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Re: [St] New GPS
- Subject: Re: [St] New GPS
- From: Gavin Lawrie <gavin.lawrie@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:34:54 +0100
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On 26 Jun 2008, at 00:15, Peter Kroeker wrote:
I've also been considering a GPS but I've been reluctant so far
since I am not directionally challenged so I'm not sure how much
benefit I'd get. I only do one or two big tours a year where I
might even think of getting lost.
One useful side-effect of the Zumo is it keeps a log of the route you
actually take, which you can then upload into various mapping apps
(e.g. Garmin's own, Google Earth, RouteBuddy and others). I've just
got back from a scoot around Europe (London, Toulouse, Milan, Italian
Alps, French Alps, London - plus two all-day business meetings, all
within 7 days...) - and I've had fun comparing the route I ended up
taking with that which I planned... seems to include a few more passes
than I had intended to do... :)
I do have a question for experienced GPSers. Can you select a route
then download it? When I plan a tour, I do all sorts of research
into what route I want to take then follow the map there. I suppose
I could enter a bunch of waypoints along the route to force the unit
to use the roads I want but that seems a little silly.
Yes. How well this works depends a bit on either your patience or the
cleverness of your mapping software. The tricky bit is the Zumo (and
all Garmins I believe) treats routes as a series of way-points only.
You can't enter an actual route - just lots of starts / finishes. You
rely on the Zumo to fill in the gaps - and it doesn't necessarily pick
the route you want it to. e.g. in the Italian Alps the interesting
mountain roads were in the Zumo OK (it has very detailed maps built
in!), but when you put in a start / finish, the Zumo tried very hard
to avoid the mountain roads... ended up having to put in lots of
obscure way-points to force the device to stay in mountains. This was
very tedious on the Zumo itself. Would have been much easier on a
computer and then downloading. And fortunately this is just what the
various computer apps let you do.
The software that comes with the Zumo is OK but only works on Windows
computers. If you use Macs Garmin have some software in development,
but it is still a pretty rough beta (search for Bobcat on the Garmin
pages) though I guess it will be good eventually. Until then an app
called Route Buddy works well - but outside USA is frighteningly
expensive (due to need to buy maps for each country in Europe
separately - vs. one cost for all of North America...). You can also
use Google Earth - but I've not yet worked out how to get it play
nicely when uploading stuff. But none have anything nearly as clever
as the 'blue line' drag to re-route feature of Google Maps. I'm
guessing that an expert could save a blue-line route and then somehow
turn it into a route. Would be cool to know... anyone? Anyway - the
issue of a route being lots of mini-routes between points still
applies - so you need either to get your software to put in lots of
way-points or do it manually.
HTH.
In passing - does anyone else with a Zumo know what the 'Detour'
button is for? Looks / sounds good. But can't work out what it
does... I guess I should read the manual ...
Regards
Gavin Lawrie
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