Right here goes…..

Finally decided its the 705 edge for me as i’ll use it on road for touring etc and the mapping would really help as i get lost riding to the end of my street but still have a couple of q’s…

* do i really need the CAD/SPEED sensor? not too interested in cadence but i’d heard that while off-road and in the tree a signal can be lost so this would come in handy….discuss.

* TOPO maps seem to be the mapping to get by reading other posts but where can i get these maps, ahem at a better price?

* finally, does the 705 take a route directly from bikely.com or are there other/better sites to utilise this function?

thanks in advance

You don’t really need the cadence sensor, but it might be useful if you are serious about your training.
The Garmin topo maps are not great IMHO opionion. Memory Map with OS maps for route planning is the better choice for off road. Use the Garmin Metroguide type maps for navigation on road.
The 705 wont take the route directly from bikely. You need to download the GPX file, convert it to a course file (google GPS2CRS) and then upload using Garmin Training Center.
You can lose the signal in heavy tree cover, but Garmin now use high sensitivity receivers which are much better than they used to be.

Geoffj,

cheers for that, but…

where do i get memorymap and metroguide programmes?

and is the conversion and upload fairly straightforward?

thanks again

I’ve only got the speed/cadence sensor fitted on my road bikes, the GPS accuracy isn’t affected by tree cover anywhere near as badly as the older Garmin models.
I already had Topo before I bought the Edge so I can’t help with that.
I only use Memory-Map, Topo, MotionBased and Garmin Connect so I’m not a lot of use with the last point either 🙁

You don’t have to buy something to plot routes over OS mapping. Sites like http://wheresthepath.googlepages.com/wheresthepath.htm will let you plot and create a gpx file. Then use gpx2crs to put them on the garmin

Hello – check out Open Street Maps http://openstreetmap.org/ – an open source version of Google maps.

Clever people have made them Garmin compatible and fully routeable:

http://www.mapomatic.net/2009/01/21/garmin-maps-updated/

I use these on my 705 and there are as good as if not better (as they get updated all the time) than the paid for versions.

DrEvil

p.s. I’ve downloaded routes from Bikely and they are routable using the OSM/Mapomatic

Cheers DrEvil, i’ll take a look but alas ‘clever’ i’m not!

Fear not, the hard work has been done – you just need to follow the intructions and copy them onto the device/memory card.

Training Center comes with the 705
Memory Map from here: LINKY

The conversion thing is dead easy.