Routes Prepared in MyRouteApp - Used with XT

[jfheath]

Sometimes it happens like that. Difficult to explain - but it could be due to memory issues, depending on what you have been doing before.

Programs can have 'memory leaks' which arise when a programmer allocates some memory for a task and then frees it up again when the task is completed. Sometimes they forget to free it up, sometimes the end is reached before the task is completed and the programmer didn't account for that eventuality - so the memory never gets released.
Later down the line the computer (or XT) doesn't have enough memory to carry out a particular job and it fails.

I'm not saying that this is the cause - but a problem like this can result in odd behaviour, and often shutting it down fully and restarting clears out the problems.

Another glitch is due to finger problem. Pressing the wrong button. And if you have ever had your XT turned on in your pocket, you will see what I mean - the XT gets very warm, the touch sensitive screen becomes super sensitive and start registering finger presses before your finger gets anywhere near it. A recipe for all sorts of odd behaviour.

[colirv]

Hrmmm...ok...I am not crazy but it seems to be working now. I could not find the original one that failed as i tried so many things to make it work. I created two new ones and they both work using the MRA and Drive app on the phone.

Phew! I'm late joining the thread, but I have no trouble creating a route on MRA on my tablet and using Drive to send it to my XT.

[mad-dawg]

No need to apologise!

I have never compared, so I don't know what it does if auto recalc is turned off.

But with it turned on, the route itself doesn't re-calculate at all. It does calculate a new bit of route to get you to the closest point on the route if you leave the plotted magenta line.

With recalc turned off, I suspect that it will do the same. I might be wrong, it would need to be tested, but the reason that I think this is that with autorecalc turned off, the XT will still calculate a new section of route in the following circumstances:

i) Skip is pressed
ii) You select Via point from the list when you start a route after pressing Go!
iii) You select Closest Entry point in the same situation

You need to get out and test this to see for yourself, to observe for yourself what it does. Give it a good chance to get it right though. Plot a route - that includes a kink as a trip track, and instead take a route that straight lines the kink. It works best if there are no other roads joining the two routes.

Finally got out to test this and it worked fine.
I exported a MRA pre planned track and poi 1.1 from my phone to Drive and to the XT.
Opened the track and set it to display on map.
Converted track to a trip and opened trip app and selected the route, the XT converted it to a trip and off we went.
I tried to fox the XT 3 times on a route from Harrogate to Malton by using a road that was not planned, recalculation was already set to on, the XT tried demanding a Uturn 3 or 4 times then accepted I knew better and showed a route to get me back on the planned route.
On the way back I reversed the route, finish to start, and did a detour to Ripon from Boroughbridge rather than the planned route, once again the XT wanted Uturns and then planned a route to liknk up with the track trip route.
Thank you John and Fatfeet, I now think I understand the rules of the game a bit better
I am off to Corsica in September so will give it a full on live test and I will report back any issues.
Cheers
Tony

[MartyLeeds]

You are probably asking too much of it - possibly due to the different way that routes and tracks are used in MRA and in Explore.
There's something about this here, but its been a while since I wrote this, and MRA, Explore and the XT have all had software updates since then.

app.php/ZXT-P61

and the following pages. The whole section is related to using Explore.

Try emailing the route and track from MRA to your phone and let Drive send them to your XT. This is no more of a chore than exporting it for import into Explore. Then try converting the track to a trip on the XT - just to see if that works for you. I find it more reliable to use MRA to create a gpx file and email it using my own email client. I find the MRA email options to be very slow for anything but the first email.

Since the MRA update and the new XT update I find the route names are been changed to shared from iPhone and then the date, anyone else seeing this? Or did a setting change and I missed it?

[jfheath]

When was the last MRA Update ?

[MartyLeeds]

When was the last MRA Update ?

Hmm maybe a week ago now version 3.1.3 119.

[jfheath]

I'll take another look - I haven't used it for a couple of weeks. But 'shared from'... date time' was something that I noted in my document on here when transferring routes between Zumos by BT. That is for the filenames - don't think I have seen anything different for the route names.

Also, each gpx file may contain a track and a route (and pois). Actually they can contain many tracks and routes, but I have never tried to transfer more than one with MRA.

[mad-dawg]

Thanks for the report FF
I will give it a test, if I can ever find a front tyre for the bike
The big test will be in September in Germany, they do like to close a motorway and give you no diversion to the next open junction.

I am back in Blighty and thought I would update you lovely people with my experiences.

Apart from the first day route from Rotterdam to Trier which I planned at home and sent to the XT, all the other days were planned the evening before in MRA on an Ipad.

Each route was sent as 1.1 track/POI, and recalculate was on and the route in MRA had a start and end point with shaping points as required to follow the planned route.

Most days this worked really well, if I went off route I got the U turn thing and then the XT gave up and plotted a route to get back on the original.

Except! on one day travelling from Barcelonnette to Aix-les Bains it acted the fool. When I got within about 30K of Aix it wanted to follow the planned route on the Peage, I being a Yorkshireman decided to follow the signed non peage route to Aix les Bains.
The XT repeatedly demanded U turns for the rest of the journey, trying to force me back to the motorway, even when I got to the town and pulled in a carpark to check google maps to see where I was in relation to my hotel. (About 500m away)

At this point I had travelled 30K north with the XT saying that I should turn round and travel 30K south to join the motorway and then travel about 40K north to Aix les Bains. There were no shaping/via points forcing this and I just muted the voice instructions.

I checked the track in Basecamp yesterday and it shows the planned route and the actual track of the diversion I took, I have no idea why it was sending me on a 70K diversion when the end point was 500m away.

Anyway, thank you John for your help, I now have a process that works most of the time.

[jfheath]

Hi @mad-dawg , welcome back. Hope you had a good trip. The last time we were able to tour in Europe was in 2014, when we rode down through France to do parts of the Tours des Grandes Alpes and Route Napolean. A really sepctacular 2 weeks. The second day in France took us to Annecy - about 20 miles north of Aix-les-Bains, and for us the following day, the start of the alipne passes. I thought that we had actually been through it - but looking at my satnav logs we didn't. It must have been the town that was on all of the signs.

Anyway - I am interested in your observations. I wonder if you would mind sending me your route and your track (if you have them) for that day.

The reason I am interested is that I have seen this many times before. Once it gets into a cycle of taking you back - it can never recover. The reason seems to be that it is taking you back to the point of last instruction that it gave you - that being the place where you left the route. Not the original route, but the one that it modified to get you back.

I lodged this issue with Tech Support a good while back, and gave them detailed illustrations, but we have had v6.4 and 6.5 since then and nothing has changed. I mentioned it again a few weeks ago, because I have been able to prove to my satisfaction that every time it repeated the demand to go back, it stops recording the where 'you have been' track in the active logs. I got notice this week that this query has been escalated to a Product Support case.

I've created a new section in Everything you need to know regarding MRA exorts, that you may have missed. app.php/ZXT-P72

V1.1 keeps all of the route points, via and shaping, and allows the XT to claculate a route when it is loaded.

I've noticed that when the XT recalculates the route, it sometimes produces a different route from the one that it calculated when it was first loaded (if shaping points don't pin it down too tightly).

I've also just discovered that if you have a route with a start and end and a middle Via that if you change the middle Via to a Shaping, then the route may calculate differently. Put the shaping back to a via, it goes back to what it was. (Just a couple of tests to create this hypothesis).

BUT - If I put a shaping point immediately after the start and another immedialtely before the end - so that they have no obvious effect on the route, and then switch the middle Via to a Shaping - or Shaping to Via - the route calculated remains the same.

Now this is very odd behaviour, and it suggests a difference between using Vias and Using Shaping points.

I have a route that I use where I know this repeated - perform a U turn continues until I am only a couple of miles to the next Via Point on the route. Until then, it will be routing me back 28 miles to reach the point that is just 2 miles ahead. I know that this particular route (that I evidenced for Garmin Support) had a Via point at each end of this section. I'm wondering now if adding shaping points close to those Vias will make a difference in behaviour.

I performed a test in the car a few weeks ago, and deliberately went off route. This behaved properly. But every single route point was a shaping point.

I'm suspicious of the gpxx subclass data in the gpx file for the Via Points. If you strip out all of that (MRA doesn't include any of it in V1.1) then it solves some other problems - like the fact that the XT renames the route points. It doesn't do it if you send the route from MRA. It doesn't do it if you send the route as a direct route from Basecamp. It doesn't do it if you manually replace the subclass info with the default '000 ... 000FFF ... FFF' value.

This has become a puzzle that I want to solve, rather than something I need to do. I'm happy that I can make a route behave as I want, and as a fallback position, I have the track visible underneath the route.

[mad-dawg]

Hi John
Sent the info you requested, let me know if you want anything more.
The process of sending the track and POI from MRA to the XT and getting it to plan a route from the track worked exceptionally well, that and the track being visible if the route gets recalculated was a great help.

It did go a bit askew in Monaco, I wanted to see how much of the circuit I could ride round so planned a track-trip, what I didnt factor in was that many of the roads are actually tunnels so there is not a lot to see! Every so often I would pop out into sunshine and the XT tried to keep me on the straight and narrow but the circuit is one way in sections and some roads were closed. At one point I felt like a meerkat, diving down tunnels and popping up somewhere else with the XT trying to send me down closed roads or panicking because it thought I was driving the wrong way down a one way street.

After an hour of this I gave up and jumped on the motorway (another tunnel!) to escape.

The issue with U turns does not happen on every occasion, for example going from Switzerland to Como in Italy, I had planned to ride down the West side of the lake but, I met up with 2 German guys going to Mandello del Lario for the Guzzi celebrations so ended up riding down the East side of lake Como. the XT asked me to U turn a couple or three times then it just recalculated a route to Como. I will have a look at the track log and see if the breaks in recording are there and let you know.

Anyway thank you again for your help, every day is a school day.