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I don’t understand Courses

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:12 pm
by ERHAU175
I don’t really understand the concept of courses.
My understanding was, that a Route is a navigation between two or more points and the GPS selects the best path between those points given certain parameters (automotive, bike, exclusions, …).
A Course I thought is supposed to be a navigation along a selected path whereas the path is defined by me on a map.
So, yesterday, I created a 20 mile counter-clockwise course in Garmin Explore that starts and ends at my home and pretty much makes an almost perfect circle. I then synced the course with the device where it appeared under “Course Planner”
My setup is a GPSMAP 66s with the original Garmin Cycle Map on the device. “Activity” was set to “Tour Cycling” and “Course Navigation” to “Roads and Trails”.
Now my expectation was that the GPS would guide me along the course on and along the defined path.
But no. First of all, after starting to navigate the course, the GPS calculated the course as expected on the device and then immediately told me that I have arrived at my destination and stopped navigation. Repeat. Same result. Ok, so apparently I can’t start a circle course unless I have already started. So I biked for a minute and started the course navigation again. What now happened for the first half of my circle course was, that the GPS told me constantly to make a u-turn to get back home. For the second half of the circle, the GPS constantly tried to guide me off the defined corse (a cycle path) onto a main road and straight back home.
So, as far as I see it, course navigation on the GPSMAP is completely useless as internally, the device only cares about the final map-point and - like a Route - tries to get you there as fast as possible.
Anybody know how to solve this or is this just what it is?
I know that I can set “Course Navigation” to “Direct Path” and then the selected course gets a thick pink line but lacks the navigation features.

Re: I don’t understand Courses

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:20 pm
by GPSrChive
A. What firmware version is loaded on your GPSMAP 66?
B. Can you create a similar course from scratch directly on your device, test that course and report results?

Re: I don’t understand Courses

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 5:08 pm
by Nail
ERHAU175 wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:12 pm I don’t really understand the concept of courses.


I know that I can set “Course Navigation” to “Direct Path” and then the selected course gets a thick pink line but lacks the navigation features.
If you want to navigate a track you must always select "Direct Path". If you want to navigate from point to point, you choose "Roads and Trails". If there were no waypoints in your course, the algorithm chose the shortest possible path. And all indications are that they were not.

Re: I don’t understand Courses

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 5:37 pm
by ERHAU175
GPSrChive wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:20 pm A. What firmware version is loaded on your GPSMAP 66?
B. Can you create a similar course from scratch directly on your device, test that course and report results?
I’m on 10.20.

I just create a similar course on the GPS as you suggest and it actually works as expected, the course gets navigated along the defined path. The problem seems to be the transfer from Explore to the GPS where apparently the points between start and finish are somehow lost.
It also works when I edit the transferred course on the GPS and thus a new copy then gets created that then is navigated along the defined path.

Re: I don’t understand Courses

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 6:02 pm
by GPSrChive
Thank you for testing!

We can all now add yet one more reason to avoid Garmin Explore (Perses) at all costs.

:evil:

Re: I don’t understand Courses

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2023 6:51 pm
by Przekątny
ERHAU175 wrote: Sun Apr 16, 2023 2:12 pm First of all, after starting to navigate the course, the GPS calculated the course as expected on the device and then immediately told me that I have arrived at my destination and stopped navigation. Repeat. Same result. Ok, so apparently I can’t start a circle course unless I have already started. So I biked for a minute and started the course navigation again. What now happened for the first half of my circle course was, that the GPS told me constantly to make a u-turn to get back home. For the second half of the circle, the GPS constantly tried to guide me off the defined corse (a cycle path) onto a main road and straight back home.
In my opinion, the device worked properly, although not as expected, if you selected the Roads & Trails option with the Calculation Method Minimize Distance or Minimize Time setting, you indicated the start and end point in the same location - the message you have reached your destination appeared, the device determined the shortest route to purpose. While driving, the message was also correct - the shortest way or shortest time to reach the destination was to turn around.