July, 2018, 01:20:09 pm
For instance here is a trackpoint from the Round Netherlands GPX. Tell me what precsion those lat / lon and elevation are claiming. 

<trkpt lat="51.999610000000004" lon="5.466810000000001">
    <ele>19.000000000000004</ele>
   </trkpt>

I know it was a rhetorical question but I just looked up the answer anyway out of interest. Apparently, 13dp gives you angstrom levels of precision, so 15dp is going to be somewhat more precise than that.

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/8650/measuring-accuracy-of-latitude-and-longitude#8674

Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 01:23:21 pm
For instance here is a trackpoint from the Round Netherlands GPX. Tell me what precsion those lat / lon and elevation are claiming. 

<trkpt lat="51.999610000000004" lon="5.466810000000001">
    <ele>19.000000000000004</ele>
   </trkpt>

I know it was a rhetorical question but I just looked up the answer anyway out of interest. Apparently, 13dp gives you angstrom levels of precision, so 15dp is going to be somewhat more precise than that.

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/8650/measuring-accuracy-of-latitude-and-longitude#8674

Brilliant, exactly the level of precision that quixoticgeek is demanding for her navigation....
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 27 July, 2018, 02:10:28 pm
Here's an extract from one of the answers given in the link quoted above:

Quote
The fifth decimal place is worth up to 1.1 m: it distinguish trees from each other. Accuracy to this level with commercial GPS units can only be achieved with differential correction.
The sixth decimal place is worth up to 0.11 m: you can use this for laying out structures in detail, for designing landscapes, building roads. It should be more than good enough for tracking movements of glaciers and rivers. This can be achieved by taking painstaking measures with GPS, such as differentially corrected GPS.
The seventh decimal place is worth up to 11 mm: this is good for much surveying and is near the limit of what GPS-based techniques can achieve.
The eighth decimal place is worth up to 1.1 mm: this is good for charting motions of tectonic plates and movements of volcanoes. Permanent, corrected, constantly-running GPS base stations might be able to achieve this level of accuracy.
The ninth decimal place is worth up to 110 microns: we are getting into the range of microscopy. For almost any conceivable application with earth positions, this is overkill and will be more precise than the accuracy of any surveying device.
Ten or more decimal places indicates a computer or calculator was used and that no attention was paid to the fact that the extra decimals are useless. Be careful, because unless you are the one reading these numbers off the device, this can indicate low quality processing!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 27 July, 2018, 02:23:26 pm
For instance here is a trackpoint from the Round Netherlands GPX. Tell me what precsion those lat / lon and elevation are claiming. 

<trkpt lat="51.999610000000004" lon="5.466810000000001">
    <ele>19.000000000000004</ele>
   </trkpt>

I know it was a rhetorical question but I just looked up the answer anyway out of interest. Apparently, 13dp gives you angstrom levels of precision, so 15dp is going to be somewhat more precise than that.

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/8650/measuring-accuracy-of-latitude-and-longitude#8674

There are two points here that should not be conflated.

1) Number of track points,

2) Precision of the track points,

You can reduce the precision of the track points, I agree that 15dp is a bit overzealous 5 or 6 dp is plenty, however, the track point you have hilighted has come about due to a poor implementation in some software somewhere, of the IEEE 754 floating point standard. It's common in a lot of computer systems where designers don't know enough about the way their machine is storing the underlying bits. Many programmers look at a problem and think they will use floating point variables. Now they have 1.000000000000002 problems. This is why you can remove bloat from many a GPX, by simply taking all the values for lat/long, and making sure none of them are more than 5 or 6dp, (or even 3 or 4 if you're ok with 20+m of accuracy), this reduces the total number of bytes that the files needs to be stored. This can reduce the amount of CPU used by the device. However, as most programmers will just import the value into a variable, which will be either a 32bit, or in some cases (rare I'd say) 64bit, value, it takes the same amount of memory on the device to store 54.0, 54.123456 or 51.999610000000004, even if the actual file size for 54.0 is 14 bytes smaller. The only time that this longer variable then is slower than the shorter one is when it comes to reading the bytes off of the memory that the file is stored in, at which point you are looking at string manipulation, and saving yourself a couple of dozen or so clock cycles, when each clock cycle is done at many dozens of megahertz at least.

Thus, the precision of the lat/long points used in the gpx file, and the number of track points in the file, are two entirely separate things. I never claimed I needed angstrom level precision, and I hope that the above gives you an adequate explanation of why points like the above come about, and why it really doesn't matter, as well as how that is entirely not the point I am making.

So, having having dealt with that red herring, shall we move on to the issue of number of track points?

How about next time I go out for a longish ride, I upload my gpx file as it comes out of what ever route planner I've used, and one of you lot can reduce it to what ever you think is right, and I'll ride it, and we can see at which point I scream and switch to my original gpx[1]?

J

[1] Here, have Mondays ride: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/28119872 it's 1992 track points, 116km, give me a gpx with less than 116 points, and also tell me how long it took you to do it, and I'll see how far I get before it drives me too insane and I use the original route.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 27 July, 2018, 02:28:00 pm
It is really excessive for the route and distance and a prime example of bloat. 

I just downloaded the Race around the Netherlands GPX and the track has 31,814 track points.  Far more than necessary.  I loaded that into my Etrex 20, and also loaded one filtered down to 10,000 points.   The original takes 40 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate, the filtered version takes 8 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate.  Over 30 extra seconds processing the extra track points it does not need by any stretch of the imagination.  If I passed through 30 controls I have already lost 15 minutes just awaiting for the GPS to be ready.  Plus it will be slower updating the map.

You turn your device off at controls?

Right, you reduced it down to 10000. 10000 is still one way point on average every 167m. That seems reasonable. Thing is, the claim made above is that you shouldn't need more than 1 per km, so now take that gpx, and make it no more than 1670 points. Even then, that's more thanthe 250 that an etrex allows in a route. Still.

Quote
For instance here is a trackpoint from the Round Netherlands GPX. Tell me what precsion those lat / lon and elevation are claiming. 

<trkpt lat="51.999610000000004" lon="5.466810000000001">
    <ele>19.000000000000004</ele>
   </trkpt>

Truth is the Round Netherlands track could have been navigated as a single track but not the bloatware they provided.
\

See previous post for explaining why this is a big red herring.

J
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fuaran on 27 July, 2018, 02:35:58 pm
Right, you reduced it down to 10000. 10000 is still one way point on average every 167m. That seems reasonable. Thing is, the claim made above is that you shouldn't need more than 1 per km, so now take that gpx, and make it no more than 1670 points. Even then, that's more thanthe 250 that an etrex allows in a route.
You are still confusing routes and tracks. With routes, you need much fewer points. And in a route it is unhelpful if you have too many points.
If following a route, I want the GPS to display the "Distance to next". ie this should be the next place I have to turn off. If it says 1 km to the next point, it means I don't have to think about navigation until then, just keep following the road I am on. So it is pointless and confusing to have loads of extra points in between junctions, it just means you get the GPS beeping needlessly.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 02:40:20 pm
It is really excessive for the route and distance and a prime example of bloat. 

I just downloaded the Race around the Netherlands GPX and the track has 31,814 track points.  Far more than necessary.  I loaded that into my Etrex 20, and also loaded one filtered down to 10,000 points.   The original takes 40 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate, the filtered version takes 8 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate.  Over 30 extra seconds processing the extra track points it does not need by any stretch of the imagination.  If I passed through 30 controls I have already lost 15 minutes just awaiting for the GPS to be ready.  Plus it will be slower updating the map.

You turn your device off at controls?

Right, you reduced it down to 10000. 10000 is still one way point on average every 167m. That seems reasonable. Thing is, the claim made above is that you shouldn't need more than 1 per km, so now take that gpx, and make it no more than 1670 points.
Frankie's claim above was for direct routing and he did not claim the route would follow the road, it won't. But he feels it is enough to navigate with if you place the route points only at turns. Not a method I have tried so cannot comment on how that would go for me. Even back in 2002 I was navigating by following tracks, before I had a mapping GPS.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 02:45:26 pm
It is really excessive for the route and distance and a prime example of bloat. 

I just downloaded the Race around the Netherlands GPX and the track has 31,814 track points.  Far more than necessary.  I loaded that into my Etrex 20, and also loaded one filtered down to 10,000 points.   The original takes 40 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate, the filtered version takes 8 seconds to load before you can click Go to navigate.  Over 30 extra seconds processing the extra track points it does not need by any stretch of the imagination.  If I passed through 30 controls I have already lost 15 minutes just awaiting for the GPS to be ready.  Plus it will be slower updating the map.

You turn your device off at controls?

Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

It would be like leaving the oven on in between meals. Wasteful and pointless.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 27 July, 2018, 02:50:36 pm
Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

So the overall average speed field is correct, presumably.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 02:52:53 pm
For instance here is a trackpoint from the Round Netherlands GPX. Tell me what precsion those lat / lon and elevation are claiming. 

<trkpt lat="51.999610000000004" lon="5.466810000000001">
    <ele>19.000000000000004</ele>
   </trkpt>

I know it was a rhetorical question but I just looked up the answer anyway out of interest. Apparently, 13dp gives you angstrom levels of precision, so 15dp is going to be somewhat more precise than that.

https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/8650/measuring-accuracy-of-latitude-and-longitude#8674

There are two points here that should not be conflated.

1) Number of track points,

2) Precision of the track points,

You can reduce the precision of the track points, I agree that 15dp is a bit overzealous 5 or 6 dp is plenty, however, the track point you have hilighted has come about due to a poor implementation in some software somewhere, of the IEEE 754 floating point standard. It's common in a lot of computer systems where designers don't know enough about the way their machine is storing the underlying bits. Many programmers look at a problem and think they will use floating point variables. Now they have 1.000000000000002 problems. This is why you can remove bloat from many a GPX, by simply taking all the values for lat/long, and making sure none of them are more than 5 or 6dp, (or even 3 or 4 if you're ok with 20+m of accuracy), this reduces the total number of bytes that the files needs to be stored. This can reduce the amount of CPU used by the device. However, as most programmers will just import the value into a variable, which will be either a 32bit, or in some cases (rare I'd say) 64bit, value, it takes the same amount of memory on the device to store 54.0, 54.123456 or 51.999610000000004, even if the actual file size for 54.0 is 14 bytes smaller. The only time that this longer variable then is slower than the shorter one is when it comes to reading the bytes off of the memory that the file is stored in, at which point you are looking at string manipulation, and saving yourself a couple of dozen or so clock cycles, when each clock cycle is done at many dozens of megahertz at least.

Thus, the precision of the lat/long points used in the gpx file, and the number of track points in the file, are two entirely separate things. I never claimed I needed angstrom level precision, and I hope that the above gives you an adequate explanation of why points like the above come about, and why it really doesn't matter, as well as how that is entirely not the point I am making.

So, having having dealt with that red herring, shall we move on to the issue of number of track points?

How about next time I go out for a longish ride, I upload my gpx file as it comes out of what ever route planner I've used, and one of you lot can reduce it to what ever you think is right, and I'll ride it, and we can see at which point I scream and switch to my original gpx[1]?

J

[1] Here, have Mondays ride: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/28119872 it's 1992 track points, 116km, give me a gpx with less than 116 points, and also tell me how long it took you to do it, and I'll see how far I get before it drives me too insane and I use the original route.

See my post at 1:11pm of actual etrex screen shots. You will not be able to tell the difference as the thousands of extra track points do nothing in terms of the track you see on your GPS. 
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 03:03:52 pm
Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

So the overall average speed field is correct, presumably.

Seems a bit wasteful leaving the GPS running whilst I have a four hour sleep or even a 45 min eat.  Especially as you can get that stat if you load your data into any of the myriad applications out there.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: L CC on 27 July, 2018, 03:05:41 pm
I get QG's frustration, I really do. No one likes arriving 120km through a 400km ride and finding their pink line Just Ends. (Somewhere in East Anglia, for me. Back in 2010, maybe?)

Her response was to throw out the Etrex and buy something else. And her response now is to defend that choice through her own (limited) experience. N=1, and all that.

My response was work out how to use the GPS I had, properly.

There was much less choice then. I think the alternative was an Edge 800- we remember those, they were the ones with the random switch off at around 300km...
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 27 July, 2018, 03:09:02 pm
Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

So the overall average speed field is correct, presumably.

Seems a bit wasteful leaving the GPS running whilst I have a four hour sleep or even a 45 min eat.

Wasteful of what?  A few electrons in a rechargeable battery?  I'm assuming this is an audax where you've planned your power budget accordingly, it would be daft for touring (which is why I habitually turn mine off, unless I'm only stopping for 5 minutes or so).


Quote
Especially as you can get that stat if you load your data into any of the myriad applications out there.

You can only do that sort of thing after the event, which isn't particularly useful.  If you keep the clock running, the 'overall average' field provides a realtime display of whether you're out of time or not during the ride.  *That's* the point.

Whether or not you find that useful enough to budget a little more battery life is up to you.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: L CC on 27 July, 2018, 03:11:31 pm
How about next time I go out for a longish ride, I upload my gpx file as it comes out of what ever route planner I've used, and one of you lot can reduce it to what ever you think is right, and I'll ride it, and we can see at which point I scream and switch to my original gpx[1]?

J

[1] Here, have Mondays ride: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/28119872 it's 1992 track points, 116km, give me a gpx with less than 116 points, and also tell me how long it took you to do it, and I'll see how far I get before it drives me too insane and I use the original route.

You can do it yourself. You'll only go wrong if you're a fuckwit. Here: https://simple-gpx.herokuapp.com/

I look forward to a post admitting your error.

I did BoB 1000km (That's Belgium- so cyclepaths and canalsides galore) on a Route with <500 points.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 27 July, 2018, 03:26:08 pm
Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

So the overall average speed field is correct, presumably.

Seems a bit wasteful leaving the GPS running whilst I have a four hour sleep or even a 45 min eat.

Wasteful of what?  A few electrons in a rechargeable battery?  I'm assuming this is an audax where you've planned your power budget accordingly, it would be daft for touring (which is why I habitually turn mine off, unless I'm only stopping for 5 minutes or so).
Especially as you can get that stat if you load your data into any of the myriad applications out there.

Depends on whether you consider burning 20-25% of a battery's energy for no purpose a good thing to be doing. You do not need overall average for an audax. 
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 27 July, 2018, 03:30:19 pm
Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

So the overall average speed field is correct, presumably.

Seems a bit wasteful leaving the GPS running whilst I have a four hour sleep or even a 45 min eat.

Wasteful of what?  A few electrons in a rechargeable battery?  I'm assuming this is an audax where you've planned your power budget accordingly, it would be daft for touring (which is why I habitually turn mine off, unless I'm only stopping for 5 minutes or so).
Especially as you can get that stat if you load your data into any of the myriad applications out there.

Depends on whether you consider burning 20-25% of a battery's energy for no purpose a good thing to be doing. You do not need overall average for an audax.

You do not need a GPS receiver for an audax.

You asked why someone would leave it on, I gave a possible reason.


ETA: Another reason, and one that I've actually kept my GPS switched on at audax controls for (I don't use the average speed display):  To keep an eye on what the time is.  Since I'm bringing the GPS receiver in with me so it doesn't get stolen, it can be useful to leave it switched on so I can see the clock while I'm eating/faffing.  Particularly if I've taken my glasses off to give my nose a sweat/pressure break and can't read the one on the wall.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: grams on 27 July, 2018, 03:59:01 pm
My app inserts *many more* points into every uploaded GPX file - LEL ends up as 78,000 points! It means elevation gets calculated properly*, navigation logic is simpler and *less* CPU intensive because all you're ever doing is looking for the nearest point rather than an imaginary point between two.

My £100 waterproof Android phone has no problem with this many points, and it downloads quickly enough and doesn't make a dent in the gigabytes of built-in storage, so however bloated or excessive this may be in theory, it has no practical effect.

(* As an extreme example, imagine a long, perfectly straight road with the same elevation at each end but a ridge of hills in the middle)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 27 July, 2018, 05:35:36 pm
Right, you reduced it down to 10000. 10000 is still one way point on average every 167m. That seems reasonable. Thing is, the claim made above is that you shouldn't need more than 1 per km, so now take that gpx, and make it no more than 1670 points. Even then, that's more thanthe 250 that an etrex allows in a route.
You are still confusing routes and tracks. With routes, you need much fewer points. And in a route it is unhelpful if you have too many points.
If following a route, I want the GPS to display the "Distance to next". ie this should be the next place I have to turn off. If it says 1 km to the next point, it means I don't have to think about navigation until then, just keep following the road I am on. So it is pointless and confusing to have loads of extra points in between junctions, it just means you get the GPS beeping needlessly.

+ several.

I don't need to see a line following the road, even roughly. On a plotted ride the line is often not even visible on my screen though I can reassure myself that I am heading towards the next point by watching the "distance to" steadily decrease* and if especially nervous zoom out to see the line still there. As you say it is good to relax, ride the damn bike, enjoy the scenery, not peer at an algorithm all the time. Sometimes, so obvious is the road I am supposed to follow that the next point I have numbered may be 5 or even 8 km away. the geek IMHO should just relax and ride their bike more.

* sometimes, as when riding up and down inlets on a coastal road, the "distance to" may even increase for short periods, but since there is a sentient human being riding the bike there is no need for it to worry. Hell, you can read the landscape and let the Garmin get on with it.

edit - just checked a stored detailed GPX point to point of mine - from Peterborough (with a lot of twiddling getting out of town) to a London tube station - 169 points. Have ridden it. Despite my 4 pints en route, the Garmin's navigation was faultless.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 27 July, 2018, 05:42:27 pm
Of course, why on earth would I leave it on chewing batteries whilst I stop for a bite to eat or to sleep?

So the overall average speed field is correct, presumably.

Seems a bit wasteful leaving the GPS running whilst I have a four hour sleep or even a 45 min eat.

Wasteful of what?  A few electrons in a rechargeable battery?  I'm assuming this is an audax where you've planned your power budget accordingly, it would be daft for touring (which is why I habitually turn mine off, unless I'm only stopping for 5 minutes or so).
Especially as you can get that stat if you load your data into any of the myriad applications out there.

Depends on whether you consider burning 20-25% of a battery's energy for no purpose a good thing to be doing. You do not need overall average for an audax.

You do not need a GPS receiver for an audax.

You asked why someone would leave it on, I gave a possible reason.


ETA: Another reason, and one that I've actually kept my GPS switched on at audax controls for (I don't use the average speed display):  To keep an eye on what the time is.  Since I'm bringing the GPS receiver in with me so it doesn't get stolen, it can be useful to leave it switched on so I can see the clock while I'm eating/faffing.  Particularly if I've taken my glasses off to give my nose a sweat/pressure break and can't read the one on the wall.
I do leave my GPS running at controls, precisely for the overall average speed display. I think one of the differences is that I don't ride audaxes with overnight stops, and neither, I think, does Kim, so it's only on and not moving for half an hour or so at a time.

ETA: If you are a more disciplined and/or faster audaxer, you won't need to keep an eye on your overall average anyway.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 27 July, 2018, 06:42:51 pm
The wahoo is not perfect, but it seems to be better than the Garmin's. It'll be interesting to see how many TCR riders this year are screwed over by Garmin failures...

Though what you (and they) might see as a Garmin failure I might regard as a user error ...

Frankie's claim above was for direct routing and he did not claim the route would follow the road, it won't. But he feels it is enough to navigate with if you place the route points only at turns. Not a method I have tried so cannot comment on how that would go for me.

Not only is it 'enough' to simply mark turns (generally) - but with direct routes less is more - any extra points between the turns simply cloud the issue and make the navigation less effective.

Regarding switching the GPS off at stops - it's unclear to me how much of a power hit the boot-up process is.  Even if it is 'hot-starting' ie after a short break of 15 minutes or so, on the Etrex there is still a lengthy process of importing all the GPX files into the GPS's own internal database.  This is repeated every time you boot.  (I think the Edges are different and probably better.)  For this reason on long tours (with GPX information to cover 2 or 3 weeks riding) I tend to leave the device switched on other than overnight stops or taking it indoors.  I still get 2 long days or 3 short days out of any pair of AAs (ie NiMH or alkaline - if lithiums 5-6 touring days is normal).

Regarding over-long co-ordinates - I have seen GPX files with 24 decimal points of 'precision' ... sub-molecular levels?  While accepting QGeek's point about these not impacting processing, they do go some way towards bloating file sizes.

Regarding the routes/tracks confusion and semantics - this RWGPS page linked on anther thread is a perfect example of my point:
https://ridewithgps.com/help/export-routes-to-garmin-device (https://ridewithgps.com/help/export-routes-to-garmin-device)
their continued use of the word 'route' - while semantically correct for what they are trying to say, is extremely confusing when 90% of the time the end product they are directing you toward is a Track.  BikeHike are equally guilty of this.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Samuel D on 28 July, 2018, 12:12:48 pm
Regarding the routes/tracks confusion and semantics - this RWGPS page linked on anther thread is a perfect example of my point:
https://ridewithgps.com/help/export-routes-to-garmin-device (https://ridewithgps.com/help/export-routes-to-garmin-device)
their continued use of the word 'route' - while semantically correct for what they are trying to say, is extremely confusing when 90% of the time the end product they are directing you toward is a Track.  BikeHike are equally guilty of this.

I lay all of the blame for this at Garmin’s feet. Imagine a company like Apple or Google expecting users of mainstream products to apply such nuanced terminology. It’s insane.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 28 July, 2018, 12:48:54 pm
The nuanced difference between memory and storage is beyond the average person.  It's not a terminology problem, so much as non-experts only having room in their brains for one class of list-of-coordinates data structure and regarding all terminology for such as synonyms, in the same way they treat all terminology for things-in-computers-that-hold-data as synonyms.

As I see it, there are two approaches to this sort of problem:  Either you educate your users so they can understand and apply the terminology effectively, or you abstract things in your UI to the point where they don't have to care about the difference.

Garmin are stuck with the 1990s approach where they explained how it worked in a manual, and users were expected to read and understand it in order to use the product.  Not only is this approach deeply unfashionable with modern tech users, but the art of writing manuals for consumer products declined sharply around the turn of the century.

Apple and to a lesser extent Google have made good money through the other approach.  It's still infuriating when they invent their own terms for things that there are perfectly good existing words for, but they're much less guilty of that than the Mega-Global Vendor Lock-In Corporation of Redmond, USAnia.


Frankly, it doesn't help that we - as long-distance cyclists - are trying to use these products in a way that evidently hasn't been given much, if any, consideration by the software developers.  When you're trying to creatively abuse a tool to do something it wasn't designed for, user-friendliness for the intended use-case is often unhelpful.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 29 July, 2018, 12:44:56 pm
Is the root of the problem that originally, the record of where you have been was called a "tracklog", but that term has fallen out of use?

When I was new to GPS, I asked someone who'd been using it for years the difference between track and route.
"A route shows where you're going, a track shows where you've been."
"Okay, so for tomorrow's ride I need to put the gpx route on my Garmin."
"No, you need the track."
 "???"
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 29 July, 2018, 12:54:14 pm
Is the root of the problem that originally, the record of where you have been was called a "tracklog", but that term has fallen out of use?

Not so much fallen out of use, so much that abusing the re-trace-a-recorded-track capability has become co-opted as the most practical (or at least user-friendly) way of getting a Garmin to stick to a planned, erm, [avoids ambiguous terminology] bike ride.

To the point where the current generation of Garmin users think that Tracks are synonymous with GPX files, and have little if any knowledge of Routes or even Waypoints.  A GPX file with a single Track in it has become a de-facto standard for sharing planned bike rides.

The Edge series muddy the waters with Courses (which, AIUI, are basically the same as Routes, but treated with the assumption that the objective is to follow the entire, erm, path, possibly multiple times - rather than just get to the other end).
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 29 July, 2018, 01:46:12 pm
It's a bit like cycle path, track and way, and possibly even lane. Especially when you consider that the historical "road-path" style of bike, which sounds like it should be a predecessor of cyclocross (or gravel, adventure, all-road, etc) bike, actually refers to a bike for road and, erm, track (in the velodrome sense). Terminology. Possibly even better than standards.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 29 July, 2018, 02:12:16 pm
Is the root of the problem that originally, the record of where you have been was called a "tracklog", but that term has fallen out of use?
The Edge series muddy the waters with Courses (which, AIUI, are basically the same as Routes, but treated with the assumption that the objective is to follow the entire, erm, path, possibly multiple times - rather than just get to the other end).

They were more of a hybrid of route and track. When creating them in Mapsource you could use auto routing to plot. The bit that was like a route. Plus you could add coursepoints for things like water, or turns.  There was a fixed set of the types of coursepoint you could add.  The course created acted more like a track however other than the prompts where you had placed your coursepoints.  The limit on my Edge 205 from 2004 was around 13,000 points in a course.  So not dissimilar to the 10,000 point limit of tracks in many devices today.  If you look inside the crs format files you will see the similarities.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 29 July, 2018, 03:23:16 pm
Terminology. Possibly even better than standards.

There's the rub. Although I think we can narrow it down further to that especially confusing subset of terminology: jargon.

But as long as you remember that 'Route' and 'Track' in this context bear no relation to their everyday meanings, you should be able to mitigate much of that confusion. I mean, I really don't care what the terms mean in Garminworld, and the historical reasons are interesting but not especially helpful. All I want to know is which type of GPX file is best for me to use for navigation on my audax rides. What they're called is unimportant.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 29 July, 2018, 03:50:57 pm
Up to a point. It's important to remember which name as used in Garminworld or the world according to RWGPS, Bikehike, etc, corresponds to what you want, so you download the right file. But the reasons as to why it's called that are, as you say, jargon.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 29 July, 2018, 04:33:16 pm
Tracks and Routes are part of the GPX interchange standard and are nothing to do with Garmin.  And within that standard it is true, there is bugger-all difference between the two things, they each share the same set of possible attributes.  So on this basis, when an online Planner offers a choice between Track and Route, very often it is in fact offering the same file with just the 'trk' and 'rte' tagging substituted as appropriate.  So a 7165-point Track file (OK in most modern Garmins and other GPS) becomes a 7165-point Route file (broken in any GPS I know of).
Given that Phil W has just recently demonstrated how possible it is to do the job right (that is, intelligently downsampling as required) - then it's unfortunate the Planners fail to do likewise.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: fhills on 29 July, 2018, 05:13:21 pm
With regard to all those mega mega points forming a coloured road-following line on the gps map, don't folk find it tiring/find themselves peering at a screen rather the road all the time? Have never understood the point/attraction. As above I prefer minimal points, info on the distance to the next turn, and the turn marked.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 29 July, 2018, 05:15:15 pm
With regard to all those mega mega points forming a coloured road-following line on the gps map, don't folk find it tiring/find themselves peering at a screen rather the road all the time?

You know when you get an OS map, mark a route in highlighter pen and put it in a bar bag?  It's like that without the stops to re-fold the map.  You don't have to peer at it all the time, just work out where the next junction is then re-check the map after the turn.  When you're turning from major to minor, it has the advantage that your own position is marked, so you don't have to obsessively count distance or check for suitable landmarks to work out which is the correct turn.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 29 July, 2018, 06:11:56 pm
peering at a screen rather the road all the time

This doesn’t describe my experience... which probably explains why I sometimes overshoot turns and have to double back when I notice a few hundred metres later - a problem that could be avoided but I hate devices beeping at me so I usually ride with the sound turned off.

If you’re using a device that supports proper turn by turn instructions, you still need to be looking at the screen to see the turn alerts, and/or have sound switched on to alert you (some people cite lack of sound as one of the shortcomings of the Karoo but I would consider it a blessing).
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: grams on 29 July, 2018, 07:31:28 pm
Even without any alerts, you only ever need to glance at it at junctions. And if it can show a decent distance ahead you can get an idea where the next actual turn will be and can ignore it until then.]]

Although I often try to ride by my own senses (which is a fancy way of saying looking at signs or following others) and only glance at it occasionally to see if I'm on route or not.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 30 July, 2018, 09:13:40 am
I wonder if this preference for line on a screen vs turn by turn instructions reflects people who, before using GPS, were happiest following a map vs following a route sheet, respectively.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: L CC on 30 July, 2018, 11:12:25 am
A lot of the time when I'm navigating I can't see the road, there's a 6 foot bloke in the way.
It's very useful for me to be able to say 'we're on this road for 10km' or 'left in about 800m'.

Does no one else do this?

(https://static.garmincdn.com/en/products/010-02083-20/v/cf-lg-b284657d-22f3-4d00-9cd5-54f08f6d42ac.jpg)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 30 July, 2018, 11:45:51 am
I wonder if this preference for line on a screen vs turn by turn instructions reflects people who, before using GPS, were happiest following a map vs following a route sheet, respectively.

Not me.  My analogue preference was strongly for maps, but I like turn-by-turn instructions if I'm using a GPS receiver that can manage them - the advantage is that it gets your attention when the cycling autopilot has kicked in.  Of course, I'm happy to use a GPS as a waterproof, windproof, backlit, self-scrolling map when necessary.

(Actually, my GPS preferences change depending on what I'm doing.  I'm more likely to prefer auto-routing in urban areas where I can make mistakes and it'll sort it out.  I'm more likely to want to use it as a map when walking or mountain biking.  Typical audax-style riding is somewhere in the middle.)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 30 July, 2018, 11:47:07 am
It's very useful for me to be able to say 'we're on this road for 10km' or 'left in about 800m'.

Do you also do "turn round, when possible"
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 30 July, 2018, 11:56:25 am
It's very useful for me to be able to say 'we're on this road for 10km' or 'left in about 800m'.

Do you also do "turn round, when possible"
And "Unexpected item in the cycling area."
Sorry, wrong thread!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 30 July, 2018, 12:00:30 pm
I wonder if this preference for line on a screen vs turn by turn instructions reflects people who, before using GPS, were happiest following a map vs following a route sheet, respectively.

No, it's a simple consequence of the process that Kim described upthread, of users hi-jacking the track-back feature and turning it into the primary method of navigation.  If navigating by following a Track you trace along the wiggly line supplied. 

... abusing the re-trace-a-recorded-track capability has become co-opted as the most practical (or at least user-friendly) way of getting a Garmin to stick to a planned, erm, [avoids ambiguous terminology] bike ride.
To the point where the current generation of Garmin users think that Tracks are synonymous with GPX files, and have little if any knowledge of Routes or even Waypoints.  A GPX file with a single Track in it has become a de-facto standard for sharing planned bike rides.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 30 July, 2018, 12:11:10 pm
I was thinking of users' individual preferences and how they vary – from person to person, rather than "preference" in the mass sense of "trend".
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 30 July, 2018, 12:36:12 pm
the current generation of Garmin users think that Tracks are synonymous with GPX files, and have little if any knowledge of Routes or even Waypoints

This is me. I've been a GPS user for less than five years and have only become aware of Waypoints in the past year, and aware of the distinctions between GPX Routes and GPX Tracks even more recently. I'm still not really clear what the TCX format is and how it differs from GPX, but I don't much care either since RWGPS tells me that GPX Tracks are the best format to export for my Edge 510 so I don't really need to know about TCX (something to do with turn instructions, which the Edge 510 doesn't support anyway).

To further confuse matters, when I first started with GPS, I used Garmin Connect's planner to create "Courses". I guess these are closer to GPX Tracks than anything else but again, I don't really care. The distinctions only matter for practical purposes and as long as I know which format works best on my device, it doesn't matter to me what it's called. The terminology may be confusing, but I avoid that confusion by treating the names as token signifiers rather than meaningful words.

Lately, I've actually started to use printed routesheets again as my main navigational aid, since I like the sense of narrative they give to a ride. The GPS is now mostly there as back-up to confirm that I'm on the right path, and to record my ride for posterity/Strava bragging rights. If I had a device that supported proper turn-by-turn instructions, I suppose it would perform the same function as a printed routesheet, but the automatically generated cues lack the personal touch and idiosyncracies of an authored routesheet which are part of the charm of audaxing.

I've never used maps for navigation on bike rides. I did some orienteering in my youth, which was fun, but that's a very different kind of activity.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: grams on 30 July, 2018, 01:13:07 pm
A lot of the time when I'm navigating I can't see the road, there's a 6 foot bloke in the way.
It's very useful for me to be able to say 'we're on this road for 10km' or 'left in about 800m'.

But you can do that by having a squiz at the routetrack ahead on your device. With the advantage that you can see what the turn looks like, and where it is in relation to other landmarks (e.g. "left in the middle of the next village" or "sharp right just after the next left bend)

(it helps if you have a device that lets you do this easily, of course)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 31 July, 2018, 12:15:05 am
See my post at 1:11pm of actual etrex screen shots. You will not be able to tell the difference as the thousands of extra track points do nothing in terms of the track you see on your GPS.

Except you had reduced it down to 10000. Which is probably plenty. However. The suggestion from those on here is that no more than 1 point per km is plenty, meaning 1670 points in total for said RatN route. Which is still going to be over 1400 more than an etrex allows for a route. Please repeat your experiment with 1670 points.

Tracks and Routes are part of the GPX interchange standard and are nothing to do with Garmin.  And within that standard it is true, there is bugger-all difference between the two things, they each share the same set of possible attributes.  So on this basis, when an online Planner offers a choice between Track and Route, very often it is in fact offering the same file with just the 'trk' and 'rte' tagging substituted as appropriate.  So a 7165-point Track file (OK in most modern Garmins and other GPS) becomes a 7165-point Route file (broken in any GPS I know of).
Given that Phil W has just recently demonstrated how possible it is to do the job right (that is, intelligently downsampling as required) - then it's unfortunate the Planners fail to do likewise.

The whole thing with route vs track is just plain crazy. As with many standards, there is brain damage in there that people accept without question. I am questioning it.

Let's face it. You wouldn't ask someone for the track to the pub, but you would ask for the route to the pub, thus IMHO, it is entirely reasonable to expect that a route is what you follow to get to somewhere. And a track is what you have created in the process. Thus the limitation on a route being only 250 points on a Garmin is annoying, if you are someone who is of the mistaken belief that when you want to follow a route, you upload a route to your device, rather than uploading a track.

I wonder if this preference for line on a screen vs turn by turn instructions reflects people who, before using GPS, were happiest following a map vs following a route sheet, respectively.

Not me.  My analogue preference was strongly for maps, but I like turn-by-turn instructions if I'm using a GPS receiver that can manage them - the advantage is that it gets your attention when the cycling autopilot has kicked in.  Of course, I'm happy to use a GPS as a waterproof, windproof, backlit, self-scrolling map when necessary.

I treat my gps unit as a line on a map that I don't have to refold all the time. Turn by turn instructions annoy me a lot of the time, on todays ride it would often come up with "turn right in 180m" but I could see by the line that I am actually going left. Only the instructions in full are "turn right in 180m, then turn left in 5m" when in reality it's just hang a left at the pub. Even with turn by turn, and some many thousands of way points on todays route, I still flew past a couple of turnings because I was going quick, or on one case, I turned left not quite far enough (yay for a 7 way cross roads!).

If I wasn't using a GPS, I'd use a map with a line drawn on it. The idea of trying to read and decode a route sheet as I ride is just crazy to me. I'm sure some people enjoy it and prefer it, but it's not for me. Perhaps it's my dyslexia not helping, trying to read text, and understand what it's saying, while it's bouncing about (bloody Pavé), is way too much work. I'll follow the line on my screen.

Quote

(Actually, my GPS preferences change depending on what I'm doing.  I'm more likely to prefer auto-routing in urban areas where I can make mistakes and it'll sort it out.  I'm more likely to want to use it as a map when walking or mountain biking.  Typical audax-style riding is somewhere in the middle.)

I just want a line on a map. If I need to re-route, I'm gonna do that based on the map. I had that today in Antwerp due to construction work. I could see the road map, I could see the line on the map, I could then navigate the roads about 200m east, and meet up 1km up the route.

Depends on whether you consider burning 20-25% of a battery's energy for no purpose a good thing to be doing. You do not need overall average for an audax.

You might not, but I rather do like it. I know that if my average is above 15kph, I am OK. Saves me doing sleep deprived maths. Not everyone uses a GPS device the way you do. (infact this thread is making it apparent that noone uses a gps the way I do...). If I am stopping in a hotel then I have free power, if I am stopping elsewhere, I have a 98Wh battery pack that I can use to top up the tiny battery in my wahoo. The eletrons are as next to free as it's possible to get. It also avoids any bugs that arise in the saving and resuming of a track in the device.

You are still confusing routes and tracks. With routes, you need much fewer points. And in a route it is unhelpful if you have too many points.
If following a route, I want the GPS to display the "Distance to next". ie this should be the next place I have to turn off. If it says 1 km to the next point, it means I don't have to think about navigation until then, just keep following the road I am on. So it is pointless and confusing to have loads of extra points in between junctions, it just means you get the GPS beeping needlessly.

I am confusing routes and tracks, under the mistaken belief that when I want to follow a route, that I would load a route. I apologise for being so naive about this.


I don't need to see a line following the road, even roughly. On a plotted ride the line is often not even visible on my screen though I can reassure myself that I am heading towards the next point by watching the "distance to" steadily decrease* and if especially nervous zoom out to see the line still there. As you say it is good to relax, ride the damn bike, enjoy the scenery, not peer at an algorithm all the time. Sometimes, so obvious is the road I am supposed to follow that the next point I have numbered may be 5 or even 8 km away. the geek IMHO should just relax and ride their bike more.

You don't. I do. Infact on my wahoo, if I deviate too far from the line of the route, then it beeps to say I am off route. Thus if the line of the route I am following doesn't match the road close enough, it beeps like mad. Thus you don't just need a point at each end of a non-straight road, but also enough points to match the curve.

As for your last sentence of this paragraph. Since Friday I have done over 425km. Since January 1st, I have done over 6250km. I have riden in Germany, France, Belgium, & the Netherlands. I have done Paris-Roubaix sportiv, 300km audaxes, 200km audaxes, diy audaxes, and even entered an ultra endurance bike race. If we set the counter as 26th of December rather than 1st of January, we can increase the country count to include Luxembourg and Switzerland. Including crossing the Ardennes in the depths of winter with ice and snow on the ground using spiked tyres. On Friday I rode through the night during a lunar eclipse, through the storm, into a headwind, 246km to Geraadsbergen to watch the TCR start. Today I rode 120km back to the Netherlands (then train home).

I want to ride my bike more, I don't want to spend my life downsampling gpx files and fettling them to make them work due to some programmer at garmin being too inept to understand how to program properly. Hence I use a Wahoo, and my etrex 10 sits on the shelf.

Quote
* sometimes, as when riding up and down inlets on a coastal road, the "distance to" may even increase for short periods, but since there is a sentient human being riding the bike there is no need for it to worry. Hell, you can read the landscape and let the Garmin get on with it.

edit - just checked a stored detailed GPX point to point of mine - from Peterborough (with a lot of twiddling getting out of town) to a London tube station - 169 points. Have ridden it. Despite my 4 pints en route, the Garmin's navigation was faultless.

Your garmin does navigation for you more than just drawing a line on a map?


Not only is it 'enough' to simply mark turns (generally) - but with direct routes less is more - any extra points between the turns simply cloud the issue and make the navigation less effective.

How does making the line closer match the actual road make navigation less effective? After all, my GPS is just giving me a line on a screen with a you are here dot. I follow that line, and turn accordingly.

Quote
Regarding over-long co-ordinates - I have seen GPX files with 24 decimal points of 'precision' ... sub-molecular levels?  While accepting QGeek's point about these not impacting processing, they do go some way towards bloating file sizes.

Regarding the routes/tracks confusion and semantics - this RWGPS page linked on anther thread is a perfect example of my point:
https://ridewithgps.com/help/export-routes-to-garmin-device (https://ridewithgps.com/help/export-routes-to-garmin-device)
their continued use of the word 'route' - while semantically correct for what they are trying to say, is extremely confusing when 90% of the time the end product they are directing you toward is a Track.  BikeHike are equally guilty of this.

File sizes due to people not understanding IEE floating point are going to happen until such time as programmers wake up and are taught how to program properly. But ultimately, sure it makes it a few seconds slower to load the file into the memory to navigate, it doesn't increase the footprint in memory one loaded as it's all stored as a 32 bit number. 0.0 and 180.000000000000000009 take up the same amount of memory on the device.

The symantics of routes vs tracks is a bloody mess and I can't be the only idiot out there that falls fowl of it.

With regard to all those mega mega points forming a coloured road-following line on the gps map, don't folk find it tiring/find themselves peering at a screen rather the road all the time? Have never understood the point/attraction. As above I prefer minimal points, info on the distance to the next turn, and the turn marked.

Distance as the crow flies, or distance as the road actually goes? Having it say that the distance to the next turn is 6.4km away, when in reality the road is 10km with a lovely 180 degree arc.

J

Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 31 July, 2018, 11:06:10 am
Let's face it. You wouldn't ask someone for the track to the pub, but you would ask for the route to the pub, thus IMHO, it is entirely reasonable to expect that a route is what you follow to get to somewhere. And a track is what you have created in the process. Thus the limitation on a route being only 250 points on a Garmin is annoying, if you are someone who is of the mistaken belief that when you want to follow a route, you upload a route to your device, rather than uploading a track.
Well, no, I wouldn't. I'd ask the way to the pub. Or simply "Where's the pub?" The terminology is silly, but thinking about it doesn't help. Tracks and routes but waypoints and coursepoints (not sure how they differ – let's not get into that too). A track is something you have created, but it is also something someone else has created that you can follow – as in tracking someone, or an animal. So it is possible to think of it in a way that makes sense. But as Citoyen said, it's jargon; there's no point trying to make sense of it linguistically, it's just a name. I'm curious as to what names they give these in Dutch? And I think I'll try to find out what words they use in Polish too.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 31 July, 2018, 11:08:45 am
This guy is talking about "ślad trasy", ie "the trace of a track" .
https://youtu.be/_GnB80N1S44

And in Garmin manuals they talk of trasa as something you can plan. But they also talk about creating a kurs on the device. Seems like they use trasa as a translation of track and kurs for route, but the latter is not a word in everyday use in Polish, while trasa can be used (in everyday speech) to refer to a journey already made or one intended for the future. So they've succeeded in translating the ambiguity!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 31 July, 2018, 11:31:51 am
The whole thing with route vs track is just plain crazy. As with many standards, there is brain damage in there that people accept without question. I am questioning it.
...
I am confusing routes and tracks, under the mistaken belief that when I want to follow a route, that I would load a route. I apologise for being so naive about this.
...
The symantics of routes vs tracks is a bloody mess and I can't be the only idiot out there that falls fowl of it.

You've acknowledged that the confusion is due to a mistaken belief and you've had the differences explained to you now, so there's no reason to continue to fall foul of it. It's not that others accept the confusing terminology without question, it's that they take a pragmatic approach and learn to deal with it (or take their custom elsewhere).

You've also had the historical reasons for the confusing terminology explained. It's nothing to do with "brain damage".

You're certainly living up to your username with all this tilting at windmills.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 31 July, 2018, 12:00:58 pm
Tracks and routes but waypoints and coursepoints (not sure how they differ – let's not get into that too).

Oooh lets. Waypoints are part of the GPX standard, Coursepoints (and Courses generally) are not and so cannot be contained in a GPX file. (In BikeHike, if you set some Coursepoints and then download the GPX file, they are just converted to Waypoints.)
Courses are a Garmin invention and the TCX file format was introduced to deal with them.  Because it's a proprietary format not all GPSs (not all Garmins even) can understand it.  OTOH many Garmins (modern Edges) can only understand Courses - but in this case they have the ability to import a 'standard' GPX and convert it to Course format internally.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Manotea on 31 July, 2018, 12:02:43 pm
A bit off topic but ref following a track on Etrex Vista and Edge systems...

On my Vista 30 I can select a Track to follow but I don't get 'on the road' turn prompts as I would for a route.

Is that a limitation of the maps I'm using or the Garmin?

Do Edge series devices give 'turn by turn' prompts for tracks?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: cygnet on 31 July, 2018, 12:16:28 pm
Do Edge series devices give 'turn by turn' prompts for tracks?

The older ones don't.

ff suggests the newer ones can.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: frankly frankie on 31 July, 2018, 12:17:00 pm
You generally only get turn instructions as a result of some computational effort by the GPS - in other words they are generated by the device.  This only  occurs with Routes and this is why there is a limit (of 250 routepoints).  A Track can have many more points and so the computing would go into overload.   'Better' hints can be generated if the map is also used, this occurs with autorouting and that is one reason why there is a lower limit (of 50 points) when doing this more intense task.

A Track GPX can include any amount of turn instructions (generated by the Planner, eg RWGPS), but the Etrex in common with most Garmins cannot use this information.  Some Edges can relay the turn instructions embedded in the file, not being an Edge user I'm not sure if it needs to be a TCX or GPX for this.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Manotea on 31 July, 2018, 01:14:14 pm
FWIW, I'm still using my old-skool belt n braces approach based on Mapsource and WinGDB, viz:

1) Generate track, filter to 10,000 trackpoints winthin Mapsource (Etrex limit). Give it a pithy name like 'Myroute'
2) Use WingDB to further filter, segment and convert the track to a set of routes. I find set filter max 50 points for 100km is about right. This generates Routes MyRoute#1, #2, '3, etc.). Use Option 21 Convert tracks to routes with Waypoints. This gives editable Waypoints...
3) Within Mapsource I'll change the standard "Waypoint" marker "." to a nice Map-Pin and mebbe edit the track to review placements.
4) Load track and routes (I set the track to Dark Green, Routes to Pink). Set track visible and activate routes as required.

This way I get a fixed track and "on the road" directions, plus make it easier to spot if the Garmin routing is taking me off-piste. The map-pins give good forward visibility of the track and make it easy to rejoin if I do wander off for any reason.

It also means I've spent some time looking at the route before hand...
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 31 July, 2018, 01:28:57 pm
TCX is a propriertary database format for Garmin Training Centre which came out circa 2007.

Luckily for you lot I still have original format course files sitting around on my PC. There were two file formats the TCX database format which hold multiple things such as courses, workouts, profile data, plus the purer CRS format which just held courses.

First the TCX format, here is an original one I created in 2011 / 2012 for the Edge 500.

You get the summary info including any laps you have setup

<TrainingCenterDatabase xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabase/v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabase/v2 http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabasev2.xsd">

  <Folders/>

  <Courses>
    <Course>
      <Name>Preston Circuit</Name>
      <Lap>
        <TotalTimeSeconds>16221.0000000</TotalTimeSeconds>
        <DistanceMeters>72650.0000000</DistanceMeters>
        <BeginPosition>
          <LatitudeDegrees>52.8475017</LatitudeDegrees>
          <LongitudeDegrees>0.6299989</LongitudeDegrees>
        </BeginPosition>
        <BeginAltitudeMeters>90.0000000</BeginAltitudeMeters>
        <EndPosition>
          <LatitudeDegrees>52.7197627</LatitudeDegrees>
          <LongitudeDegrees>-0.2283500</LongitudeDegrees>
        </EndPosition>
        <EndAltitudeMeters>114.0000000</EndAltitudeMeters>
        <Intensity>Active</Intensity>
      </Lap>

Then you get the info you would recognise as equivalent of a track in GPX files. But notice you have additional information about how far along the track you are, the distance element.

  <Trackpoint>
          <Time>2012-02-25T04:24:33Z</Time>
          <Position>
            <LatitudeDegrees>51.9562005</LatitudeDegrees>
            <LongitudeDegrees>0.4992400</LongitudeDegrees>
          </Position>
          <AltitudeMeters>82.0000000</AltitudeMeters>
          <DistanceMeters>760.8699951</DistanceMeters>
        </Trackpoint>
        <Trackpoint>
          <Time>2012-02-25T04:24:43Z</Time>
          <Position>
            <LatitudeDegrees>51.9560879</LatitudeDegrees>
            <LongitudeDegrees>0.4985699</LongitudeDegrees>
          </Position>
          <AltitudeMeters>75.0000000</AltitudeMeters>
          <DistanceMeters>808.5199585</DistanceMeters>
        </Trackpoint>

Now for prompts you needed coursepoints and these are the only trigger for an alert on the earlier edge units (205/305/500)

Coursepoints look like this in TCX format. Notice there is a point type, this dictated the icon shown on the screen, and there were about half a dozen point type icons available to use.  left, right, straight, water, food etc.

 <CoursePoint>
        <Name>Poppy's</Name>
        <Time>2012-02-25T05:17:56Z</Time>
        <Position>
          <LatitudeDegrees>51.9536768</LatitudeDegrees>
          <LongitudeDegrees>0.3436500</LongitudeDegrees>
        </Position>
        <AltitudeMeters>88.0000000</AltitudeMeters>
        <PointType>Food</PointType>
      </CoursePoint>
      <CoursePoint>
        <Name>Vill. Hall</Name>
        <Time>2012-02-25T07:12:52Z</Time>
        <Position>
          <LatitudeDegrees>51.9502719</LatitudeDegrees>
          <LongitudeDegrees>0.0352099</LongitudeDegrees>
        </Position>
        <AltitudeMeters>102.0000000</AltitudeMeters>
        <PointType>Food</PointType>
      </CoursePoint>


You notice there are times in the file.  These were used for the Garmin virtual partner you could set in courses to pace yourself against. They were either generated in Training Centre or would be based on the times from your previous workout.

Finally you get the application info at the end of the TCX database.

<Author xsi:type="Application_t">
    <Name>Garmin Training Center(r)</Name>
    <Build>
      <Version>
        <VersionMajor>3</VersionMajor>
        <VersionMinor>6</VersionMinor>
        <BuildMajor>5</BuildMajor>
        <BuildMinor>0</BuildMinor>
      </Version>
      <Type>Release</Type>
      <Time>Aug 17 2011, 11:13:24</Time>
      <Builder>sqa</Builder>
    </Build>
    <LangID>EN</LangID>
    <PartNumber>006-A0119-00</PartNumber>
  </Author>

</TrainingCenterDatabase>

You could build courses from scatch in Training Centre or you could elect to base them on a previous "workout".  Workouts are also saved in the TCX. Workouts were not simply tracklogs but also contained summary information, lap information, heart rate, cadence and various other bits of data from a rider's profile as well.

With the Edge 500 and later units the internal format was changed to FIT another Garmin format.  This latter format is binary but you can still find many of the structures and ideas from tcx carried over into it.  This is why when later Garmins crash it can sometimes claim the distance is there but there is no tracklog. The summary record has been retained but the detail records were dumped from memory and not saved.

You can still dump tcx, crs files onto Garmin 500's and it will convert them to fit format for use. Not sure about later units as the Edge 500 was the last Edge I ever used due to them crashing on long rides.


Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Samuel D on 31 July, 2018, 02:01:31 pm
(Desperately clicks “unnotify”.)
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 31 July, 2018, 03:25:35 pm
Let's face it. You wouldn't ask someone for the track to the pub,

I would not ask for directions to the pub that involved going from lamp post to lamp post like a drunk, but that is what you are asking for.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 31 July, 2018, 05:05:16 pm
Let's face it. You wouldn't ask someone for the track to the pub,

I would not ask for directions to the pub that involved going from lamp post to lamp post like a drunk, but that is what you are asking for.
So we need a different format for outward and homeward journeys.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 31 July, 2018, 05:17:49 pm
Let's face it. You wouldn't ask someone for the track to the pub,

I would not ask for directions to the pub that involved going from lamp post to lamp post like a drunk, but that is what you are asking for.
So we need a different format for outward and homeward journeys.

If the dtunk can't remember the way home they just lay down and sleep ;D
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 31 July, 2018, 05:25:30 pm
In a bus stop audax hotel.  :D
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 31 July, 2018, 05:38:02 pm
Sometimes I think I would quite like a purple line on the road to follow home from the pub.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Phil W on 31 July, 2018, 05:42:11 pm
Sometimes I think I would quite like a purple line on the road to follow home from the pub.

Well they do put that white line down some roads or is that something different?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: citoyen on 31 July, 2018, 05:43:42 pm
Sometimes I think I would quite like a purple line on the road to follow home from the pub.

Well they do put that white line down some roads or is that something different!

I tried that once and ended up getting a free taxi ride from a nice man in a smart uniform. Not to my home though.
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Kim on 31 July, 2018, 06:35:51 pm
So we need a different format for outward and homeward journeys.

That's how Garmin got us into this mess in the first place!
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 31 July, 2018, 06:41:17 pm
So we need a different format for outward and homeward journeys.

That's how Garmin got us into this mess in the first place!
You mean they designed all this during a boozy lunch?
Title: Re: Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 31 July, 2018, 06:42:55 pm
You mean they designed all this during a boozy lunch?

That would explain so much...

J