2610 Routes

[+Jamie Z]

I recently made a purchase of the Garmin 2610. It's UI is a bit dated, but it seems to be a pretty tough unit, and except for the all-in-one-basket waypoint management, I think I like it.

 

One of the first things I tried to do was load a route which I'd created from Google Maps. The route is about 250 miles long and contains something like 56 via points. I uploaded the route to the GPS using GPSBabel. Transfer worked fine, the GPS beeped, but on the GPS screen it said, "Route Truncated."

 

Yup, my route was there... but apparently some of the points have been lopped off.

 

Through some experimentation, I found that the GPS would accept routes with up to 50 points. Anything more, and I got the truncated message.

 

Later, I was reading online and found a great resource for information on the 2610. On this page, it says that in firmware version 3.40, "Increased number of via points allowed per route to 250." Great, except that's not what I'm seeing.

 

Anyone have an idea what I could be doing wrong, or how I can get this thing to accept routes with more than 50 points?

 

Jamie

[+DonB]

I recently made a purchase of the Garmin 2610. It's UI is a bit dated, but it seems to be a pretty tough unit, and except for the all-in-one-basket waypoint management, I think I like it.

 

One of the first things I tried to do was load a route which I'd created from Google Maps. The route is about 250 miles long and contains something like 56 via points. I uploaded the route to the GPS using GPSBabel. Transfer worked fine, the GPS beeped, but on the GPS screen it said, "Route Truncated."

 

Yup, my route was there... but apparently some of the points have been lopped off.

 

Through some experimentation, I found that the GPS would accept routes with up to 50 points. Anything more, and I got the truncated message.

 

Later, I was reading online and found a great resource for information on the 2610. On this page, it says that in firmware version 3.40, "Increased number of via points allowed per route to 250." Great, except that's not what I'm seeing.

 

Anyone have an idea what I could be doing wrong, or how I can get this thing to accept routes with more than 50 points?

 

Jamie

I'll start off by saying I have created up to 2000 mile routes for my 2610 but I don't think I have ever came close to using 50 vias in the route, so I don't claim to be an expert on creating routes, but I wonder if it could have anything to do with using Google maps, or maybe GPSBabel. Did you get Mapsource with the GPS, and if so did you try using it to create your route?

[+DonB]

I recently made a purchase of the Garmin 2610. It's UI is a bit dated, but it seems to be a pretty tough unit, and except for the all-in-one-basket waypoint management, I think I like it.

 

One of the first things I tried to do was load a route which I'd created from Google Maps. The route is about 250 miles long and contains something like 56 via points. I uploaded the route to the GPS using GPSBabel. Transfer worked fine, the GPS beeped, but on the GPS screen it said, "Route Truncated."

 

Yup, my route was there... but apparently some of the points have been lopped off.

 

Through some experimentation, I found that the GPS would accept routes with up to 50 points. Anything more, and I got the truncated message.

 

Later, I was reading online and found a great resource for information on the 2610. On this page, it says that in firmware version 3.40, "Increased number of via points allowed per route to 250." Great, except that's not what I'm seeing.

 

Anyone have an idea what I could be doing wrong, or how I can get this thing to accept routes with more than 50 points?

 

Jamie

Double post

Edited October 10, 2007 by DWBur

[+Chuy!]

It also takes 2000 track points. Try finding software to convert your route to tracks.

[+Jamie Z]

I'll start off by saying I have created up to 2000 mile routes for my 2610 but I don't think I have ever came close to using 50 vias in the route, so I don't claim to be an expert on creating routes, but I wonder if it could have anything to do with using Google maps, or maybe GPSBabel. Did you get Mapsource with the GPS, and if so did you try using it to create your route?

I admit that using 50+ vias is excessive. I designed a 250 mile circuit for a group motorcycle ride, so the route necessarily didn't stay on one road for very long at any time. Lots of twists and turns. Then again, that's not unusual for me.

 

The 2610 came with Mapsource, but I haven't played around with it much. The UI for Google Maps is so amazing, that I can't imagine not using it. I did transfer the route to Mapsource and tried to send it to the GPS from there. Same deal: Route Truncated.

 

Using GPSBabel's "simplify" tool, I can get it to upload to the GPS with exactly 50 points, and it doesn't seem to have lost any detail. From my analysis, it looks like Babel removes points that are really close to each other.

 

That'll work for the time being, but I'm still trying to find the solution why Garmin's own website says they increased the number, but it's not what's happening. Perhaps the documentation means you can have a total of 250 vias for all your combined routes.

 

Jamie

[robertlipe]

Via points and route points are different. I've never found a definition on WHY they're different, but they're different. GPSBabel only writes routepoints as when I last looked, via points were an undocumented protocol.. (That may have changed; it's been a while.) So few Garmins use via points that I never bothered to reverse engineer it.

 

Actually, it's not points close to each other, though that's the common case. The deciding factor of points to toss are those that change the shape of the resulting polyline the least.

[+Jamie Z]

Via points and route points are different. I've never found a definition on WHY they're different, but they're different. GPSBabel only writes routepoints as when I last looked, via points were an undocumented protocol.. (That may have changed; it's been a while.) So few Garmins use via points that I never bothered to reverse engineer it.

 

Actually, it's not points close to each other, though that's the common case. The deciding factor of points to toss are those that change the shape of the resulting polyline the least.

Robert,

 

Thanks for the explanation. As for via points and route points... well, when I upload a route to the GPS, the turns show up as vias on the GPS.

 

Now, if I can figure out how to get more than 50 in there.

 

Jamie

[Motorcycle_Mama]

Jamie, you might want to ask about routes on the 2610 over on the Motorcycle Tourer's Forum on Delphi. Those guys are the experts on those units.

 

http://forums.delphiforums.com/MCTourer/start

[+Jamie Z]

Jamie, you might want to ask about routes on the 2610 over on the Motorcycle Tourer's Forum on Delphi.

Thanks. I posted my question there.

 

Who the heck is using "Jamie Z" on that board? I oughta...

 

Jame

[+DonB]

I'll start off by saying I have created up to 2000 mile routes for my 2610 but I don't think I have ever came close to using 50 vias in the route, so I don't claim to be an expert on creating routes, but I wonder if it could have anything to do with using Google maps, or maybe GPSBabel. Did you get Mapsource with the GPS, and if so did you try using it to create your route?

I admit that using 50+ vias is excessive. I designed a 250 mile circuit for a group motorcycle ride, so the route necessarily didn't stay on one road for very long at any time. Lots of twists and turns. Then again, that's not unusual for me.

 

The 2610 came with Mapsource, but I haven't played around with it much. The UI for Google Maps is so amazing, that I can't imagine not using it. I did transfer the route to Mapsource and tried to send it to the GPS from there. Same deal: Route Truncated.

 

Using GPSBabel's "simplify" tool, I can get it to upload to the GPS with exactly 50 points, and it doesn't seem to have lost any detail. From my analysis, it looks like Babel removes points that are really close to each other.

 

That'll work for the time being, but I'm still trying to find the solution why Garmin's own website says they increased the number, but it's not what's happening. Perhaps the documentation means you can have a total of 250 vias for all your combined routes.

 

Jamie

As a test I did a route, using Mapsource, from the Cleveland area to Yuma with 55 via points and loaded it into the 2610. I had it show me the route and nothing was cut out.

[+Jamie Z]

As a test I did a route, using Mapsource, from the Cleveland area to Yuma with 55 via points and loaded it into the 2610. I had it show me the route and nothing was cut out.

DW,

 

Thanks for checking that for me...

 

Update:

 

I had posted this question on another forum also... a reply there had said basically the same thing as above, so for demonstration, I was going to upload my route file to show the guy how it truncated the route.

 

But first, I wanted to check my steps to accurately describe how it happened. So... I load the route into my GPS, and it works fine. Go figure. I still don't know what I was doing wrong, or what I did right this time, but now it works.

 

Jamie

[+Jamie Z]

Well... now I'm in the same boat again. After getting it to work--I successfully sent a route with well over 200 via points to the 2610--now it's truncating again. I've deleted all the waypoints and routes from the GPS, but no matter what I do, I end up with a route with 48 via points.

 

I have no idea what I'm doing differently from when it worked. As far as I know, I'm doing it exactly the same.

 

I take a gpx route file. I open up GPSBabel GUI. I choose the the gpx file to send to my 2610. I check "route." I click on "Let's go." Transfer goes fine. GPS says "Route Truncated."

 

Yesterday using the exact same procedure, same gpx file, the GPS didn't say that. Grrr.

 

I've tried it using Mapsource, too. Same thing. Route shows up fine in Mapsource. I transfer it to the GPS. Transfer goes fine. GPS says "Route Truncated."

 

Has anyone else even seen this message besides me, even if you don't have a solution? I don't know what's causing it, and so far it seems to be completely random.

 

Jamie

Edited October 19, 2007 by Jamie Z

[+Jamie Z]

Well, this makes three posts in a row in my own thread...

 

After some fussing around, I think I may have figured out the issue. I hope there is a way around it.

 

If I send the route to MapSource, and then have MapSource calculate the route, and then send it to the GPS, it will accept oodles of via points. If I haven't done the calculation, though... 48 is the max.

 

Jamie