Route Export to Garmin zumo XT

Quote from pe112 on 14.08.2022, 02:17

Hi Guido,

first of all: Scenic is great!

I was looking for an iPad app for planning routes offline for my Garmin zumo XT while on the road. (Planning on the XT is crappy.) Scenic fills that gap almost perfectly. Powerful, easy to use and fast route planning and GPX export 🙂 Thanks a lot for that!

Now there are two improvement that I would like to suggest for the GPX export:

1. Mapping Scenic Stops and Vias to the corresponding Garmin Route Point types

I found that you are exporting two variants of a route in the GPX file: "(Vias and Stops as Routepoints)" and "(Vias as path - Garmin Extension)".

As far as I understand the first one maps Scenic Stops and Vias to plain GPX <rtept>s while the second one maps Scenic Stops to plain GPX <rtept>s and Scenic Vias into the Garmin GPX path extension.

Now it seems to me that both approaches have their disadvantages, at least when it comes to the latest Garmin zumo device, the XT (I cannot talk about others):

• (Vias and Stops as Routepoints): Exporting all Stops and Vias as plain GPX <rtept>s makes them all Stops on the XT. But knowing the difference between a Stop and a Via is one of the biggest plusses of Scenic and of the Garmin zumos (including the XT) and was one of my main reasons for chosing them.
• (Vias as path - Garmin Extension): Exporting the Vias as a Path does not survive the first route recalculation on the XT.
  And that first recalculation already happens during the route import 🙁
  (Paths are used by Garmin to send to the device an exact copy of the route calculated in their Basecamp application. As soon as the device relaculates the route it will do so only based on the Stops and Vias. Because the Vias are sent from Scenic as a Path only the Scenic stops will be used for the recalculation and the Vias get lost.)

What I found to work best is to map

• Scenic Stops to GPX <rtept>s with the <trp:ViaPoint> GPX extension and
• Scenic Vias to GPX <rtept>s with the <trp:ShapingPoint> GPX extension

I do have a script running on my NAS at home that translates a "(Vias and Stops as Routepoints)" route into a "(Stops as ViaPoints, Vias as ShapingPoints)" version. The result is working fine on the Garmin zumo. However my approach with translating the Scenic output on my NAS at home  is obviously just a workaraound and it works only with an Internet connection available.

It would be great if you could include a "(Stops as Garmin ViaPoints, Vias as Garmin ShapingPoints)" version of a route into the GPX export.

If you would like to have more details or example GPX files, I will be happy to provide them.

2. Adding configuration options what to include in the GPX export files

The exported GPX files include

• All stops as Waypoints
• Two versions of the Route
• A Track

When this is all sent to the Garmin device directly from the Scenic app, it results in large files/long transfer times via Bluetooth and clutters up the Device with Favourites/Waypoints over time.

What about introducing a configuration option for the GPX export to specify if the Waypoints, the Track and which version of the Route should be included in the exported file? Or does such an option already exist and I have not found it so far?

 

I would be very thankful if you could consider my suggestions. The first being by far the more important from my perspective. And if I can support you in some way, please let me know.

And again: Scenic is an excellent piece of software 🙂