I was wondering if someone could help me out by checking my routes on their Infotainment GPS. I have extremely limited experience with the system; I had my Limited for 3 days before leaving home for my job. I will be returning home here shortly and will leave the next morning for roughly a 3000 mile trip thru the South West. If someone could help me out just to make sure I didn’t screw anything up with the way points and such it would be greatly appreciated.

You can email me at acftgrunt@yahoo.com

 

I guess no one can help.

 

We can help - it does take time as some of us are not here all the time.

Since we have the same system, what you see will be what I see. But, if you like, try this - send me your ride planner file and I will take a look.

I can tell you what I see.

Do you have any specific questions?

 

Cycle7447,
Thank you for your reply. I didn't know I could attach files to the post. Learn something new everyday. I am not very familiar with the infotainment system at all. I have read the manual, played with the online tutorials, and read but loads on here.
What I have done with my .gpx files was open them up with textedit on my mac and renamed my waypoints. I did create the files on the Harley Ride Planner. So I hope they import correctly for you.
Again Thank you for your reply and your help.

Bill

 

Bill -

Just reviewed your Ride Planner files. I see Day 1, Day 2, Day 4 & Day 5. No Day 3?

My observations:

The files were overly complicated. The first 3 had multiple routes within the files. I think this is an artifact from Ride Planner - I believe you left your routing stops as destinations & didn't convert them to waypoints? The files with multiple routes were broken into routes between start to destination 1, destination 1 to destination 2, etc. The last file (Day 5) had a single route included so it appears that file had your routing stops converted to waypoints.

Sometimes these overly complicated files can cause problems when you load/run them (not found a consistent problem, but my experience has been that simpler files tend to work better).

I did not actually load them into my bike. I did however, run them through Route Converter to clean them up (simplify). I gave the routes the same internal name as the GPX file name. I deleted the multiple routes from those files that had them. All routing stops are now converted to waypoints. Your waypoint names are way too long to display on the bike's GPS, but I did not change them since I wasn't sure of your naming preference. I have attached my edits with a .txt extension added to the file name. To use the files, just rename them by deleting the .txt from the end of the file name.

Looks like a nice trip! Have fun.

Dave

 

Bill - you will be in a lot of trouble if you listen to this guy names HAMMZ (LOL)

Actually I know him - we belong to the same HOG Chapter and he's a great guy. He did exactly what I was going to do and I completely agree with him. You do indeed have a great trip.

I may have somehow missed it - but, I did not see a day 3.

Click on the files he sent you and they will go to your download file. You can then open them in Ride Planner and see what he had done. Remember to save them in Ride Planner.

Once you are happy with your routes, just export them to your bike.

I do have another thought for you. Day 1 is 568 miles, Day 2 - 463 miles, Day 4 - 219 miles and Day 5 - 278 miles. Not sure what your riding habits are - but, if I were taking this trip, I might want to reduce the miles on Day 1 and Day 2 a little - and increase the other two.

Hope this helps

 

Hammz and Cycle7447,
Again thank you both for looking at these, and there is no Day 3 because that is a goof off day in the Grand Canyon.

Hammz, when I put your day one in Ride Planner, it showed me the most direct route to Alamosa. It didn't take me thru Dodge City. Here are some screen shots to show you what I mean.






Cycle7447, The first two days are long just so we can get to where we are going. Long-yes, Managable-yes, Hauling ***-no. Once we get to the GC thats where we take things alot slower and enjoy the scenery.

Again thank you for helping me out.

 

Bill -

That observation of missing Dodge City is an anomaly of Ride Planner. You can be assured that the Dodge City waypoint is indeed, in the GPX file and will appear as a waypoint on your GPS. Attached is that file, with some formating for better readability. Open it as a text file & you'll see the data for Dodge City is in the file. This is just another example of why I have stopped using Ride Planner & now build my routes directly within Route Converter.

Here's the route in Route Converter with the Dodge City waypoint selected:

 

Hammz, I am in the process of getting Route Converter. How many waypoints are too many in your opinion and what would be too long of a name?

 

The number of waypoints relate directly to the capabilities of the GPS unit. The 6.5GT Infotainment system software through version 1.18.1 was limited to 10 waypoints. With version 1.18.3 that waypoint limit was increased to 100 waypoints. Some HDF members ran tests indicating they were only able to effectively use about 55 waypoints in version 1.18.3 despite the release notes saying the new limit was 100. I have never found a need for using more than around 30 waypoints for the routes I have created, so I can't really speak to whether the real limit is 100 or 55.

Name length is more limited to the useful length of the waypoint name string displayed on screen in the GPS. Because of this, I try to limit waypoint names to about 8 characters in length. The reason for this is because sometimes while actually using the GPS, there may (will) be times when you may need to deviate from the planned route slightly. If this happens at a point where you actually don't travel thru a waypoint, the GPS will try to circle back to go thru that waypoint. The solution then will be to tell the GPS to skip that waypoint & continue the route at the next waypoint. Keeping track of where you are at in the overall route becomes easier when those waypoints have a sequential number & short description that fully display on the GPS system. Hence the shorter names become extremely useful while moving & modifying route directions "on the fly".

The naming convention I use would be to use a sequential number for each waypoint, followed by a short descriptive geographic that cues me to where I am along the route.

Hope that explanation makes sense for you.


Dave