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Route Planning with Lezyne Devices

by PogLord
Fri, Sep 08, 2017 11:07
9

 

Hi there! First post on here and hoping for some sensible, cut-through-the-guff advice on planning my routes.

Got a Lezyne mini GPS which works well for my purposes and I like it.  New update makes it even more useful, however desktop route planning seems to be a bit of a faff.  Lezyne’s own route building tool will create a proper turn-by-turn route no problem, but if you want it to go somewhere specific it’s a case of sticking bunch of waypoints in which is quite fussy.  Basically it has no drag-to-alter like googlemaps or some of the other online tools. 

 

So first question:  What’s the best tool for sensibly dragging a route around, then having it spit out an actual TCX file with turns in it?  RideWithGPS seems to do this if you pay them for it.  Do other options exist? 

 

I’m actually happy with just the breadcrumb trail for a lot of rides (when I mostly know where I’m going) but would like to add a few of my own turn directions to a turnless GPX file.  This would be really useful as I could plan routes on the web, have GPS visualiser or whatever create a GPX file and then put in the turns I need.

 

So second question:  Is it possible to add my own turn cues to a GPX route?

 

I’m partly trying to mitigate being directed down canal paths here; this seems to be a perennial problem which hasn’t quite been solved yet.  I suspect the answers to these questions might be ‘pony up for RideWithGPS’ (might do) or ‘buy a Garmin’ (probably won’t). 

Curious to know what others are doing with route planning anyway.  Thanks for reading!

 

 

If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.

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9 comments

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graybags | 6 years ago
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I use Bike Hike, which is free to use and you can save routes either as GPX or TCX files. It is also handy as it displays maps simultaneously both as a typical map and also as an OS, which is useful for cross referencing

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Wafty Crank | 6 years ago
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I've got a Lezyne and plot routes on RWGPS. Works ok but the turn cue that comes up on the screen is a bit garbled eg: Turn left 496 to turn right 2. It's trying to give you info about the upcoming turn and the one after, which is useful enough but it can't display all the information (the right 2 should read right 232)

The other problem is Lezyne Root advises you to set the turn notification distance to 0 on the site you're downloading from (RWGPS default is 30m). When I did this I got the cue about 100m in advance (as promised) but then the same cue again as I went through the turn and the cue then stays on the screen with the distance increasing for about 1km. In short, leave the RWGPS turn cue at 30m.

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Anthony.C | 6 years ago
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That site looks ok but  a bit of a faff. If you like simplicity the easiest way by far to plot a route is with Garmin Mapsource, I got it with a driving gps many years ago but you can get it here, https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-install-mapsource-if-it-didnt-come-with-your-gps/  and you will then need some to install some free maps from here http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/.  You could also use Basecamp but it's not  quite  as simple.

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PogLord replied to Anthony.C | 6 years ago
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Anthony.C wrote:

That site looks ok but  a bit of a faff. If you like simplicity the easiest way by far to plot a route is with Garmin Mapsource, I got it with a driving gps many years ago but you can get it here, https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-install-mapsource-if-it-didnt-come-with-your-gps/  and you will then need some to install some free maps from here http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/.  You could also use Basecamp but it's not  quite  as simple.

That's great, thanks. I'm an aincient Mac user and on android so I don't think mapsource is a goer for me unless I dual-boot but Basecamp has a legacy version. Will check it out.

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PogLord | 6 years ago
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Plot a route totally works!! Amazing. I may even be won over to plotting rather than dragging now.

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PogLord | 6 years ago
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Thanks for the advice - will take a look at plot a route.

Have discovered that lezyne can handle gpx with turns in (even has an extra icon to deonte this) but this only seems to work with other people's rides.. I can even add my own turns into theirs but not into my own rides..!

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alansmurphy | 6 years ago
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Plot A Route works very well on my Garmin and Mio devices, and you can happily see and steal routes around you.

 

Have also found using Strava on the desktop and downloading as a GPX works, especially for things like the Manchester 100 last weekend that had no GPX, we just downloaded last years ride that we had done. OK so they changed the course as late as the Sunday morning but nothing could have helped us with that and 90% was right which gave us advance warnings of turns...

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coys67 | 6 years ago
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I have been using plotaroute.com for a while now, works fine with my edge 520, its free and the turn by turn is great, worth having a look at, imo.

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Al__S | 6 years ago
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I've not found anything else that matches RideWithGPS for producing turn-by-turn for my Garmin (510). It is painful paying yet another sub!

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