Edit TomTom routes

[tromeojunk]

We have had a Garmin for years and it works great. Received a TomTom XL340 for free last year and thought great, nice and small, easy to travel with. But here are my issues:

With Garmin, once you plan a route and decide to deviate (as our route is more direct), Garmin will remember this and the next time you use that same "route" it will go your way vs its way. So, we travel a few routes routinely and every time it wants us to go this other (much longer) way so its constantly replanning.

With Garmin, if I plan a route ahead of time and I don't like the route calculated, I can edit by moving the route line (similar to Google maps). However, I cannot do this with TomTom.

I was excited to see the send to GPS function on Google maps but unfortunately it only sends the destination, not the CORRECT, DIRECT route.

VOLUME KEYS - would LOVE to have them!! The screen tapping thing not great and this is for the passenger - driver would crash trying to adjust.

 

[Andy_P]

With Garmin, once you plan a route and decide to deviate (as our route is more direct), Garmin will remember this and the next time you use that same "route" it will go your way vs its way.

You sure about that? I've never heard of a Garmin doing that.

If you think about it, where on earth would it find all the memory to store a new route every time you went a different way. How many could it store? How would it know which ones you want to keep?

With Garmin, if I plan a route ahead of time and I don't like the route calculated, I can edit by moving the route line (similar to Google maps). However, I cannot do this with TomTom.

Yes you can.
Change route/ travel via / point on map

I was excited to see the send to GPS function on Google maps but unfortunately it only sends the destination, not the CORRECT, DIRECT route.

That would be exactly the same on the Garmin (if it could do it) All normal sat-navs work out a route on-the -fly when asked, from A to B (possibly including some "via" points. None of them store entire routes.

VOLUME KEYS - would LOVE to have them!! The screen tapping thing not great and this is for the passenger - driver would crash trying to adjust.

I've used TomTom touch screens for years and I haven't crashed yet....

Not often I need to change the volume anyway (and I can mute or unmute with three rapid taps in the same place on screen)

 

[dhn]

As I understand it, some Garmin models do, over time 'learn your route'. How, I do not know.......

Just that you can indeed 'train' the units.

 

[Andy_P]

Well, I'm impressed! (and apologize for doubting you 'tromeojunk')

Does anyone know how?

As I said... how on Earth does it store it all?
If you got it to calculate a new route every day and then ignored it and went your own way, it would surely have to start trying to learn your ENTIRE route every time just in case it became a regular route. There's no way that's possible surely? These are pretty simple devices.

More info or evidence gratefully received!

 

[canderson]

Well, I'm impressed! (and apologize for doubting you 'tromeojunk')

Does anyone know how?

As I said... how on Earth does it store it all?

It really wouldn't be all that much for most people. There are limits to its ability to learn more than commonly used routes. Imagine adding just a tiny bit of 'preferential' information to existing map data. Think of an IQRoutes system with an added parameter.

 

[Andy_P]

But my point is this "common sense" approach is easy for us, but very hard for a computer.

It has no way of knowing which are your commonly used routes. So if when you first bought it, you did a different long distance route every day for a week, does it store them all in the hope you might repeat one of them next week?

Also, the entire IQ Routing system on a TomTom wasn't worked out on a computer with a TomTom-sized brain and memory. It's just the results of all the calculations that were embedded in the maps.


Does anyone have any hard facts about this feature?

 

[canderson]

Can't see 'inside' the code, but if it was my job, I'd be looking at the most frequent destinations, ignoring all else, and building tables of road segments used for the most common few. Pointers to the vectors for the road segments wouldn't use up all that much memory.

Then again, that's not exactly what Garmin is doing with their myTrends technology. What that does is try to guess where you're headed based upon your current direction of travel vs. your Favorites list. Per Garmin's docs:

In order to effectively use the myTrends feature you must meet the following requirements before myTrends will display arrival and relevant traffic information:

* Your frequent destinations must be marked as favorites in your device, i.e. Home, Work, etc.
* A regular pattern of driving habits must be established before myTrends will display on your device:
o Daily regular pattern of driving takes at least three days of usage
o Weekly regular pattern of driving such as a different destination on different days would take 2-3 weeks of regular usage