TomTom Rider track overlay experiment
One of the biggest differences between Garmin Zumo and TomTom Rider navigation devices is the way they handle tracks.
The Garmin Zumo has the ability to set Recalculation mode to off. Also, many models have options to display a track even if its off-road for off-road navigation.
When a track is opened on a TomTom Rider the Rider always maps the track to the road. When you make a detour for example because a road is closed the TomTom Rider recalculates a new route to the track.
Is this bad? No, the Rider helps you to find the best way to follow the track as closely as possible over the road.
So why this experiment.
There is no option in the TomTom Rider to see if the route displayed on the TomTom Rider is the actual track. Many TomTom Rider owners like an option to see if the route is on-track. Some even like the option to show the track for off-road navigation.
How does it work?
Simple the TomTom Rider has an option to display POI’s. So, my idea was if I convert route point to POI’s I get a track overlay displayed as POI’s on the TomTom Rider.
All I needed to do, write a program to convert GPX track point to an OV2 POI file. And I did so you can download this file on my website an experiment for yourself.
https://roadrider.jouwweb.nl/gpx-track-2-ov2
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Comments
• The number of poi’s shown on the TomTom Rider depends on the zoom level. With a low zoom level The Riders skips many of the POI’s. Personally I use a high zoom level 2D view with Automatic zoom Based on road type when riding. This way I can see all POI’s.
• The actual number of POI’s in the OV2 file.
My program doesn’t add any POI-track-points. So the number of POI’s in the OV2 file depend on two factors.
• The actual number of track points and there distance in the source GPX file.
• To prevent a POI overload I added the Minimal Distance slider. Lowering the slider to 5M will generate (almost) all POI-track-points.
The number of track-points in the GPX file heavily depends on the program used to create the GPX file. For example with MyRouteApp the average distance is about 100m and some GPS tracker programs and BaseCamp create much more track-points. Also both trackers and most route programs the distance between track-points depends on the speed driven.
But even with 150m POI-track-points distance I don’t think there is much room for missing a detour when you use it as overlay for a track on the road. (In this case you will load both the OV2 and the original Track)
For Off-Road use you will need more POI-track-points so use the 5m slider setting.
After driving more than 1200 Km with a POI track point overlay active I do not want to go back driving without a POI track point overlay active.
You can now see directly if you made a wrong turn and drive off track.
With roadblocks you just have to zoom to know where the original track is and drive an alternative route to your track.
(The Rider changes your route directly when you drive off-track. So you normally you don't know if an when you drive the original track)
Changes;
BugFixes;
Non - no Bugs have been reported.
Link: https://roadrider.jouwweb.nl/gpx-track-2-ov2
KeepTrack is a little program that removes route info from GPX files.
Why, Now you just import the Track after a GPX import in TomTom MyDrive. No need to delete the route anymore.
Download link: https://roadrider.jouwweb.nl/keep-track
However, for me this is just to much work. They should build it into the rider. Just have the rider recalculate the track once imported. The track it calculated just before you push "drive" should be available by default (different color). In the end I would like to know: where have I been, where am I going and what was the orignal plan?
To me that is the core function of a motorcycle GPS device. Instead of adding features like this, they add whatapp support...WTF!
Anyway, kudo's for the app you made!
Before you can hit drive this recalculation is already done when You activate the track.
See; https://discussions.tomtom.com/en/discussion/1034426/tomtom-rider-why-no-route-possible-message-when-displaying-loaded-track#latest
Not hitting drive is a trick to disable recalculation during navigation. This can be handy when you don’t follow a part of the track or driving the track in the other direction.