Zumo User Forums

I foolishly believed that I had actualyl figured out how to use Basecamp and my XT2, thanks in no small part to the help that I have gotten here. I have had several good rides. Yesterday, though, I proved just how disillusioned I am.
I am attaching a screen cap of the route and an excerpt from the points list.
I'm pretty sure that I know the "what" of my problem. I just don't understand the "why" or "how" to avoid it.
Looking at the ride, I chose not to follow the highway from Kanata to Carleton Place. I had the Zumo off. I entered hwy 15 just south of Beckwith, heading south. Looking at the point list now, I would have been somewhere around point 10989. The plan was to turn off 15 onto McPhearson road. The pic shows this as the very short jog east. I would then turn onto Rosedale heading south to Montague and continue the ride.
As soon as I entered 15, I stopped on the shoulder and turned on the Zumo. I opened the route and was given 3 choices to start. Two of them were clearly nonsense since they were almost back at my house. So, the only option was "closest entry point". I chose that. BIG MISTAKE! The Zumo started to take me south - as planned - but immediately started instucting me to take various left or right turns, presumably to turn me around. I ignored all of them. I turned onto McPhearson and it still would not give up trying to turn me around. I passed through Montague and it had not given up. Eventually, I gave up and turned it off.
I am also attaching a list of points that I hope will help some of you point out what I did wrong.
When I choose "closest entry point", I don't know if the closest point is ahead of me or behind me. Clearly, I want it to be ahead of me, but how can I determine what Zumo will do? Yesterday, I believed that it was trying to take me backwards to a point that was earlier in the route than I was when I turned it on. Nothing that I could do changed that, it seems.
Is this down to something that I am doing wrong in creating the route in Basecamp in the first place? I am going from BC to the Zumo directly. No Tread involvement.
I will be very grateful for any help with this. Yesterday my ride was punctuated by me screaming into my helmet at the zumo lady. She didn't listen. So, I know that there is a better solution.
thank you very much.

@gwilki First, I'll offer a couple general thoughts that might help.
1. When you turn the zumo (or any GPS receiver) on, it takes a bit of time for it to acquire satellite signals and accurately determine it's current position. Further, if it is not moving, it has no idea what direction the motorcycle is facing. I keep my XT2 on whenever I'm on the bike and just "view map" if I'm not following a route.
2. In general, routes that form a loop or overlap can cause confusion, in part, because the "closest point" can be on the opposite side of the loop from the one you want. That is probably not the case here since your loop is rather wide, but I typically break such routes into two parts, one out and the other back.

More specific to your post, all the points you show are shaping points (won't alert). When you start a route, the choices offered are via points (alert on arrival) and Closest Entry Point (CEP). If you want to have more choices, convert a few of the shaping points to via points.

Stated simply, CEP tries to find a route from your current location to the closest point on the magenta line, not the closest via or shaping point. The zumo will calculate a route from your current location to that closest entry point (or the the selected via point if you chose one instead of CEP) calculate a route to that point, then pickup the original route from there. Any portion of the original route prior to that is ignored.

If you really want the details of how CEP works, my theory is here viewtopic.php?p=20805#p20805. It is based on a good bit of testing and seems consistent with previous testing by @jfheath.
Also, it was recently found that CEP can be confused by routes that include a u-turn or that have points at intersections. (I don't remember what post that is in.)

I hope this helps a little.

If you really want to see how Closest Entry Point works, you can prepare your own real time demonstration.


1. Load a Track and select Go!
2. Then ride somewhere else.

Explanation

Create a route that you want to observe and then ride somewhere else. You can watch the Zumo XT1 and XT2 working out where the closest entry point is and plotting a dotted straight line from your current position to that CEP.

And you can watch it update as you ride along.

Here's how. Create a route which plots the route. Make a track from it and send the track to the GPX folder of the SD card.
Import the track, select it and select Go. Do not convert it to a route. Do not load a route. Just load the track and select Go.

Tap the bottom right corner of the map screen. 3 bar menu. Or 3 dot menu on the XT1. Select Trip data.
THis shows 4 buttons down the right hand side of a landscape screen.

One of them should be labelled 'Off Course'
The only other one that is relevant would be the distance to the end.
You can tap any of those four buttons and select what you want to have displayed.
You might want to display your maps as North Up. Settings -> Map display.
And you might want to turn off autozoom so that you can zzom out and see the road and the point that it is heading for.
Settings -> Map Display -> Autozoom.

It is easiest to see it working if you have in mind two roads that are parallel to each other. It doesn't matter how far apart they are. Lets say that they are 10 miles apart. Your track is plotted along one of them. You are riding along the other. You can watch what it is doing and how it continually adjusts the point where it has located the CEP.

Of course, with an actual route, it has to plot the roads to take to get to that point. But this is a really good demonstration of how it is working out the point to aim for.

Some pics and a few more details here:

app.php/ZXT-P51

Thank you very much. I've read abouit via vs shaping points here. My confusion is that all of my points are shown as via points. If I right click on any of them, one of the options is to "edit via point".
So, if they are shaping points, how do I convert them to via points? I thought that they were all via already. When I create the route originally in BC, I simply create points by clicking along the roads that I want to travel. I don't see any option at the time to designate that mouse click/point as either via or shaping. Is that what I am missing?
My next step is that I open the points list, select all of the points other than the beginning and ending point, and make then non-alerting. I wrongly assumed that made them via points.
I will look at the link you've provided shortly.

gwilki wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 2:38 pm Thank you very much. I've read abouit via vs shaping points here. My confusion is that all of my points are shown as via points. If I right click on any of them, one of the options is to "edit via point".
So, if they are shaping points, how do I convert them to via points? I thought that they were all via already. When I create the route originally in BC, I simply create points by clicking along the roads that I want to travel. I don't see any option at the time to designate that mouse click/point as either via or shaping. Is that what I am missing?
My next step is that I open the points list, select all of the points other than the beginning and ending point, and make then non-alerting. I wrongly assumed that made them via points.
I will look at the link you've provided shortly.

In Basecamp the route list has the heading 'Via Points' . That is because it started life as an improvement from Mapsource - which only has Via Points - Shaping Points didn't exist then.
They forgot to change the heading of that table !


So treat that heading as if it says 'Route Points'. That includes, start, finish, Via Points and Shaping Points.

So the difference is that Via Points Alert on arival. Shaping Point do not.
Via Points are shown in black text, shaping points in a Grey.

This link will help you app.php/ZXT-P16

And this link is the start of the same chapter - all to do with Basecamp. app.php/ZXT-P11

You can multiselect the points, right click on them and change them to not alert on arrivel (shaping point) or Alert on Arrival.

When multi-slecting, do not include the start and the finish - they have to be set as Via Points - so the option to change them to shaping point does not exist.

To multiselect using a PC click the mouse on the first item that you want to select. Hold down the shift key, click the mouse on the last item you want to select. It will select all of the items in between as well as the first and lats that you selected.

You can also hold down the control key when selecting. That selects just the item that you clicked on - while keeping any others that you clicked on selected at the same time.

When creating routes, most of my route points will be shaping - with perhaps 3 set as Via to mark a point after each stop.
I don't worry about what type of point they are until the route is finished. Then I clcik the 2nd point, Shift click the next to last to select all but the first and last points, right click and select 'Don't Alert on Arrival'.

Then I click on my first stopping place point. CTRL click the 2nd stopping place, CTRL click the 3rd. Right clcick on one of them and select 'Alert on Arrival' from the pop up menu.

You'll also notice the stats at the top of the table - mentions Via Points. Same issue - it is referring to all route points as Via Points - because it is a remnant from Mapsource.

@gwilki Yes you can thank Garmin for using confusing terms. They sometimes use the same term to mean different things and sometime use multiple different terms to mean the same thing.

Basecamp, incorrectly, calls all of the points in a route via points.
In reality:
Via points that alert are via points.
Via points that do not alert are actually shaping points.

When you right click on a point in list in Basecamp, a couple of lines below "Edit Via Point" you will see either "Don't Alert on Arrival (shaping point)" or Alert on Arrival, allowing you to change a real via point to a shaping point or a shaping point to a real via point.

[Edit - Ooopss - you got 2 replies at the same time. At least we both said the same thing ]

smfollen wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 1:51 pm (I don't remember what post that is in.)

Maybe you're thinkING of this GitHub issue? https://github.com/FrankBijnen/TripManager/issues/17

Thanks to you all. I've learned quite a bit.
I am still left, though, with why the Zumo would not follow the route. I was on the magenta line when I selected closed entry point. I understand that it did not know what direction I was heading in. So, it seems that it selected a point that was behind me - presumably also on the magenta line. If I am correct so far, why would it not simply pick up the next shaping point on the line when I started moving. I thought the value of shaping points was that I did not need to pass through them and that when I did not, the Zumo would continue to guide me on the route ahead of me.
Clearly I'm wrong about that.
So, I guess a better question is, if you were sitting at shaping point 10989 and wanted to head toward shaping point 956, what would you tell Zumo, keeping in mind that the only starting point options I was given were two that were very close to the starting point and CEP?

gwilki wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 11:12 pm So, I guess a better question is, if you were sitting at shaping point 10989 and wanted to head toward shaping point 956, what would you tell Zumo, keeping in mind that the only starting point options I was given were two that were very close to the starting point and CEP?

This is a problem and is one of the reasons why I sprinkle Via points throughout my routes (they are selectable as entry points). I place them on the road. Some people may consider the alerting aspect of them to be annoying but I think their potential value outweighs that annoyance.

Worthy of comment here is...
... when selecting a Via point as an entry point you may not know which one is the next one so it can be a trial and error process, selecting one, looking at the resulting route, then perhaps restarting and selecting a different one.
... do CEP first and looking at the resulting route. If goes backwards or is funky, redo, selecting a Via as the entry point.

BTW, I thought I posted a reply similar to this last night but don't see it so I apologize if this ends up being a duplicate.

Peobody wrote: Fri Sep 12, 2025 2:06 pm

gwilki wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 11:12 pm So, I guess a better question is, if you were sitting at shaping point 10989 and wanted to head toward shaping point 956, what would you tell Zumo, keeping in mind that the only starting point options I was given were two that were very close to the starting point and CEP?

This is a problem and is one of the reasons why I sprinkle Via points throughout my routes (they are selectable as entry points). I place them on the road. Some people may consider the alerting aspect of them to be annoying but I think their potential value outweighs that annoyance.

Worthy of comment here is...
... when selecting a Via point as an entry point you may not know which one is the next one so it can be a trial and error process, selecting one, looking at the resulting route, then perhaps restarting and selecting a different one.
... do CEP first and looking at the resulting route. If goes backwards or is funky, redo, selecting a Via as the entry point.

BTW, I thought I posted a reply similar to this last night but don't see it so I apologize if this ends up being a duplicate.

Thanks very much. I apologize to you and the others for seeming to be so dense on this. As I said in my initial post, I thought that I had this all figured out. In hindsight, I believe things have been working well as I have been able to avoid using CEP altogether.
I understand your idea on having a few via points in the route so that CEP will give me an option to use them. Over time, I will learn where to best place them so that, should I need to use CEP along a route, they will not result in messes like I just had.

One final question on this. Is it best to have uturns turned on?