Zumo 346 stutters over bluetooth

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alan sh
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Zumo 346 stutters over bluetooth

Post by alan sh »

I have just acquired a Zumo 346 (same as the 396 but only half the maps, I am told). It all seems to work OK except...

I have it connected to a bluetooth module on my Autocom system (which is what I use for intercoms). When I hear instructions, there seems to be a bit of a stutter before it tells me where to go. So for example if it needs me to turn left in 200 yards, it will say "I - In 200 yards turn left" The I of "In" seems to be repeated.

It's not a big deal, but has anyone seen or heard of this before and is there a solution?

Alan
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Re: Zumo 346 stutters over bluetooth

Post by Gomer »

Welcome to the world of bluetooth audio. Oh how I wish it just had a audio outlet plug so I could just plug in my ear buds but no we have to go thru bluetooth. In short I get the same thing. It kind of misses the first instant of the message. Rather annoying but after a couple of days you kind of get tuded to it, like warts.
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alan sh
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Re: Zumo 346 stutters over bluetooth

Post by alan sh »

I think I am going to go back to my 660. I got the 346 very cheaply and thought it was a good idea as it has traffic (from my paired phone), but in all other respects, the 660 is just as good - or better.

Alan
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Re: Zumo 346 stutters over bluetooth

Post by jfheath »

I lodged a complaint about this with the XT. I did all sorts of tests with it and with the 595 that I have. I couldn't pin the fault down.

I have a smart phone, a Zumo - one of which is an XT. The XT requires a BT adapter to get speech, phone calls to the autocom.

There were two main suspects. One of which seemd to arise after I had connected to the Garmin Explore website, and always required a reset.

I never sorted out the music problem playing from smartphone tot he XT. That would keep cutting out. But I sorted the other problems.

It seems to be to do with the number of BT devices that I have. If I cleared everything out of every device that I had with me - ie the Zumo, the BT module and my smart phone, and I then established the connection away from home. It would work.

The problem seems to be when one of my devices had latched onto another device that it had previously paired with. It would periodically go and do something which affected the current connection. I guess it was getting a request to pair, and it was getting interrupted while it told the requesting device to go away, it was seeing someone else at the moment.

I've streamlined the process a bit now. Whenever I have finished with a pairing, I don't leave it up to BT to sort it out - I delete the pairing and if possible tell it to forget about it. That leaves it free to make a proper connection to just one single device.

So I pair XT to autocom BT module.
I pair XT to the smartphone.
And the smartphone is set to use data rather than wifi.

And it seems to work well - except I cannot get the Zumo to play music from spotify consistently. It pauses every few seconds. But thats OK - if I want music, I'll use the Zumos MP3 player.

Today, I discovered something really important. I found another way that doesn't work.
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