North East Ring

[Nick Algar - Competition Secretary]

43 minutes ago, Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO said:

Totally, agree. The googlemap was purely for sharing a route and not planned to drive it from. I use it to plan Euroblats and then translate them onto my TomTom and set waypoints. We then manually move through the waypoints to avoid exactly the problem you describe.

 

e.g. Here's the start, middle and finish of the Stelvio pass-

 

 

 

Hi Ian,

Interesting discussion as I do a lot of route planning, our area, Scotland, Wales, Ireland etc and am using Google Maps for it. But it's increasingly becoming hard work due to the issue of it constantly trying to improve on your route that you really wanted to take. Also you run out of waypoints at time. 

Are you finding TomTom better and are you using the App or an Actual TomTom ? 

Thanks for any guidance.

[Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO]

21 minutes ago, Nick Algar said:

 

Hi Ian,

Interesting discussion as I do a lot of route planning, our area, Scotland, Wales, Ireland etc and am using Google Maps for it. But it's increasingly becoming hard work due to the issue of it constantly trying to improve on your route that you really wanted to take. Also you run out of waypoints at time. 

Are you finding TomTom better and are you using the App or an Actual TomTom ? 

Thanks for any guidance.

Hey Nick,

 

I primarly use the TomTom app on my PC for detailed route planning. It then synchronises with my TomTom device.

 

TomTom calls waypoints Myplaces and stores them in Alphabetical order on the PC, the device and the phone app

 

 

We've evolved the system year on year. I normally have the username and pwd of the other 3 drivers for our Euroblats and program all 4 TomTom devices from my PC to ensure we've all got identical waypoints for the trip.

 

In the weeks leading up to the trip. I number the waypoints like this- 

 

a.001 home

a.002 Tagg Lane 

a.003 Pub nr. Hull

a.004 Fuel nr. Ferry

a.005 Ferry Port

b.001 Rotterdam Ferry Port

b.002 Fuel stop

b.003 Rest Stop

b.004 Museum in Dusseldorf

 

etc.

 

Where a = day 1, b = day 2 (trips have grown in length) so 1, 2,3, only works for 9 day trips or shorter.

 

At the end of each day, we can then each rename the previous day's waypoints with the prefix 'Z' to move them to the bottom of the list, from either the TomTom Device or the phone app, so the following day, the points for the day are at the top of the 'My Places' Menu.

 

Here's our route from Austria to our first hotel from this years, trips hence all places are prefixed Z

 

 

Then in subsequent years, we can edit the waypoint name to use it again etc.

 

What's really annoying is you can't share waypoints from one TomTom account to another, so they have to be manually programmed!

 

In operation whilst driving, once we're 2-3 miles from a waypoint, we'll generally swap to the next one. 

 

You can use Myroutes in TomTom, but I've found it can get hung up if you don't hit a waypoint exactly and doesn't move on to the next one and stubornly keeps trying to route you to the one you've passed!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nick Algar - Competition Secretary]

31 minutes ago, Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO said:

Hey Nick,

 

I primarly use the TomTom app on my PC for detailed route planning. It then synchronises with my TomTom device.

 

TomTom calls waypoints Myplaces and stores them in Alphabetical order on the PC, the device and the phone app

 

 

We've evolved the system year on year. I normally have the username and pwd of the other 3 drivers for our Euroblats and program all 4 TomTom devices from my PC to ensure we've all got identical waypoints for the trip.

 

In the weeks leading up to the trip. I number the waypoints like this- 

 

a.001 home

a.002 Tagg Lane 

a.003 Pub nr. Hull

a.004 Fuel nr. Ferry

a.005 Ferry Port

b.001 Rotterdam Ferry Port

b.002 Fuel stop

b.003 Rest Stop

b.004 Museum in Dusseldorf

 

etc.

 

Where a = day 1, b = day 2 (trips have grown in length) so 1, 2,3, only works for 9 day trips or shorter.

 

At the end of each day, we can then each rename the previous day's waypoints with the prefix 'Z' to move them to the bottom of the list, from either the TomTom Device or the phone app, so the following day, the points for the day are at the top of the 'My Places' Menu.

 

Here's our route from Austria to our first hotel from this years, trips hence all places are prefixed Z

 

 

Then in subsequent years, we can edit the waypoint name to use it again etc.

 

What's really annoying is you can't share waypoints from one TomTom account to another, so they have to be manually programmed!

 

In operation whilst driving, once we're 2-3 miles from a waypoint, we'll generally swap to the next one. 

 

You can use Myroutes in TomTom, but I've found it can get hung up if you don't hit a waypoint exactly and doesn't move on to the next one and stubornly keeps trying to route you to the one you've passed!

 

31 minutes ago, Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO said:

Thanks Ian

I can see how your doing that, interesting that it still has some issues. I know Google maps can sometimes get hung up if you miss a waypoint, but it's then simple to delete it and keep going. I will often do that just before I get to it if I'm concerned it's in the wrong place. I've taken these days to putting the Waypoint into the middle of a road, just outside say a Village etc so there is less chance of missing it  

 

Your numbering system is great, really like that. I'll have a look at TomTom and see which suits what I am doing best.

 

I am often doing routes for big groups and one aspect of Google Maps is it's so easy to share the route. 

It's interesting that we are all looking for the Holly grail of route planning, one day maybe. 😄 

 

 

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Sadly, the holy grail, - "Tyre" route planning software, was around for only a few years of active development before it "advanced" and changed direction somewhat.

 

I've not looked into it for four or five years though, so maybe its replacement is better now.

 

The original (small) subscription service was great, based around Googles map engine, it allowed you to build routes up from as many waypoints as you wanted, and allowed you to very accurately place the waypoints. Before exporting to TomTom as routes/tracks and similar to Garmin.

 

Back in the day, the Tom Toms it was compatible with had very easily accessed route controls, while you were following one, so it was easy to tap the screen to move on to the next way point, if for some reason you realised you weren't going to hit one. 

 

Then Tom Tom started messing around with their own firmware, making the controls really hard to get to, and even removing at one stage the ability to import routes from every new product except the Riders. They did eventually bring some route/track support back.

 

I think the Tyre planning software people changed as a result of Tom Tom's mucking around, they launched their own fully compatible GPS app, and cloud based planning tool. But whilst it did it's job well, it wasn't as nice or intuitive to use as the old system, and meant another GPS app to buy/subscribe to. I must admit, after a year of using it, I drifted away.

 

Now as Ian said, we treat what would have been waypoints as individual destinations/POI and manually select them, creating as many or as few as seem to be needed based on the complexities of the road.

 

The other thing to be aware of when sharing routes like this what ever the way you do it, is it's important everyone has their sat nav set to the same route planning settings.

ie

fastest or thrill, if thrill what options for twistiness/hills. exclude motorways, toll roads etc, whether traffic updates are on or not and so forth. Variations in any or all these, will cause the sat nav to route differently sometimes.

[tex]

I usually use Tom Tom mobile to drive in the westy or my other car if touring.. Its easier to use. Also has the unlimited points to allow precise route YOU want to go. It has a few draw backs, mainly the lack of sharing.. Which I would of done here. Plus speed cameras, fuel on route, route saving etc. Longer tours I save it by the day so the route is not huge and if you lose it.. 

I'd like to see Google use live weather integrated, so I can navigate around rain 😁

 

[Flying Carrot Steve]

I have to say I tried Tom Tom Mobile and thought it was dreadful. Next year I will be using CoPilot GPS after trying the trial free period. It's £13.99 a year and way better than Google Maps IMHO. It is for me at least the best one I've tried so far. 

[Kingster]

I used to use MotoGoLoco website. It used a version of google maps that allowed more waypoints and then you could share it as well as download gpx (and other) satnav files. Was brilliant, but sadly got kyboshed by google some years ago. 
 

I tried Copilot back in 2016 on our Alps trip. It got me lost more than once and had a nasty habit of rerouting back to the start if you stopped for a coffee/food. In a foreign land it was easy to accept the route until you spotted “that weird looking bridge” again after 50 miles in the reverse direction 🤬🤬🤬

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

Interesting, the original Tyre software seems to be back and being developed again.

 

https://tyre2navigate.com/?lang=en

 

May take a look at this when I have a mo. Depends how well it plays with current Tom Toms

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

For ref, this was what replaced Tyre originally, My Route App

https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/home

 

Sounds like one of the old original partners has left and brought back Tyre, though.

[Stuart]

I use MyRoute on my laptop and I think it's great for designing your own route. It's not great at importing routes but if you create one you can export in both TomTom and Garmin formats. As someone said above, make sure the waypoints are accurate or it will try to take you back if you miss one. But that's easy enough to do