Destination Waypoint Missing in Zumo XT

[John S Parry]

I ran a MRA route that I executed in my Zumo XT the other day. It was saved as GPX 1.1 like I do all my MRA routes. Everything ran fine until the end of the route. Instead of finishing at my destination, it finished at the last shaping point (#13) roughly 20 miles before:

It animates prefect on the web Route planner. I modified the route in MRA to a few other variations to troubleshoot. First, instead my home being both start and finish, I changed to finish to a closer point on the street. I also tried changing the location of shaping points leading to my house. It always finishes at the last shaping point. The XT in its route calculation is not picking up waypoint #14. I don't know which side is the culprit.

This is unusual behavior, and I haven't seen it before. Any thoughts??

[Marinus van Deudekom]

@John-S-Parry Maybe if you Share that route here we can help you. Make sure it's set to public

[Don Stauffer]

I've occasionally had the same issue. I did some work testing the route, but did not come up with a final conclusion. If the destination is critical (such as getting to a hotel before dark) I sometimes save the destination directly to my Garmin as a precaution.

Here is a link to my (public) route that had this issue:

https://www.myrouteapp.com/route/open/6733240

[John S Parry]

@Don-Stauffer Thanks for the confirmation. I'll go ahead and make this route public for anyone to look at, but it's good to know I'm not completely losing my mind.

I knew my way home on this one but there are scenarios where this would be unacceptable. I didn't verify the route at this level in my XT, so it was a surprise when it happened.

[John S Parry]

Before taking it any further here and possible wasting the time of good folks wanting to help, I decided to quickly recreate the route from scratch instead of constantly modifying the original. It is semi-complex, but I've worked it so many times I can do it in my sleep.

I went through the whole process, checked all the route waypoints on my XT, and it looks good. Going back through my mind and all the iterations, the only thing I can think of was that at one point I made a number of modifications (deletes and new waypoints) leading towards the end of the route. I can only guess that something got messed up and MRA got confused. Stuff happens.

It still makes me a bit uneasy, but I'll go with it for the time being. Thanks.

[Marinus van Deudekom]

@John-S-Parry @John-S-Parry of you both had the same issue maybe thats because the last via point is not on a actual road

[John S Parry]

@Marinus-van-Deudekom I'm not sure what you're looking at. The last via point is my home address. It's not an arbitrary point selected off-road. The route is a complete circle (a big 470-mile circle) but it starts and ends at my address. Animating the route in MRA shows it ends at my house as intended.

Still, thinking that might have triggered a problem, I previous modified the route to end at a point on my street prior to reaching my house. The route still ended in the XT at the last shaping point.

Please clarify if you're referencing something else.

[John S Parry]

@Marinus-van-Deudekom The version of the route I just recreated from scratch re-calculates correctly in the XT in either scenario: (1) Start and End with the same address (2) Start and End with different addresses.

At this point, I'm going with the problem being too many modifications and something getting messed up in the process of creating the GPX. If someone wants to offer a different explanation, that's fine. But I'm OK now moving forward.

[Con Hennekens]

@John-S-Parry, I think the culprit is rather in the Garmin than in MRA to be honest. Checking the GPX with a text editor could take the guesswork out of it, and show if the destination is present in the file or not.

[John S Parry]

@Con-Hennekens that could very well be the case. I don't know enough about the internals of a GPX file to say one way or another.

What makes me suspicious is the following:

1. Before I made a lot of last-minute changes to the MRA route, as far as I remember, it looked fine on the XT side.

2. After the series of MRA changes, I transferred to the XT for my ride, and I got lazy and didn't do my normal detailed XT route verification. I didn't know anything was wrong until I got towards the end of the ride.

3. After returning home and investigating, no matter what changes I made to the route on MRA, a correct transfer to the XT didn't work. The XT always created the end point wherever the last shaping point was located.

4. I Finally deciding to start from a clean slate and recreate the route from scratch. Everything then worked correctly. The MRA route recalculated in the XT as created.

This all tells me that the MRA created GPX file is the culprit. The XT only works with what it's given. Garbage in, garbage out. Again, I'm not trying to find fault here -- just a logical answer. In Google Maps, I'll sometimes create a route and then proceed to make a bunch of stopping point changes. At some point, the calculated route is all messed up and the resulting map is a mess. At that point, there is no other choice but to start over. I believe a similar thing happened here.

My lesson is to assume nothing and always check the re-calculated route on the XT. A lesson that's easy to forget when things generally go well. I've had rare, strange results when creating routes in Garmin Basecamp and transferring to the XT. None of this is usual, but the minute you let your guard down, surprises can happen.

[Con Hennekens]

@John-S-Parry, reading the GPX file is not hard. If you wish me to look at it, you me by PM. I will provide an email address. I do need to know the address of the destination though.

Just a thought: could it be that start and finish were THAT close that Zumo thinks it is the same and leaves the last one out?

[John S Parry]

@Con-Hennekens when I recreated the route from scratch. I started with my home address being the start and my next-door neighbor being the finish. It recalculated in the XT correctly. I then modified the MRA route to make my home address both the start and the finish. Again, it recalculated in the XT correctly.

My habit in round trip routes is to use my home address for both the start and the finish. I've never previously had a problem in MRA. I've also never had a problem in Basecamp or inRoute. Maybe there is a better best practice for this, but again, I've never had a previous issue with this practice in any environment.

I'm attributing this to a one-off, since I couldn't recreate it. If it happens again, I'd appreciate you looking at the GPX file for diagnosis. Thanks.

[Con Hennekens]

@John-S-Parry, I agree, if it is not reproducable, it is hard to discover any problem.

[Brian McG]

@John-S-Parry Unfortunately with an XT "garbage in, garbage out" is not the appropriate phrase. The XT can screw up a perfectly good route / gpx.

I would pretty much bet on the issue being with the XT, there are multiple known issues with the XT.

When navigating with the XT do you have route recalculate enabled?

If recalculate is on & there has been a slight deviation during the trip, it is possible the XT may have entered into the RUT / CEP loop where the XT shows a blue spinning circle in the route info panel.
With this issue the XT gets confused & half (nav instructions) is working on the correct data & current position, the other half (route info) is out of sync & working on data at least one waypoint behind.
It would not surprise me if due to the out of sync calculations occuring the XT suddenly decided it had reached the end of the route.

[John S Parry]

@Brian-McG LOL... You're correct. the XT can be a finicky device.

Again, I'm just suspicious given the total circumstances. Clearly, when I recreated the route from scratch this morning, it wasn't "identical" in every sense to the original. It covers the exact same path (roads and turns), but the location of specific shaping points were obviously a little off from the original. These are manual placements and impossible to recreate exactly to the same GPS coordinates. But otherwise, no differences that would materially change the route.

With the XT, re-calculation is automatic when the route is initially imported into the XT Trip Planner. And the route recalculates automatically right before the route is executed. This is controlled by the XT and can't be changed. To my knowledge, the only route recalculation you can manipulate in Settings is Off-Route. You have the option of Automatic, Off or Prompted. I never went off-route during this trip. I have the setting at Prompted, and never issued a recalculate during this trip.

Again, I couldn't recreate the scenario when I recreated the trip from scratch. Maybe if I did a large number of modifications, I could trigger some strange behavior. But I can't spend any more time on it unless it happens again. Hopefully, it won't.

[John S Parry]

One more thing....

I went back to look at the version of the route that prematurely finished as previously described. I see a red dot (circled in blue):

I don't remember seeing this earlier, but maybe I didn't have the right zoom level. I did a search on this but came up empty -- that's why I'm asking here.

BTW, this shaping point (#13) location was a mistake in the route that I didn't catch. I meant it to be on the highway directly above. Here is the route with public viewing:

https://www.myrouteapp.com/route/open/9582564

[Con Hennekens]

@John-S-Parry, Strange, I have never seen such a dot either...

[Brian McG]

@John-S-Parry your 100% correct with your descriptions of when an XT calculates importing & starting a route
Where things can & seem to have gone awry is exactly at point 13 where you have deviated from the planned route.
The XT would have been expecting to come off route 118 & up the small road to point 13.
I am assuming you carried straight on along route 118 which will have made the XT perform a recalculation to either return to point 13 or possibly skip it.
Either way this deviation could very easily have got the XT into one of its confused loops which happen frequently wen recalculation is set to automatic or prompted

[Nick Carthew]

@John-S-Parry said in Destination Waypoint Missing in Zumo XT:

One more thing....

I went back to look at the version of the route that prematurely finished as previously described. I see a red dot (circled in blue):

The red dot is from the distance slider at the bottom.

[John S Parry]

@Brian-McG Thanks Brian. At the time while riding, I was surprised by the XT deviating me off the 118. I know that area/side road well and knew it would only be a very small deviation to follow and keep the route intact. Out of curiosity, I proceeded to the side road, and when I reached the end point you see on the map, the route completed in the XT. So, there was no deviation or recalculation.

As I mentioned, that point #13 was a mistake. I didn't have my glasses on and thought I was placing a shaping point on the 118. I'm guessing what happened is that I actually placed an off-road point somewhere between the 118 and that side road, and MRA decided to place the point on the road itself. Maybe it would have run properly on the phone app, but there was something in the GPX that tripped the XT up.

I wanted to play with it, so I copied the route to a new name and corrected it, deleting #13 and adding a new #13 on the 118. No matter what I did, the XT would always stop at the last shaping point before real end point. This is all conjecture, but I think the original #13 somehow corrupted things when saving the GPX.

I've since recreated the route from scratch, and all waypoints transfer correctly to the XT. Maybe my hypothesis is way off base, but I can't figure out another explanation.