Set track points evenly to avoid "off track" Garmin Edge bugFORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

Hello, I'm new to this great tool, I’m looking for a feature. Apologies if it already exists:

With my edge 500, often when I plot a route and then follow it on my bike, I experience a known bug from Garmin: when "oncourse" (cycling exactly on the track) it says "of-course"and seconds later it comes back to "track found". A fix is documented here: https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?27017-Using-Gpsies-to-create-Courses-for-the-Edge-500)

The idea is to use a track with points set at regular intervals. The only way I knowto do this is to use a TCX converter (like GPSies). For some reason after doing this it fixes the issue.

I did not find this capability in plotaroute. Did I miss it? (the feature to remove some points is nice, but as it removes point on straight lines after I run it my Edge shows me off road on straight lines by lack of points). It would be great to have the option when we download from plot a route as it would avoid another step of converting the route after the download (which has drawbacks as well as conversion in GPSies removes the Turn informations…)

Thanks in advance for your advices. Kind regards from France

That's interesting - I wasn't aware that the Garmin Edge struggled to navigate routes properly when points were far apart.  We don't have a facility to create equidistant points at intervals along straight sections but I can put this on our feature request list to look into.  Thanks for the feedback.

John

That's really an annoying bug on Garmin Edge 500, that Garmin has not fixed for years. It is as if the GPS was looking inside a circle around your current position to find the next point of the track where you have to go, but if the next point is too far it does not find any and thinks you are off track.

The solution I have found by looking on Internet is in several steps:

- Create the track in plotaroute

- Download TCX

- Convert the track using GPSIES to have points spaced evenly

Then (optional):I If I want to add turn indications, I need to upload again in plotaroute and add the directions again, as GPSIES conversion removes all the indications, then download it again, without using the "remove point" feature of course. 

Cheers, and again big thanks for the quick answers!

I have exactly the same problem with the Garmin 310XT.  I have a similar workaround involving a command-line call to GPSBabel, but it's messy and hence not ideal

I'd also be very happy to see an option to add in additional points, such that there is a maximum distance (user specified) between plotted points.

eg if I specify a max distance of 100m, then the routing software will insert additional points between any pre-plotted points that are more than 100m apart.

In this case, if the watch screen was zoomed to be 200m wide, I could guarantee that the previous and following course points would map to the screen, and hence the software could plot the route and would not flag up as being off course.

I suppose you could also consider incorporating this feature into the course reduction routine, such that you remove redundant points, but iff they do not create adjacent coursepoints more than the specified distance apart.

Thanks for the suggestions Ian.  If anyone is interested in us developing a solution for this, please vote for it on our Feature Requests list (Feature Request ID 27).

John 

Hi John, I have a question off the back of this topic.  I created a very simple route in the app (4 trackpoints), dl it , then added in 3 additional trackpoints using gpsbabel.

gpsbabel -i gtrnctr -f a.tcx -x interpolate,distance=1 -o gtrnctr -F b.tcx

When I subsequently uploaded it back into the app, it seemed to have removed the additional points that I had added, as evidenced by the fact that

• I can't add a direction marker at the new points
• When going into drag mode, the points do not show up

Do you do any pre-processing of the file to remove points that are exactly on a straight line between the adjacent points?

Thanks

Ian

This is my original track I created (a.tcx)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>

<TrainingCenterDatabase xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabase/v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabase/v2 http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabasev2.xsd">

<Folders>

<Courses>

<CourseFolder Name="Courses">

<CourseNameRef>

<Id>a</Id>

</CourseNameRef>

</CourseFolder>

</Courses>

</Folders>

<Courses>

<Course>

<Name>a</Name>

<Lap>

<TotalTimeSeconds>2028</TotalTimeSeconds>

<DistanceMeters>5633.3876392945</DistanceMeters>

<BeginPosition>

<LatitudeDegrees>52.5872499</LatitudeDegrees>

<LongitudeDegrees>-1.1724472</LongitudeDegrees>

</BeginPosition>

<EndPosition>

<LatitudeDegrees>52.5834431</LatitudeDegrees>

<LongitudeDegrees>-1.1418056</LongitudeDegrees>

</EndPosition>

<Intensity>Active</Intensity>

<Cadence>0</Cadence>

</Lap>

<Track>

<Trackpoint>

<Time>2016-03-05T00:00:00Z</Time>

<Position>

<LatitudeDegrees>52.5872499</LatitudeDegrees>

<LongitudeDegrees>-1.1724472</LongitudeDegrees>

</Position>

<AltitudeMeters>75</AltitudeMeters>

<DistanceMeters>0</DistanceMeters>

<SensorState>Absent</SensorState>

</Trackpoint>

<Trackpoint>

<Time>2016-03-05T00:11:50Z</Time>

<Position>

<LatitudeDegrees>52.6031518</LatitudeDegrees>

<LongitudeDegrees>-1.1595726</LongitudeDegrees>

</Position>

<AltitudeMeters>62</AltitudeMeters>

<DistanceMeters>1972.6864609377091</DistanceMeters>

<SensorState>Absent</SensorState>

</Trackpoint>

<Trackpoint>

<Time>2016-03-05T00:23:25Z</Time>

<Position>

<LatitudeDegrees>52.5978866</LatitudeDegrees>

<LongitudeDegrees>-1.1323643</LongitudeDegrees>

</Position>

<AltitudeMeters>79</AltitudeMeters>

<DistanceMeters>3903.4087876465737</DistanceMeters>

<SensorState>Absent</SensorState>

</Trackpoint>

<Trackpoint>

<Time>2016-03-05T00:33:48Z</Time>

<Position>

<LatitudeDegrees>52.5834431</LatitudeDegrees>

<LongitudeDegrees>-1.1418056</LongitudeDegrees>

</Position>

<AltitudeMeters>85</AltitudeMeters>

<DistanceMeters>5633.3876392945</DistanceMeters>

<SensorState>Absent</SensorState>

</Trackpoint>

</Track>

</Course>

</Courses>

</TrainingCenterDatabase>

And this is the track after i interpolated points at 1 mile distance (note the additional 3 trackpoints) - b.tcx

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>

<TrainingCenterDatabase xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabase/v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabase/v2 http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/TrainingCenterDatabasev2.xsd">

  <Courses>

    <Course>

      <Name>a</Name>

      <Lap>

        <TotalTimeSeconds>2028</TotalTimeSeconds>

        <DistanceMeters>5633.39</DistanceMeters>

        <BeginPosition>

          <LatitudeDegrees>52.587250</LatitudeDegrees>

          <LongitudeDegrees>-1.172447</LongitudeDegrees>

        </BeginPosition>

        <EndPosition>

          <LatitudeDegrees>52.583443</LatitudeDegrees>

          <LongitudeDegrees>-1.141806</LongitudeDegrees>

        </EndPosition>

        <Intensity>Active</Intensity>

      </Lap>

      <Track>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:00:00Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.5872499</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1724472</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>75.0</AltitudeMeters>

        </Trackpoint>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:09:39Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.6002230</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1619446</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>62.0</AltitudeMeters>

          <Extensions>

            <TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2">

              <Speed>2.780</Speed>

            </TPX>

          </Extensions>

        </Trackpoint>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:11:50Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.6031518</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1595726</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>62.0</AltitudeMeters>

          <Extensions>

            <TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2">

              <Speed>2.774</Speed>

            </TPX>

          </Extensions>

        </Trackpoint>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:21:29Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.5987635</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1368928</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>79.0</AltitudeMeters>

          <Extensions>

            <TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2">

              <Speed>2.780</Speed>

            </TPX>

          </Extensions>

        </Trackpoint>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:23:25Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.5978866</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1323643</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>79.0</AltitudeMeters>

          <Extensions>

            <TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2">

              <Speed>2.771</Speed>

            </TPX>

          </Extensions>

        </Trackpoint>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:33:04Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.5844503</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1411474</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>85.0</AltitudeMeters>

          <Extensions>

            <TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2">

              <Speed>2.780</Speed>

            </TPX>

          </Extensions>

        </Trackpoint>

        <Trackpoint>

          <Time>2016-03-05T00:33:48Z</Time>

          <Position>

            <LatitudeDegrees>52.5834431</LatitudeDegrees>

            <LongitudeDegrees>-1.1418056</LongitudeDegrees>

          </Position>

          <AltitudeMeters>85.0</AltitudeMeters>

          <Extensions>

            <TPX xmlns="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/ActivityExtension/v2">

              <Speed>2.742</Speed>

            </TPX>

          </Extensions>

        </Trackpoint>

      </Track>

    </Course>

  </Courses>

</TrainingCenterDatabase>

Hi Ian - Yes, we do pre-process routes that you upload to the site, as routes recorded on GPS devices tend to have a large number of redundant points, which takes up extra storage space and causes the route to load more slowly. 

John

Thanks for the update John, I suspected as much but wanted to chech that I wasn't doing something stupid!

Any chance we could revisit this? The latest Fenix 6 firmware seems to have exacerbated this issue and lots of people are reporting off course issues.

Hopefully Garmin will fix it but if not....

Hi Stefan - it's on our Feature Requests list (number 27) but doesn't have many votes yet. If anyone else is interested in us developing a new tool for this (to add points to a route so that they are no more than a specified distance apart) please add your vote.