Colorado -- navigating tracks

[wfcrawford]

In the FAQ's the info below if shown for navigating tracks. I've been following tracks on my Colorado using the compass page and am not certain exactly what it is doing. It appears to be changing bearings to "next" trackpoints but seems to lag the turns. Since there is no distance to next you never know if you need to just hold course because you are approaching the next tracklog or if you are indeed well off course. But it appears to be providing guidance to each tracklog along the track. What is this unit really doing?

 

I've always used the compass page to navigate tracks so I was very disappointed to see no guidance to successive next trackpoints and no trackback. But since I've had to start using the map page to navigate tracks in the reverse direction I believe I'm finding that perfectly acceptable. Have others found navigating along the track on the map page to be just as good or are there situations this will be an unacceptable shortcoming?

 

 

T16.) Can I navigate along a track? Is Trackback supported?

 

You can navigate along a track, but currently this function doesn't look very useful. The Colorado highlights the entire track and indicates how far it is to the end of the track along the track. Guidance doesn't seem to help you follow the track it just indicates where the end of the track is.

 

Trackback and track reversal is not support as it is on other Garmin GPSs.

[toddm]

It depends, I've found the compass navigation page on the colorado as you have found very confusing and almost impossible to follow. I wonder if it might be that the unit is trying to navigate you from track point to track point and if those points are very close together or there is any lag, or worse both, it would make for chaos on the display to try and follow. I've also seen the unit I played with that seemed to want to navigate you to the end of the track, not along it.

 

The way the colorado deals with tracks is just a cludge, on the one hand when you save the active track being able to set start and end points is a great feature. However the problem is with no trackback you have to save 2 tracks with opposite start and end points if you want to navigate along them both ways. Also the inability to see other saved tracks is annoying at best, esp. if you have a lot of tracks in a small area representing different trails.

 

The easiest page for me to follow a track used to be the "highway" style page that would I guess be similar now to the automotive view of the colorado. Which of course also is not available on the colorado.

 

Right now the colorado is nice for caches, but for navigation, and accurate field work, it can't touch the etrex/60/76 series. Hopefully garmin will add the functionality needed, but I would not hold my breath.

[+g-o-cashers]

@wfcrawford,

 

You might be right. I never played around much with the navigation along tracks feature. I'm pretty sure distance to next and distance to dest were both the same and looked like the distance along the track to the end from your current point. I was never able to figure out what the bearing was trying to tell me -- after trying it for 10-15 minutes and having it spin around I gave up, it could be trying to point to you along the track. If it was it wasn't doing a great job but I haven't tried this in 2.4 so maybe there have been improvements.

 

GO$Rs

[wfcrawford]

From all I can tell my Colorado seems to follow the track on the compass display when navigating in the original direction. But it's quirky, I don't trust it, and would not rely on it to navigate me through any difficult situations.

 

When you ask it to follow a track and you are already at the end of the track, it appears to peg the total distance as the straight line distance to the beginning of the track plus the track length. It's useless to try and follow this.

 

Question -- after downloading tracks from the Colorado to your PC, can you upload them to the Colorado as routes? You can't follow a route in the reverse direction, but you can follow it on the compass display with it indexing to next points as you travel. What is the point/route limit on the 50 routes allowed on the Colorado?

 

One more question: I don't understand the max. number of tracks that can be stored or accessed on the Colorado. The documentation says 20 tracks at 10000 points each but the FAQ says >= 180 tracks at the same 10000 points each. Can you only save 20 tracks on your Colorado but you can add many more by transferring them from your PC to the Colorado? Can you actually select a track to follow from this full >180 list?

[+g-o-cashers]

Question -- after downloading tracks from the Colorado to your PC, can you upload them to the Colorado as routes? You can't follow a route in the reverse direction, but you can follow it on the compass display with it indexing to next points as you travel. What is the point/route limit on the 50 routes allowed on the Colorado?

 

I just took a very quick look but I don't see a way to do this in Mapsource. There are many 3rd party tools that will convert tracks to routes starting with gpsbabel http://www.gpsbabel.org . I use ExpertGPS to do this and I'm sure there are many others. You would need to upload the tracks in the current.gpx file, convert them on your computer and download the new gpx file into [drive]:\Garmin\GPX. They will be loaded as routes the next time you power on.

 

One more question: I don't understand the max. number of tracks that can be stored or accessed on the Colorado. The documentation says 20 tracks at 10000 points each but the FAQ says >= 180 tracks at the same 10000 points each. Can you only save 20 tracks on your Colorado but you can add many more by transferring them from your PC to the Colorado? Can you actually select a track to follow from this full >180 list?

 

I'm really not sure where Garmin's numbers come from but what you can do is download gpx files into Garmin\GPX with track logs. The track logs can contain up to 10000 points each and I've tested and verified that you can see at least 180different tracks. Each one of these you can see in the WhereTo?->Tracks menu, you can select it and goto it. Obviously subject to the same issues you've described already. Hope that helps.

 

GO$Rs

Edited April 5, 2008 by g-o-cashers

[+Dog Knows]

 

I've always used the compass page to navigate tracks so I was very disappointed to see no guidance to successive next trackpoints and no trackback. But since I've had to start using the map page to navigate tracks in the reverse direction I believe I'm finding that perfectly acceptable. Have others found navigating along the track on the map page to be just as good or are there situations this will be an unacceptable shortcoming?

 

 

I do a lot of off-trail hiking in the mountains and I always use the map page for following my track. With topo maps loaded, this allows me to see where I am in relation to ridges, drainages and other terrain features that I passed on the way in. For me, it is a good way of keeping track of where I am. Also, if the hike is not strictly out and back, but has a loop at the end, I can see on the map when I have met up with the track I want to follow out. I find it quite easy to then just follow the line on the map to stay on route.

[+g-o-cashers]

I played around with navigation along a track some more today.

 

- Distance to Next/Destination is the distance along the track from your current location to the end of the track.

- Bearing (and Pointer) on the map and compass page do seem to offer guidance along the track using the track points. There is some strange behavior as you suggested in the original post. At sharp corners the pointer seems to point off track until you are past the turn by 100-200' at which point it will swing around and point to the next track point.

 

GO$Rs

[wfcrawford]

Yes, that's exactly what I've observed. Hopefully Garmin will make the software changes to allow us to use the Colorado to confidently follow a track in the original direction in addition to adding trackback. When following a route the Colorado anticipates the next route point and cuts the corner so it's curious that it would not handle a track similarly.

[rjfrider]

I've also noticed on the map page that the pointer does not necessarily point the correct direction of travel (in track up) to follow a track - either in the original direction tracked or in reverse direction. I notice the same behavior apparent on the navigation/compass page.....after stopping, you have to move many feet along the trail before you are able to tell whether you're on the track or not. It would be ideal to view more than one track, also. I too hope that Garmin will address this navigation of tracks in a firmware update if possible.

 

By the way, does anyone know a work-around regarding loading of multiple tracks.......someone mentioned to me using GPS Babel to add tracks to one another to make a single large track of several tracks. Has anyone done this and if so, how did you add tracks together?

 

Thanks for your replies. Rider

[+g-o-cashers]

Check this out. Here's something that a user who goes by Dutchronnie posted on the Colorado wiki this weekend. I've cleaned up the text but it does seem to work pretty well. If you could only reverse the track in the field we would have something pretty close to the old Trackback feature.

 

T16.) Can I navigate along a track? Is Trackback supported?

 

Yes. First make sure that you do not have City Navigator or any other autorouting map selected. Having no map selected or Topo2008 selected will work. Second, set your Guidance Method under Setup->Routing to "On Road for Distance".

 

From WhereTo?->Tracks select the track you want to follow. As you move you will receive guidance along the track. Your "destination" will be the end of the track and "next" will be the next trackpoint in the track. Bearing pointers will direct you to the next trackpoint and you we receive audible alerts as you approach these "turns".

 

Track reversal is not supported as it is on other Garmin units. Trackback, the ability to create a route from a track with intermediate waypoints, is also not supported but the procedure above provides similar functionality except that you cannot reverse the track.

 

It isn't clear whether you get guidance to every trackpoint or if the Colorado does simplification to the track for navigation.

 

GO$Rs