Garmin Edge Touring

………..are they any good for navigating when using uploaded routes or are they a self mapping nightmare?

Just asking as navigating on my Edge 500 is a tad awkward and the Edge Touring is on off at Halfords with a case & out in front mount.

couple of guys use them in the road club – no probs with turn by turn,

Thanks

Yeah, happy with mine. Openstreetmap-based mapping works great for road stuff (complete with road names in directions) following a course. You can turn off rerouting if you don’t want to deviate from your planned route, even if you miss a turn. Still fine for off-road stuff too although you tend to rely more on the course to follow.

Mine has been an utter nightmare. Bought it for LEJOG a couple of weeks ago. I loaded my routes in and it usually started off giving point by point turns for the first 10mins, then lost it and just showed the blue line on the map which I had to zoom in on all the time. It then found the turn by turn again, usually when I was 5mins round the corner from my overnight stop. Also everytime I went to upload the ride I’d just done to strava or garmin connect it came up with an error. Luckily I’d realised this before LEJOG so took along my garmin watch as well to record the ride for recording purposes. It also started to turn itself off every now and again.

just used mine in Brittany for 2 weeks…..was pretty good.
I used the route plan where you put a location in. it gives you a few options showing distance. you choose and ride, it does however sometimes recalculate, and you end up riding further.

good on and offroad, with road/route names even track names.

are they any good for navigating when using uploaded routes

Er, yes and no.

Not very intuitive and hugely frustrating at first, however once you get it sorted out and the right settings on it they do actually work, and are much cheaper than the alternatives. If you don’t have the right settings it ends up doing some properly bonkers shit. And it still occasionally does odd things.

Different maps help.

Like bigmandh ours has been a pile of junk. It sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t, turn by turn usually works for a bit and then fails completely. It sometimes turns off mid ride. Occasionally it works ok. I got fed up and bought an 810, loaded the same maps and same routes (made with ridewithgps) and it’s spot on, hasn’t failed me yet (fingers crossed).

As above, mine has been essentially fine once I’d got the settings sorted and understood how to compensate for its foibles. It is still a bit temperamental, though, and for some reasons has recently started throwing up “Route Calculation Error”s, though nothing has changed in the way I am using it AFAIK. So all in all, a mixed bag!

Following this with interest. Can you export your strata routes over to it?

Yeah you can export the gpx from strava and use it on the device.

What settings have people had to change to get it to work better?

Following with interest too. I want something that will give me turn-by-turn directions for Ride to the Sun and Dunwich Dynamo (I take a wrong turn every year!) and with sufficient battery life for those long rides.

I take it the Touring is too unreliable to be used for this purpose?

bigmandh – the main one you need to change is the automatic recalculation, as otherwise in, for example, a circular route, it will either try to take you to the end of the route immediately, or just think you’ve completed the route as soon as you set off!

hebden – IMO it would be fine for that, and i frequently have used mine for just those type and length of rides, it is more that it is temperamental in use! Kind of hard to explain until you use one, but I have used mine for 1,000s of miles of riding, including London to Paris and I have survived so far!

This, copied from Ride with GPS, clarifies it a bit:

Some quick navigation specific settings for your Edge Touring.

Click the Wrench Icon on the main menu of the unit.
Select Routing Options
Change Routing Mode to Cycling
Change Calculation Method to Minimize Distance
Ensure Lock On Road is set to Off
Enter Avoidance Setup and disable all (keeps the unit from changing your pre-planned route based on its own map data)
Change Recalculation to either Prompted or Off (Important!!! If you lose GPS signal or go slightly off course, recalculation will usually short cut you to the end of your route. You almost never want it, so we set it to Prompted).
Course Turn Guidance must be OFF. This feature only works when the device recalculates the route, which you don’t want if you are using a TCX route.
Off Course Warnings is Enabled. Venture too far away from the route and the device will let you know.

I’ve always found routing to be a bit hit and miss on Garmins.

I think it’s something to do with whether the GPS is a route or a track. With one of them (route?) the Garmin tries to create it’s own route between the waypoints, with the other, it just displays the route as is.

My Garmin Touring has been fine with routes specifically created with Strava or BikeRouteToaster, but less good when it’s random GPX’s downloaded onto it.

The claimed 17 hrs battery life – has anyone used one with screen illuminated for, say, 9 hours?

The longest I’ve run mine with screen on was around 8.5 hours and it still had a reasonable amount of battery life left, probably from memory 10%+

edit – that was whilst in use navigating, by the way.

The longest I’ve run mine with screen on was around 8.5 hours and it still had a reasonable amount of battery life left, probably from memory 10%+

edit – that was whilst in use navigating, by the way.

Thanks for that. **** it – I’ve just bought one 🙂

From what I can see, you don’t need the optional case, and the out-front bike mounts are available for a couple of quid from Ebay, so you don’t need the “extras” in the £159 Halfords deal. They’re £132 from Wiggle.

I’ve got an Edge touring.
You don’t need the rubber case – but for a few quid it is a ‘nice to have’

The SRAM out front mounts are pretty good (I’ve got one on each bike) and usually about £11ish…

I generally only use if to record my rides (and upload to Strava) and give me a bit of data whilst riding.
I’ve not really explored the navigation etc..
Might swot up on it as taking it to France this summer and it would be good to plan some routes.

Allowing for the random turning on-off and perhaps just loosing sight of enough satellites here and there to ‘know’ where it it, but isn’t the routing / not routing going to be [mostly] down to the quality of the data in the currently loaded map tho’?

I’ve had a look at the [uk] maps over on garmin.openstreetmap.nl with a view to getting a Touring/810/Oregon shortly, and the maps I looked at, based on what I can see on the ground, look to include everything I’d expect (but of course, I won’t know what the Garmin ‘sees’ the road/path/track as tho’ until I try it, so how much they match reality on the ground isn’t in any way meaningful if the underlying code that describes what it is, is duff).

They’re “interesting” – mine has on several occasions reverted it’s settings to default without me touching it and it’s started auto-recalculating routes. Fortunately on routes that I knew anyway and was just using it to test. Once it just gave up altogether and started directing me straight back to the start/finish. It seems too stupid to be able to pick up a programmed route mid way through it but maybe that’s me not checking a setting or two…

So far it’s not turned itself off or not saved a ride.

It has however stopped doing turn by turn and just shown the blue line on the map a few times. For the first few trips, I was using my old Edge 500 as a backup because the Touring was doing so much weird stuff. It seems to have settled down a bit now, maybe I’ve just got more used to its foibles.

I think Garmin have tried to be too clever with some aspects of their computers and I wish they’d stop screwing around with the awful Garmin Express trying to get it to auto-sync. I don’t want to use it, leave me alone!

but isn’t the routing / not routing going to be [mostly] down to the quality of the data in the currently loaded map tho’?

People have said that using other maps like velomap improves the routing. Which implies that the route weighting is in the map for each type of path.

I’m now using velomap, and it’s routed me fine, but I tend to use ‘lock on roads’ set to on with a TCX course. This seems to calculate a route based on my track points, which are all very close to the road I want so it seems to work. I have yet to try talkietoaster. Interesting to note that with velomaps, although you have turn by turn on, the maps don’t actually draw the garmin chosen path (just the TCX itself) so it looks like TBT isn’t working. But it is.

The default Garmin maps seem to be a little obsessed with cycle paths when routing. As I said, when I use TCXs it doesn’t matter unless there is a cyclepath alongside the road it insists I go on it. Easy to ignore though.

I had a problem with it forgetting my settings for a while, but the other day I got a firmware update which seems to have helped.

The most annoying thing at the moment is, you can’t have “turn by turn directions” enabled, and have “off course warnings” enabled. So, if you miss a turn, you dont know about it.
Also, that bit above from RidewithGPS, tells you to have “course turn guidance” off, if you do that, it wont direct you.
I missed a turn today using mine(it didnt tell me to turn)and I didnt realise for 2 bloody miles.
I did get into the habit of, when you are approaching a junction swipe it to the map screen so you can check yourself, but of course forgot today.

Agreed with a lot of the above, and it used to do turn by turn and off course alert simultaneously, so not sure why that got pulled. I have been experimenting with openstreemap.nl and talkytoaster since I started getting the route calculation errors (that is separate to the unit calculating its own course, which works perfectly), and it hasn’t helped… a bit annoying.

On the turning off issue – I’ve had that a few times, but not really when it’s working fine; it only seems to happen at some point during an activity when something else has already gone awry, if that makes sense!

Re-routing would be ok, like your car one does, if it didn’t send you straight back home as soon as you miss a turn!

Exactly, or the equally annoying thing of as soon as you miss one turn by a few metres you don’t get any more directions for the rest of the ride… just the breadcrumb trail…

I see there’s a new software version, 4.10, out now. Its supposed to address the “off course warning” and “turn by turn” issue.
Was going to try it out later, but can’t get out now. Anyone updated and tried it yet?
If they fix this issue, I’ll be happy with mine again.

Excellent, I’ll get it loaded up tonight and test it out. As usual mine was mostly fine yesterday, though the quirk of the day was not giving me my first turn direction until about 3 miles in. Other than that mostly perfect 🙂

So I took the plunge and bought one of these following this and http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/garmin-edge-touring-or-810 threads

A few questions now –

1) What maps do people recommend?

I’ve got:
– a genuine set of Garmin UK OrdSurvey maps,
– EU wide city navigator (or whatever Garmin call their maps for car based sat navs). it’s some years out of date but fine 99% of the time.
– the OpenStreetMap mapping that came with the unit

Has anyone worked out the advantages and disadvantages of each? It it worth sticking in the CityNavigator for road use?
Will I get turn by turn off the Ord Survey mapping when on road or is in ‘unroutable’ (ie just an image file?)

2) re the recommended settings above. What’s the difference between Cycling and Mountain biking (if ‘lock to roads’ is set to off)? I’ll use it for both road and off road rides – do i need to switch between the two?

And another question…..

the touring came with an 8Gb memory card inserted (which I assume has the maps on). Garmin Express tells me there’s a map update available and to ‘plug in a card with at least 7Gb of storage capacity’

With the supplied card inserted Garmin Express isn’t finding a memory card. What’s going on? Do I need to reformat the card first (and lose the supplied maps?)

You can put a larger microSD card in (they are super cheap now) and then install more than one map. I’ve got OS maps, the pre-installed OpenStreetMap, plus some OpenMTBMaps for Cuba i put on ages ago. You can then switch between them in the settings, under Trip Page – map, i think.

I think the cycling v mountain biking is for the auto routing. Cycling prefers roads. I always leave “lock to road” off .

I always assumed the lock to road option was to pin a ride you’re recording to a road that follows the route you’re taking, if the GPS signal is poor. I have noticed that it will sometimes show you slightly off the side of a road, and the blue line showing your route as being recorded is moved slightly to the side so it follows the road. I could be wrong, of course, just my experience from use.

Righty o, I’ve updated software to v4.1, and as far as I can tell, it’s made no difference at all. You still can’t enable, “turn by turn” and “off course warning” together.
Back to v2.7 for me.

Help!? Just tried to install the latest software and mapping updates on mine and the Garmin decided to switch off halfway through the update, possibly due to the screen saver switching off (could be coincidence?). Now when I try and to install updates it gives this error message: “there was an error installing this update”. Tried ejecting the Garmin and reinstalling, but the same message appears! What now?

Ok, panic over. After rebooting the Garmin, it appears to have installed the new update. Just need to install the new mapping updates; fingers crossed!!

SD cards really are cheap now – 32gb branded about £7 on eBay. Ages since I’d bought one.

You can put a larger microSD card in (they are super cheap now) and then install more than one map. I’ve got OS maps, the pre-installed OpenStreetMap, plus some OpenMTBMaps for Cuba i put on ages ago. You can then switch between them in the settings, under Trip Page – map, i think.

So how do you get your genuine OS maps on there? I thought Garmin sold their maps either locked to a physical device or locked to the SD card it was supplied on. Mine came on micro-SD and if I try to copy it to my computer it fails. Of course the card it came on isn’t large enough to add further maps to. Do I need to obtain a ‘hacked’ version of the OS mapping?

I always assumed the lock to road option was to pin a ride you’re recording to a road that follows the route you’re taking, if the GPS signal is poor. I have noticed that it will sometimes show you slightly off the side of a road

That makes sense. My in-car Garmin must have a lock to road – if you drive a new section of road it shows you on a the nearest road it has for a long while until it starts yelping. You’d not want that behaviour on a bike GPS where you might use tracks/bridleways. Then Road/MTB settings to be give me a road/off road route setting. MTB should be fine all the time if using a pre-defined GPX track.

Damn. Map update confusion.

New Touring said ‘map updates available’ but then didn’t recognise the 8GB supplied card as being an 8GB card it could update to. I found a 32GB card and the unit then spend 3 hours or so supposedly installing new maps but when i use that card now it appears to only have a ‘basemap’ – it’s only showing the A roads and none of the residential streets in between. Swapping the original 8GB card back in they all appear so it doesn’t appear to be a setting for map detail.

What have I done wrong?

So my first test ride with this highlights some immediate Garmin shitness. it really is glum just how badly some of their stuff works. ignore last post – 3 hours of downloading didn’t appear to put anything on the card. So a short ride today, one I’ve done many times before.

“Navigate to the beginning of the course? “

What does this mean? Is this supposed to be
– get me from where I am to the beginning of the course so that I can start it. or
– get me back to the start point in the quickest way

Trying to start a course from my front door, which started at my front door, it just kept telling me I’d reached the end whichever option I chose. I tried ignoring it and it seemed to go away.

Turn by turn
Seemed to work remarkably well. Takes an age to calculate even a 25km route so must be painful for a big ride.

Very annoying that you can’t have ‘off course’ warnings when doing turn by turn. How do I get a firmware version on which this is an option? Are there any disadvantages to that firmware?

Mapping
It’s very clear – much better than OSGB landranger in the city at least. Much clearer than when I last tried using OpenStreetMap.

Garmin Connect
remains a piece of crap. Tried loading a few rides I’d recorded with my Edge 200 onto the Touring. That’s got to be about as simple as it get hasn’t it? No, “courses – Transfer Error”. Had to export the GPX and drag onto the Garmin.