Morning all,

Is anyone aware of any decent Android apps for providing turn by turn navigation for mountain biking?

There seem to be plenty of apps that will do turn by turn based on an underlying map, which is great on roads, but I’ve yet to find anything that really works well off road.

In the ideal world, I’d like an app which lets me download a GPX track I want to follow, then beeps at me as I’m coming up to a turning point so that I know to look down at the map and see which track to take. Even better would be if it automatically dimmed between turns to save battery life.

Does this exist? My Garmin 800 more or less did it, but the screen was so bloody small that it wasn’t always easy to figure out which one of a couple of close bridleway turns I was supposed to be taking!

Is it just a case of putting some sort of marker into the GPX files if I’m creating my own route?

I’m keen to try riding some new, unknown areas, and would always have an OS map with me just in case, but it would be nice to have the easy option! 🙂

MMtracker but you need memory map to use it and it wont do turn by turn but will do track or route

My Garmin 800 more or less did it

My Garmin 800 does a pretty good job so long as I have put some time in on bikeroutetoaster.com creating a file with turn instructions in and warnings as I approach the turns.

If you want something like road satnav levels of directions you’d better stick to the road, keep off the moor 🙂

Won’t the garmin 1000 do it but it needs OSM/OCM maps so it knows the path and bridleway vectors that you are turning between. So it wouldn’t likely work if you hadn’t added your path to the underlying map.

Not android though, but I think you would be lucky to find that.

RideWithGPS. Works best with an annual subscription to the (very good) website.

Turn by turn off road is tricky as GPS accuracy varies and can be anything from 5 to 10 metres to 50, plus trails can be very close to each other. Phone compass is also not terribly accurate I find.

I use OSM stuff, not turn by turn, with position showing where I am and direction it thinks its facing and try to follow the map but have on occasions realised I’m going down the wrong path even though the phone shows it’s the right one, until eventually the track goes off course.

If you’re following marked bridleways etc with obvious, “left turn here” kind of stuff then it may be easier, but singletrack and trying to follow someone’s route or a race course off main paths, I find can be tricky just following the phone.

Exploring I do a bunch of research, keep track of recognisable features, work out my bearings and where I want to check out and just head in the direction I think interesting things will be and hunt them down. A route I’m trying to follow then it does become a bit trial and error but usually I get the rough gist of it looking at evidence of where people seem to be riding.

Viewranger is a great app. Does all the gpx stuff and that sort of thing…

Deadkenny, I suppose what I’m really after is fair warning that a change is coming up. I’m not expecting the phone to be able to tell me to within a metre or even 10 exactly where a turn is, but I do want to try and minimise the risk of going careering down a hill only to realise I’ve then got to turn round and retrace my route for half a mile of steep climbing!

I suppose what I’m really after is fair warning that a change is coming up

I use a Satmap, OS 1:25k mapping, and then zoom it in to about 1:3K.

This gives a pretty good indication of where the route is about to go, although does require looking at the screen reasonably often – if you are on trail already and should branch off of it then you could miss it as you are concentrating on your flow on the current trail.

The other problem is that the satmap is quite big and the bar mount puts it high, but I have found an ‘outfront’ type mount so I can put it in front and at the same height as the bars, making it less obtrusive and less of a deviation from my line of sight to see it.

RideWithGPS. Works best with an annual subscription to the (very good) website.

Not tried this one before, thanks, will give it a try. 🙂

I use Memory map right now, but it doesn’t do turn by turn.

Double post.

I had the same problem as you and sold my 800. Bought a Samsung S5 which is considerably more legible and also waterproof. Bought an inexpensive bikemount from Fleabay to fix it to the handlebars.

Using bikeroutetoaster and viewranger apps. I can plot a gpx track at home and follow it in the field. It works fine, not perfect.. but fine.

I also bought a £15 spare battery and charger so I go out with two batteries, but have not yet needed the second one, just don’t have brightness too high and turn off bluetooth and wifi.
Oh, and opencyclemaps..

The android phone app I use (backcountry navigator) can do something like this I believe. I think it alarms close to marked waypoints, you can set the distance from the waypoint that it sounds. I guess you’d have to put a bit of work into setting it up beforehand tho as any gpx you download almost certainly isn’t going to have the waypoints prelayed on it. So, you’d download the gpx file, overlay it, then put waypoint at every point you wanted it to buzz you. Never tried it tho so don’t know if what I’m saying would actually work or if it’s any good.

Ooh! I didn’t know Backcountry Navigator could do that! I’ve got that already, with the whole of the UK OS maps at 1:25,000 downloaded for free, so if it can, I’ll be sorted with that! 🙂

I’ll email their usually very responsive support to ask.

I think it was in a recent update.
mark a waypoint by holding your finger on the point of the map you want to mark
click mark on the menu that pops up
select the compass symbol at the top right to access the proximity alarm option

Thanks for that. I shall take a further look when I get home. I find it to be a really powerful app, but it’s certainly not simple to use! 🙂

It’s worth having a quick scan of their email newsletters to pick up on new stuff like this. Nathan can ramble sometimes, but there’s often nuggets of info, to the point where I always read them.

The app used to be fairly basic, but they have pandered to users demanding more bells and whistles, so it appears a lot more complicated now. A lot of the new stuff is really good tho. The new course creator is brilliant and straightforward.

If you use it a lot it’s worth learning the back office stuff, creating new trip databases etc.

Someone did a series of vids on youtube (southeastbackpacker), which Nathan recommended in the last newsletter and altho most of it was known, I learnt some new stuff from those.

This is from the 13 Nov newsletter, looks like it’s in Beta testing, so use it and let them know if it works well for your application.

Waypoint Notifications

Many have asked for the ability to get alerts of when they are a certain distance from waypoint.
To try out the beta version of this feature, go to settings, choose GOTO options, then make sure Show GOTO option is active.

The next time you use the GOTO function (from Long Click, Waypoint screen, or Waypoint list), you will see something like this.

You can continue to navigate to a fixed point as before, but you can also defer that navigation until you are within the distance you specify.

This uses Google’s Location Geofencing to give us alerts. You will get a notification that you can click on, open BCN, and start navigating to that point with map and compass.

We don’t know how accurate to expect Google’s Geofencing service to be yet. It is more accurate if you are actively using navigation within BCN. Less so if the GPS is not in active use in any app.

The settings also has a “Cancel Geofencing” option to clear pending alerts.

Hmm.. I suppose from that it looks as though I’d have to set it up for each individual waypoint, which could be a little tedious on a longer ride! I wonder if there’s an option to automate it?

Also, I’m not clear on whether it will happily beep when I get near on whatever route I’m taking, or whether it actually wants to choose its own route to navigate me to the waypoint?

Thanks for all your help, btw! 😀

I suppose from that it looks as though I’d have to set it up for each individual waypoint, which could be a little tedious on a longer ride!

In fairness, I did suggest that might be the case in my first post 🙂

Also, I’m not clear on whether it will happily beep when I get near on whatever route I’m taking, or whether it actually wants to choose its own route to navigate me to the waypoint?

I think it’s nothing more than a proximity notification to a waypoint. It’s not going to act like a satnav
However, I don’t understand the last few sentences about google location geofencing

Turner guy, what’s the out front bar mount for the satmap? I like the sound of that.

I find it the best device for navigation, but it is bulky.

Geofencing is a service provided by Google to let apps know if you enter or leave a specified location. The accuracy may be in doubt because often Google tries to save power by lumping requests together (check email, calendar, do alarms etc) and doing them at the same time. This means if you think your phone is testing it’s location every 5 minutes, it might skip one poll but do two within a shorter time period. I’m guessing this is where the doubts will be.
My own app allows you to do something similar but I didnt use geofencing for this reason and a couple of others.