Group route sharing advice
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I have planned several routes (in MRA) for a group trip to Spain.
I have the navigation app but others have an array of different systems and I want them to be able to lead but not go off-piste and ruin my hard work!
Has anyone had this experience and has some tips? I have made sure to compare routes with Tom Tom etc.
Should they download routes as tracks and switch off automatic calculation? What works best please?
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The group I ride with is set up in a similar way. Although a track should work we very often find route differences between MRA, Tom Tom Garmins etc, even different versions of Tom Tom. The differences are usually minor though.
Our solution is to use enough waypoints that any key parts of the route are invariate, and then not to worry about it. Whoever is leading is in charge and you follow them whatever your nav device says. We usually get there in the end. -
If a route made in e.g. the HERE-card contains a road that is not on the map that a TomTom Rider uses, the TomTom device will automatically choose another road (by software design). So be sure you compare in advance the created routes with the Toolkit and make the routes the same for all devices.
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When I ride with a group I always send a track to the participants. This gives me the greatest certainty that the various navigation apps and systems will use the route as it was created. I advise Garmin users to turn off recalculation, and convert the track/trail into a journey in the garmin device. What @Rob-Veerman says use the toolkit (gold version) to compare the here map with the tomtom and osm map.
What @Tony-13 says we do too, the lead rider determines where everyone goes, no discussion. -
It's the nature of each Navigation devices, to calculate (min. onetime after import) route by it's own algorithm. You can't avoid this.
As others wrote: set many route points and compare in MRA-Routeplanner if route will be same in TomTom map.
At least, export your route as gpx incl. route AND track (usually gpx 1.1 format).
Then your group mates should import your file and should display on their screen both, route and track. Then it becomes obvious on each device, if it calculates the route exactly along the track. -
All the above posts give good advice,
it is just the nature of having multiple different devices that there are going to be inconsistencies in the routes due to the different routing algorithms/profiles that are used to calculate the routes.
All you can do is try to constrain the routes to be as similar as possible by adding lots of pointsOne trick I use to help identify if there is going to be an issue is in the name of the route I add the total mileage that I believe the route should be, the mileage MRA has calculated with the Here routing.
When friends load the route to their Garmin or TomTom if there is a big difference in mileage calculated then it implies it is a poorly constrained route & the navigation systems have a serious divergence somewhere in the route
It is not a perfect solution & it won't catch the small deviations but it can serve as a warning something is amiss
