Is it me - or is the Nav V / Basecamp completely useless for planning

[fastbmw]

I have taken many multi-day trips, but for my upcoming trip (London, ON -> Asheville, NC -> London) I decided to pre-select my route/roads/etc.  I use Google maps for my travel planning in the car, but I thought I would try the Nav V and Basecamp (on Windows PC).  After trying for many hours, I can only conclude that Basecamp is completely useless. 


[size=2px]Is anybody using Basecamp to plan out multi-day trips?  [/size]
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In about 2-3 hours I was able to plan my entire 7-day trip (in one-day segments) using Google Maps - including selection of each road and easily adding my nightly hotel stops.  Each day is  saved as a webpage, that I can send to my phone (for navigation) or to others for discussion.  They are very easy to update.  The only limit I hit was in the number of way-points that can be added - but planning each day separately took care of it.


The only other question I have is how to actually navigate during the trip.  Do I export the route from Google to my Nav V?  Is this even possible?  Or do I mount my phone on the bike (water-proof Pixel 2) and skip the Nav V altogether?  I have already confirmed that 'OK Google' works fine from my Cardo headset... 


Has anybody else had experience using their Android phone directly for long trips (and eliminating the Nav V altogether)?

[Steve F]

Couldn’t agree more in that Route planning with Garmin Basecamp is a right royal PITA!! I spend far too long planning two week Euro excursions with this clumsy software on my Mac desktop. Likewise I’m uploading the route to my Nav 5 unit, which is the easy bit! All I can say is persevere with the Basecamp and it will and does (eventually) get easier......honest guv! Just scrutinise any route that you concoct on Basecamp before uploading it to the Nav 5. I can’t vouch for using Google maps in this respect, but doubtless the actual route planning is probably simpler to execute. How on earth can a global navigation leading company make such an abortion of their Basecamp route planning???

[Sleuth]

Yes, BaseCamp as a steep (Vertical) learning curve.  Yes, until you know how to use it it can be a pain.


I have lost much in the way of blood, seat & tears caused by its predecessor (MapSource), and then BaseCamp. 


There are good reasons for using BaseCamp.  The main is if the map on the computer is the same as the map of the GPS - you get the same routing as planned.  Something that is not guaranteed when using third party maps.


However all is not lost in learning BaseCamp.  there is a support group: [size=78%]https://www.zumouserforums.co.uk/[/size]  This forum has a goodly number of knowledgeable people there.  (I have used their brains on occasion)  yes I am a member, and sometimes I have a good point to say.


In terms of planning a multi-day trip.  I have a Garmin 595 World Traveller GPS, which allows me to install any of the Garmin maps on the device.  We will be celebrating 25 years of matrimony.  As a result we are heading to Northern Arizona, and Southern Utah for a serious tour.  I programmed the multi-day trip with relative ease.  It is a matter of knowledge and practice.


Stick with it, and it will eventually make sense.


Any questions, either ask them at the Forum, or myself.


Best regards
Sleuth

[etitanic]

Nothing much more to add to Sleuth's comments except to keep at it. Yes it is not as intuitive as Google Maps but does play well with Garmin GPS. I have been planning multi day trips for over 10 years and of course have little issues NOW. It can be done.

[milleplod]

I tried Basecamp once, then gave up and never bothered with it again. It's not in any way intuitive - I've got better things to do than to spend endless hours 'getting the hang' of something. I use https://tourstart.org/tour/   

It's not free (although you do get a free trial), but, even though I'm retired, I manage to find the £1 per month that it costs. It's simple to use, it works seamlessly with my Zumo....and it took me less than 10 minutes to 'get the hang' of it! 


Pete

[Levisp]

A very good alternative to Basecamp is https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/products/compare You need Gold membership to plan route and transfer to Nav V. Can use google maps for planning. Works well. Their mobile phone app is crap, very much still a beta product the last time I looked. However desktop planning works great. Maybe worth a look.

[Casbar]

Yep, I started using my routeapp years ago, brilliant app. It also has google maps, tom tom maps and Garmin, you can export to many different formats and compare routes so you can see the route on tom tom vs garmin vs google to make sure if you share everyone will have the same route.


And a tool to export to the Nav



But if you want to do all that, you need a subscription. Basic app is free and you can trial full version for free for a month.


Subscription version comes with full support which is useful sometimes

[hammo]

Well its good to see the great billion pound computer age is alive and kicking !!!! just buy a route map problem solved .

[Casbar]

Well its good to see the great billion pound computer age is alive and kicking !!!! just buy a route map problem solved .

Great advice, but its a lot less stressful to plan a route of brilliant roads, load into the Nav, share with your mates and off you go. I have a map as well and use that to plot my routes. Time moves on, way past sticking routes to my tank and don't miss that at all to be honest

[fastbmw]

Thanks for all the great responses and suggestions. I wanted to share 'a' solution that appears to be working. Of note, this solution uses Google Maps to do all the planning - which I find to be an excellent tool. This was my gripe with Basecamp (BC) - so I call this a win
I used Google Maps to plan each day's route. It was very easy to pick the roads I want, adding all the way points I want. I saved the URL for each day. I then used an online tool (there are several) called [size=78%]https://mapstogpx.com/[/size] to convert the map to a GPX file. I was then able to load this into BC, and proceed to move to the Nav V. Once on the Nav V these showed-up as Tracks - which I was able to convert to a Trip Planner route on the Nav V itself.

I did notice that some of the GPX files would fail to load into BC. After some playing around, I found that it was related to some of the way points. For me it was the hotels at the beginning/end of my day. I surmise that BC could not find them and therefore failed to load the GPX file. I changed the Hotel in Google to a specific address (rather than just a hotel name),and this fixed the problem.

I took a look at the route that was created in the Trip Planner and it appears to be the exact route that I planned in Google. I have NOT yet tried this out on the bike to validate that it does not re-plan the route, skipping all the great roads that I picked. However, I am assuming that the Nav V will follow the route in the route planner directly. I'll try a test this weekend and confirm.

[Sprintgull]

Basecamp is all of the awful things people say above, and more, until you get used to it.  I use it all the time now, and have very few problems.  Just back from an 8 day trip planned on Basecamp.  The way I do it is to plan the entire route (this one was 2200 miles), then work out where the sensible overnight stops should be.  Once I'd found somewhere on Booking.com I'd take to co-ordinates from there and stick that into my route.  Also if you have planned stops during the day you can enter a 'layover' time so you can keep track on what time your day should end.  Then you use the cut tool to split the route up into days.Be a bit careful here as it can do strange things with your last/first stop of the day especially if you are riding away from your hotel the same way you came in.  All easy to correct though.  As mentioned above there's loads of stuff on the interweb about Basecamp.  Persevere and all will be well (probably).

[Casbar]

Basecamp is all of the awful things people say above, and more, until you get used to it.  I use it all the time now, and have very few problems.  Just back from an 8 day trip planned on Basecamp.  The way I do it is to plan the entire route (this one was 2200 miles),then work out where the sensible overnight stops should be.  Once I'd found somewhere on Booking.com I'd take to co-ordinates from there and stick that into my route.  Also if you have planned stops during the day you can enter a 'layover' time so you can keep track on what time your day should end.  Then you use the cut tool to split the route up into days.Be a bit careful here as it can do strange things with your last/first stop of the day especially if you are riding away from your hotel the same way you came in.  All easy to correct though.  As mentioned above there's loads of stuff on the interweb about Basecamp.  Persevere and all will be well (probably).

Its so good Garmin have stopped supporting it and are moving to a different solution. The thing is, people don't want to spend hours learning something, they just want to plan routes and send them to the Nav. That is why I use My Route App, it took all of 15 mins to understand how to use it. But each to their own

[STeinar]

Basecamp is all of the awful things people say above, and more, until you get used to it.  I use it all the time now, and have very few problems.  Just back from an 8 day trip planned on Basecamp.  The way I do it is to plan the entire route (this one was 2200 miles),then work out where the sensible overnight stops should be.  Once I'd found somewhere on Booking.com I'd take to co-ordinates from there and stick that into my route.  Also if you have planned stops during the day you can enter a 'layover' time so you can keep track on what time your day should end.  Then you use the cut tool to split the route up into days.Be a bit careful here as it can do strange things with your last/first stop of the day especially if you are riding away from your hotel the same way you came in.  All easy to correct though.  As mentioned above there's loads of stuff on the interweb about Basecamp.  Persevere and all will be well (probably).

Well, yes we are all different - in any aspects :-)


I did not like BC in the beginning, but now I can not really say anything bad about it .
The biggest problem is that it has "to" many options - and as someone write here - people don't read instruktions etc - and then they get lost
For me - it dos everything I would like to have - and way more - so for me BC is the prefered planning SW
STeinar
 
BTW: from +33c in the shadow - and way to warm for a Norwegian ;-)

[Little-Brit]

I got dragged into doing modest computer tasks in the mid 1990s.  I believed then that computers would never be taken up by the wider population whilst they required so much complex learning to do even basic things.  Garmin's Basecamp is still like that 1990s software!


Apple (and I'm no particular fan of theirs) and others have clearly demonstrated how "easy" it can be to produce user friendly software - it just takes very clever people and lots of time and effort on their part to make it simple for us.  Like others here I use My-route app now. 


As an aside the BMW electronics are a brilliant example of how you make a complex system intuitive; you barely need any instructions to fathom out how to use it. 


Derek