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Intro to BaseCamp

Downloaded last night after updating everything. Time to play with base camp. For those that have the Zumo 665, have you received an upgrade XM tuner or can not unlock map error at boot up?

Mine worked fine. It just prompted me to recalculate my custom routes that were done on different map versions. I let it but it takes forever. Inconvenient timing in my case, so I would recommend just wiping everything out of your gps after saving it in base camp and let your computer do the heavy calculating after doing the map update then load the routes or tracks you want back onto the gps.
 
That looks a lot easier than what I've been doing, too. Thanks, Jon!
 
I found this ...

that 'spains how to edit a route with drag and drop easier that I had been doing.


One thing to keep in mind is that those additional waypoints may not have an alert linked to them so that your GPS unit won't display "X miles to turn" or something similar. In the long haul, any complex route will need to be edited in the route window.

Route1_zps72711bbf.jpg
 
Can I toggle which waypoint will alert and which won't? That would be nice.

It is annoying when I see "xx miles" displayed, only to find that it was miles to where I dropped a waypoint while editing a route, rather than to the next turn. Or, if I drop the waypoint at the turn I get announcements for both the turn and the waypoint back to back.

I appreciate this thread motivating me to dive deeper into BaseCamp.
 
Right click on waypoint and choose "Don't Alert On Arrival" looks to be it. Might be wrong though, need to test.
 
And thanks for posting about that Meridian.

I got me a route all planned out, copied by hand from google so I can learn basecamp. Learning some stuff, getting more comfortable.

I'd attribute this to using photoshop. When you sit down to photoshop, nothing makes a lick of sense. Once you learn how to use it though, nothing else seems to make sense but the way photoshop does it. I'd imagine that over time it could be this way with basecamp but you have to get over that initial learning curve.
 
Ok, so one more thing.

Does anyone know of a way to clean up the internal memory from basecamp or some other app? I've tried all manner of things and the old data stays in there.

I did find a doc that if you delete the files in the GPX folder, it'll clear out that data, which it did. Routes you've already imported and favorites remain on the device, but stuff to be imported is cleaned out.

I had a route that I'd created some time in the past that would never import because it had too many via points. I don't recall how it was created but Basecamp would open it up and it's like an 800 mile trip with a point every .01 miles. Gads, no wonder it wouldn't import. But I couldn't get rid of it either. Data on my memory card in the device can be deleted from Basecamp but not from the Internal Storage.

I ended up deleting all the data in my GPX folder and that fixed it but I wonder what I can do in the future.

Oh yea, now that the stupid route is deleted, it searches MUCH faster for custom routes to import. :D
 
Right click on waypoint and choose "Don't Alert On Arrival" looks to be it. Might be wrong though, need to test.

That's it and glad it helped. It's important when converting tracks into a route because there doesn't seem to be any reason to how Basecamp chooses when to alert. Having an alert come on when you don't need to turn is almost as bad as having the GPS suddenly prompt to recalculate because a turned was missed due to no alert.
 
I was making routes in BaseCamp on the OSM map and it has a few bugs. When selecting two points it will sometimes error out and not follow the road. Went to Garmin map and it works fine.

QUOTE]

I experienced the same issue. routing using the OSM maps was all wrong, but using the Garmin maps it was OK. Not sure what that's about.
 
Ok, so the bike is running, it was time to test out the GPS with Basecamp. I had plotted me out a nice little hour or two route for testing both the GPS and the bike.

I noticed when I upload a route, it uploads the waypoints to the GPS, which makes sense. I can see them in favorites. I imported the route and it shows up under routes. All is well, right?

Well, when I pulled up the route and said to run it, all it did was tell me to go to my endpoint. Zoom out on the map and I see no route but my waypoints all over the place. The route shows clearly on basecamp so I'm not sure what went wrong here.

I ended up just pulling up the waypoints one by one and routing to them in the GPS. This was less than desirable because it routed me via the straightest roads and skipped my fun roads.

I must be missing something here or there's some type of disconnect. I sure am glad this happened on a test route and not on a trip!
 
Which Map did you use to build the route on? (Garmin NA, Topo, OSM, etc.)

When you uploaded to the device is it possible that you uploaded only waypoints instead of the route itself? I seem to remember seeing an option to chose which data you want to upload and these being separate choices. (though, like you said, the waypoints do upload with the route info. IIRC)

I'll usually select the route in the left pane of BaseCamp (or MapSource), or, select the route on the map so it is highlighted before uploading.
 
Routes get recalculated on each device and the settings on the device, along with the maps will dictate how that route is shown. For example, a Basecamp program with a TOPO100 and no avoidances applied to the profile will route differently than a GPS running Street Navigator 2009 and the standard motorcycle avoidances. (This is a real problem for our BMW club because every time someone shares a route every GPS recalcs it differently.) It's important that you have the same maps and the same settings on all devices.

Tracks won't have this problem, but not all GPS devices report tracks.

On our trip to Arizona I had loaded up a route to the Coke Ovens that went over roads that can't be "routed," in other words the map didn't recognize them as roads. When I turned on the route I had a simple arrow saying that my destination was "that way" and pointed to a mountain. Long story short, the route proved useless.

One other consideration, I did a route that crossed itself. When I reached that intersection the GPS decided that I wanted to go to the end point and directed me to turn in that direction than following the route as planned. Also if the end point and the start point are the same, the GPS can get confused.

You were spot on when you said this is like Photoshop. Doesn't make sense at first, but gets easier.
 
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Ok, so I went into the GPS and told it to recalculate that route and it shows up on the map now. At first I thought maybe I need to do an extra step here, but...

For grins though, I deleted all the data, cleared the route and re-uploaded it via basecamp. To upload, I right-click the route on the left side, and choose "Send To" and then choose my gps. I choose the GPS model, and don't specify which memory to load it to.

I then went into My Data and imported the route. And....it shows up on the map. Odd. Not sure what went wrong there the first time, but I'll look forward to testing again this weekend.

Oh, and I'm using the City Navigator North America NT 2014.3 map, same one loaded on the GPS. Also, it didn't route me along the twisty road because I guess I didn't use my little point that isn't a waypoint, that I'd placed on that road to force it to go that way. That makes sense.
 
Oh yea, and I'm using routes and not tracks, because my FJR only likes to be on "Routeable" roads. :D
 
:tab I gave up on auto routing. I create my route in Basecamp. If I come to a spot where the program won't route a particular road, I stop the route. Create a new route from the closest spot where it will route and continue the route. When I get it all laid out the way I want, I convert all the pieces to tracks. I then use the track tool to fill in any gaps between the route pieces, like over non routeable roads/trails. Then I take all the pieces and combine them into one track file. THAT is what I copy over to my GPS and use for navigation. All I need to see is the line on the map so I can tell if I am still near it or have gone off the reservation. I don't need it telling me when to turn, which way to turn, etc,... The only slight inconvenience is that I lose the "distance to next waypoint" or "Distance to destination". But really, even that is no big deal. I can usually let the GPS create a route on the fly from where I am to a point of interest, unless there are non routeable sections between me and the point of interest. I can even do this while the track is displayed on my map. Moreover, if I share it, other people can see exactly where the route is supposed to go so they can tweak their own routes as needed to match it for their maps, software, and GPS unit.
 
The only slight inconvenience is that I lose the "distance to next waypoint" or "Distance to destination".

It's funny how differently people can use the same tool. For me, when traveling, these are the most important pieces of information for me. I've usually gone over the route so many times that I've gotten it memorized. However, knowing how far I have to go till that next turn, especially in a well populated area with lots of turnoffs, that's key for me. Also, knowing how long I have to my destination can help me determine if I have time to stop and explore something that's caught my eye. :D
 
Which GPS unit are you using. If you turn on tracks on the Zumo you get all the tracks that are stored in the unit.

Montana 600. I can turn on only selected tracks.
 
It's funny how differently people can use the same tool. For me, when traveling, these are the most important pieces of information for me. I've usually gone over the route so many times that I've gotten it memorized. However, knowing how far I have to go till that next turn, especially in a well populated area with lots of turnoffs, that's key for me. Also, knowing how long I have to my destination can help me determine if I have time to stop and explore something that's caught my eye. :D

:tab I do all those things, I just don't always use the auto-routing features to do them. However, if I need to know how far to the next turn, estimated time to destination, etc,... I can do that on the fly on the unit. All of this is exceptionally handy when leading a group and trying to juggle different levels of rider skills, possibly changing a route if time becomes an issue, or knowing we have time to play around with more stops or side trips if time allows. It does also help a LOT to be very familiar with the route ahead of time. I spend a good bit of time going over planned routes, possible alternative routes, things to see/do along the way, places to cut short if needed, etc,...
 
So far I have been using nothing but tracks on my 650.
 
Everytime I start thinking it is finally time for me to ride with a GPS and then start researching, I peruse the recent threads here and get scared off again. Still seems like too much time is required due to overly complicated and user unfriendly software.

Are you guys making it sound harder than it really is? Could it be since I'm not familar with the terminlogy and steps it only just seems daunting to me?

_
 
Everytime I start thinking it is finally time for me to ride with a GPS and then start researching, I peruse the recent threads here and get scared off again. Still seems like too much time is required due to overly complicated and user unfriendly software.

Are you guys making it sound harder than it really is? Could it be since I'm not familar with the terminlogy and steps it only just seems daunting to me?

_

It can be much easier depending on what the rider is using and looking to do. A rider can use Google Earth to make street routes and it is very intuitive and easy to use. Then, using GPS Visualizer they can translate those into GPX tracks that their GPS can read. Some riders type in waypoints directly into the GPS and follow the directions.

Basecamp is hard to use because it does complex things with complex, multilayered data. Features that Garmin has included to ease things, like points of interest and route avoidances, can make it more complex and often impossible to use.

The nice thing about GPS is when you've taken a wrong turn past El Mirage, you can zoom out and see that there is a highway ahead, but frankly I can do that with a smart phone, free US topo maps and Alpine Quest.
 
Silverbullet, it really depends on what you want from the GPS. You really don't even need to use mapping software for the navigation either. You can do everything pretty easily from the GPS. There's also a lot of advantages to having one like looking up POI's. When you are out in west Texas and been fighting a headwind and your gas is running low sooner than you expected, it's nice to be able to sit at a crossroads and see in all four directions how close the closest gas is. Granted, it's not always 100% accurate, but it sure beats sitting there with no information.

One of my favorite features is the "Go Home" button. Run around, get yourself lost exploring, don't use the GPS all day long, just go down roads that look interesting. When you are done, pull up the GPS and hit "Go Home" and bam...you aren't lost and have a way home.

Of course, some of us like to obsess over routes and roads and turns and this and that. It CAN get very complicated very quickly, and when it gets complicated, it gets harder. There's LOTS of ways to get info into these things and sometimes options make it seem more complicated. I've done just fine without basecamp so far, but I'm interested in some of the options and it's another tool to learn.

The great thing is you have a HUGE resource in the folks here that can help you out if you get stuck. Lots of folks have TONS of experience with these things and can make it easy for ya. Get one, play with it, have fun, and if you don't like it, you can always sell it. :D
 
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