Distance Limitations of Auto routing GPSr?

[+DocDiTTo]

Something I've often wondered...

 

If you have a GPSr like a 60CSx and have a microSD card large enough to hold all the data for the whole USA, will the GPSr be able to route you the whole way across the country in one shot? Could I punch in my start as "Harrisburg, PA" and my finish as "San Diego, CA" and get the whole route up at once? Would it take a long time to calculate that route, if it could do it? Or would you need to break the route up into pieces in order for the unit to handle it?

 

I'm interested in knowing how various models of auto-routing GPSrs (car models and handhelds) would handle such a task. Anyone tried it?

 

I figure there's got to be a limit... but what is it?

[kb9nvh]

From indiana to Clearwater works OK and also indiana to OK city.

 

I really think that if you have all the maps then it will do it from coast to coast. Longer routes, of course, take longer to calculate but even IN to FL was like 30 seconds or something like that.

 

Something I've often wondered...

 

If you have a GPSr like a 60CSx and have a microSD card large enough to hold all the data for the whole USA, will the GPSr be able to route you the whole way across the country in one shot? Could I punch in my start as "Harrisburg, PA" and my finish as "San Diego, CA" and get the whole route up at once? Would it take a long time to calculate that route, if it could do it? Or would you need to break the route up into pieces in order for the unit to handle it?

 

I'm interested in knowing how various models of auto-routing GPSrs (car models and handhelds) would handle such a task. Anyone tried it?

 

I figure there's got to be a limit... but what is it?

[+Cache Viking]

I have two Garmins. A "V" and a "10" for my PDA. Detailed maps on my V are limited by memory but the hard coded base map should be able to get me back and forth accross the US. On my 10, I have just loaded all the detailed maps from Albany NY back to Santa Barbara CA and the autorouting seems to be working fine with all those detailed maps. On the PDA there is always the less detailed base maps that should always would for getting me back.

 

Not sure how big your Micro SD or why you would need the entire US on it. Doesn't the 60 series have a base map for the entire US like the V does?

[MrMullen]

This is the only complant I have about my Garmin eTrex Venture.

 

I can load it with maps with autorouting capibilities and do address searches around my county, but I can't do address searchs for areas outside of my county. For example, I live in San Diego and I wanted to plot a route to Seattle, Washington, but I could not type in the address even if I told the GPS that the address I was searching for was in Seattle. However, if I get on the map and manually find the address with the click stick, I can auto route to it just fine. It's really wierd that I can not type in an address outside of my county I am in.

[+webscouter.]

I autorouted from KC to Salt Lake City

[+M4T]

You can autoroute coast to coast even without all of the POI/detail maos loaded. If you have map data loaded for two cities, say Manhatten and Los Angeles, you can autorout from one to the other, the Garmin GPSr will use the base mpas to route you on the major highways between cities.

 

Remember you won't have any POI data on the base maps so no services, gas, lodging etc.

 

I routed from New York to my parents house in Florida no problem. I was even able to load all the maps from western NY to central FL on my 60C, just selected each map segment around the route in Mapsource and there was just enough memory.

 

Good luck!

[+DocDiTTo]

Sounds like the curent models can handle bigger jobs than I thought they could! That's great to know! I've done routing across PA with my PDA and TomTom software, but I don't have enough memory to load maps for the whole country.

[+kfishok]

Just for the heck of it, I tried to auto-route from San Diego to Bangor, Maine. I did not use the computer, just my 60Cx. Since I was in Oklahoma City, it routed me from OKC to San Diego on I-40 and then back to OKC and then on to Maine on I-44 and points beyond. All the calculation took about 30 seconds, and I had turn by turn directions for the whole route. 4600+ miles and 64 hours calculated for the trip. I do not think I plan on making that trip anytime soon. So, to answer your question, I do not think that there are any limits to the Garmin auto-routing City Nav software and base maps. I have all of the South, Southwest, Southeast and some of the Central US loaded on a 1 Gig MicroSD card.

[robertlipe]

There are limits. Routing from London to New York, for example, doesn't work well. OK, that's an extreme example, meant to exaggerate the issue, but the point is that routing across areas where there are no roads (i.e. islands) doesn't work.

 

The nice thing about the current crop of Garmins, DocDitto (Magellan's handhelds won't do this) is that they'll route on the basemap. Face it, if you don't want a basemap, you're probably driving on the interstate or major state highway anyway. This lets them route across crazy distances without having detail maps for the entire path.

 

This spring I was working on a project where I had six different models of Garmins all hooked up to one computer simultaneously. They were all simulating a mixture of driving and point-to-point routes and I picked places all over the US. All ran successfully to completion over the course of about two days.

 

This was a software stress test and not something actually useful to do, but every one computed a route on its own (over a mixture of base and detailed maps) and every one ran to completion.

[Hertzog]

This is the only complant I have about my Garmin eTrex Venture.

 

I can load it with maps with autorouting capibilities and do address searches around my county, but I can't do address searchs for areas outside of my county. For example, I live in San Diego and I wanted to plot a route to Seattle, Washington, but I could not type in the address even if I told the GPS that the address I was searching for was in Seattle. However, if I get on the map and manually find the address with the click stick, I can auto route to it just fine. It's really wierd that I can not type in an address outside of my county I am in.

I believe that the 60CSx initially had a problem like this, which was corrected in one of the first firmware updates. So make sure you have the latest firmware update, and submit a bug report to Garmin if you do.

[kb9nvh]

I did have my csx fade out on me and turn off once during a recalculation. Very strange behavior. Turned back on and it worked fine.

 

Anyone else? I think I've read this once before so it has to be some kind of bug....but what the heck would make it fade away like that????

 

This is the only complant I have about my Garmin eTrex Venture.

 

I can load it with maps with autorouting capibilities and do address searches around my county, but I can't do address searchs for areas outside of my county. For example, I live in San Diego and I wanted to plot a route to Seattle, Washington, but I could not type in the address even if I told the GPS that the address I was searching for was in Seattle. However, if I get on the map and manually find the address with the click stick, I can auto route to it just fine. It's really wierd that I can not type in an address outside of my county I am in.

I believe that the 60CSx initially had a problem like this, which was corrected in one of the first firmware updates. So make sure you have the latest firmware update, and submit a bug report to Garmin if you do.

[+geognerd]

I'm impressed by how fast your Garmins are able to calculate routes for such long distances, and that they could do so without pooping out. My eXplorist 400 feels like it takes 20 seconds just to calculate a route that's 15 miles long.

 

The speed of calculating the route, and the ability to use the basemap demonstrate how Garmin's autorouting implementation is better than Magellan's.

[robertlipe]

Garmin's autorouting implementation is better than Magellan's.

(Embra and) I agree

[+wickedsprint]

I have used a 76C and a Garmin V to route me all over the USA, one trip being from florida to california and another from california to wyoming, the Garmin V was nice since its basemap is the same as a paper rand mcnally atlas as was the 76Cs, the new 76CX I have has a much more limited basemap it seems, probably the recreational one so it needs the extra map detail to be useful for routing, the V does not.

[+the hermit crabs]

I did have my csx fade out on me and turn off once during a recalculation. Very strange behavior. Turned back on and it worked fine.

 

Anyone else? I think I've read this once before so it has to be some kind of bug....but what the heck would make it fade away like that????

Mine "faded away" once recently also. It was not during a route calculation, though. I was deleting a bunch of waypoints I didn't need anymore, when suddenly it stopped accepting button presses, and the screen slowly faded out and the unit shut itself off. (The "fade" took about 2-3 seconds, I think.) I turned it back on and it was fine. At the time I thought that maybe I had confused it by pressing so many buttons in rapid succession (I was deleting a clump of about 40 caches, one after the other), but maybe that had nothing to do with it after all.

[+BlueDeuce]

I did have my csx fade out on me and turn off once during a recalculation. Very strange behavior. Turned back on and it worked fine.

 

Anyone else? I think I've read this once before so it has to be some kind of bug....but what the heck would make it fade away like that????

Mine "faded away" once recently also. It was not during a route calculation, though. I was deleting a bunch of waypoints I didn't need anymore, when suddenly it stopped accepting button presses, and the screen slowly faded out and the unit shut itself off. (The "fade" took about 2-3 seconds, I think.) I turned it back on and it was fine. At the time I thought that maybe I had confused it by pressing so many buttons in rapid succession (I was deleting a clump of about 40 caches, one after the other), but maybe that had nothing to do with it after all.

 

Similar situation yesterday when I was deleting waypoints, I know it likes a moment to repaint the screen with the remaining waypoints but I started pressing buttons for commands before it was ready. Locked it up.

 

Mine can hold 115mb and it has no problems auto-routing while fully loaded.

Edited August 17, 2006 by BlueDeuce

[cryppie]

Instead of replying here, I started a new topic about the fading screen: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=141469