Cheapest way to viewing gpx routes on tour without using your phone?

[L CC]

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?

[Kim]

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.)

[frankly frankie]

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"

[Cudzoziemiec]

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!

[frankly frankie]

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.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I was thinking of users' individual preferences and how they vary – from person to person, rather than "preference" in the mass sense of "trend".

[citoyen]

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.

[grams]

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)

[quixoticgeek]

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.

(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.

* 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.

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
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

[Cudzoziemiec]

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.

[Cudzoziemiec]

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!

[citoyen]

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.

[frankly frankie]

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.

[Manotea]

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?

[cygnet]

Do Edge series devices give 'turn by turn' prompts for tracks?

The older ones don't.

ff suggests the newer ones can.

[frankly frankie]

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.

[Manotea]

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...

[Phil W]

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.

[Samuel D]

(Desperately clicks “unnotify”.)

[Phil W]

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.

[Cudzoziemiec]

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.

[Phil W]

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

[Cudzoziemiec]

In a bus stop audax hotel. 

[citoyen]

Sometimes I think I would quite like a purple line on the road to follow home from the pub.

[Phil W]

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?