Last updated on March 19, 2013
This evening I was playing around with drawing custom courses that can be loaded into a Garmin Edge 500 and used to provide turn prompting while out riding. This isn’t quite turn by turn directions, but upon reaching a certain point it’ll provide notification that one should turn, look for a hazard, etc. To test this I set up a neighborhood route, out Philadelphia Court and out to some main roads, winding around through some other neighborhoods, and back.
Not long after departing on a test ride it correctly informed me that I should turn right out of the driveway, but then gave an an off-course notification and the prompting no longer worked. After I got back home and reviewed the data the image above is what I found. Lots of garbage data scattered around the neighborhood.
This is just one of the many little quirks that I run into when using a GPS for data recording. Despite indicating that it’s receiving a solid signal it’ll still occasionally go funny and produce garbage for a little while. I’ll have to give this a different test another day. Maybe I’ll head out for a ride on Sunday and test the prompting on one of Bob’s routes…