itinerary waypoints from googleMaps mismatched

[daveyjane]

Google Maps and Tyre and houghi.org all do the same thing, so maybe its a tomtom bug.
A long list of waypoints (less than 48), produces several places where the route has an error.

Example: At a "T" where I have chosen a waypoint, and wish to go straight, it turns left, say for instance, then it goes 100 meters, then it turns around and goes back, and then goes left. (effectively going straight). This appears to be due to a slight misplacement of the waypoint.

See inclosed pic.

What can I do to fix this misplacement? I have been very careful in the dragging of the waypoint, to modify google's route to drop it very carefully in the intersection i want included ( zoom in all the way) and put it within the street boundary, etc. About 5 or six of these errors occur in 30 carefully placed waypoints. Google maps does it and Tyre does it. In correcting half a dozen of these mistakes there are then one or two mistakes in the mistakes, and it has to be done a third time to be rid of them all.
It is as if, the two maps, google's and tomtom's, are not quite agreeing about the latitude and longitude of a particular point, and the dots that represent waypoints on one map are not even on the roads on the other map, so the "turn around when possible" phrase is called upon.

Sometimes, rarely, it actually goes around the block, and then continues. Despite having chosen 'shortest route' and within tyre, chosing 'place waypoints exactly on roads'.

Looking for suggestions. Or workarounds. Like how to drag points in the Tomtom to correct the misposition of several waypoints, '. And then resave the corrected itinerary. Improving the placement within googlemaps or tyre does not help.

thanks in advance for your input. daveyjane




.

 

[Arno]

Off hand I would suggest you open the waypoint with TYRE, use [Edit] and drag the point just a few meters past the T intersection.

If that doesn't work, send me some of them by eMail at (e-mail address removed) and I will try but will most likely not get around to it 'til tomorrow or the next day.
Arno

 

[canderson]

I like Arno's suggestion about placing the waypoints beyond intersections.

As I imagine you have already begun to suspect, there are places where the geolocation of roads isn't all that good. When you pop a latitude/longitude number directly into your TomTom (which is what occurs when you go from a satellite map point to your TomTom), your GPS will attempt to take you there based upon the map information it has vs. the latitude/longitude. Sometimes the coordinates are seen by the TomTom as sufficiently off the road or up another road to cause your strange diversions. One fellow here (from the UK as I recall) was complaining about his TomTom thinking he was on access roads or ramps off a major highway. That was his TomTom trying to place him on a road that best matched the coordinates he was receiving from the satellites. It's all part and parcel of the same issue.

When you select a coordinate that you believe is on a specific road, but your TomTom tries to take you 100m up a side road, either the overlaid map in Google is off, or the map in your TomTom is off, or both. As a possible check as to which is producing the larger error, look at the Google representation and see if the road overlay image is really on top of the road you can see from the satellite view or wanders a bit. If you see a significant mismatch on the Google side, that may well be where most of the problem occurs.

When Arno suggests moving your itinerary point down the road a ways from an intersection, it's in an attempt to force your TomTom away from any other reasonable option than the road you really want. If you place the point 500m down the road away from the intersection, it will prefer that (even with an error in geolocation) to a point 100m down a side road 500m away.

 

[daveyjane]

map accuracy adjustments

"either the overlaid map in Google is off, or the map in your TomTom is off, or both."



Can the map in my Tomtom be adjusted for accuracy, to coincide with googlemaps.?
Or even with the transit I might have in the backyard.

<> "place waypoints exactly on roads" should the check be in the box at this preference question in tyre?

does the eye altitude adjustment (in tyre)have anything to do with this mismatch problem?
and do the 00.00000. 000.0000 settings in tyre control this behavior?

I'll have a chance to try all your suggestions tomorrow.

 

[Arno]

TYRE and itineraries and I are not friends.
I love TYRE to move coordinates or rename custom POIs that I set up with TomTom or Google maps in the first place.
I don't have a check mark at place waypoints exactly on roads and I did not bother to find out about eyelevel as I presumed that his would apply to Google Earth.

I usually do not make itineraries. If I plan a larger trip I set up a custom POI category for it and put in POIs for any conceivable address.
This allows me to change my route at the drop of a hat without having to worry that I cannot use the .itn any longer to pick up after wards.

I had pretty good luck with a (in my opinion Beta) programme called Routenoptimierung.
I do use it sometimes if I have to go to 5 -8 different places to let it establish the most optimised route.
(Just to check myself. As a former straight commissioned territorial salesman I had to pay for my own gas and got pretty good in deciding on the most efficient route for the day; or fastest if there was a cause for it.)

Have a look here for Routenoptimierung.

Try it from just two points before the questionable one 'til two points after and see what you get.
Since it too uses Google maps your results may not differ by much, if any.

My offer still stands, if you contact me off list, to test your route for you to see if we both get the same result.

 

[canderson]

"either the overlaid map in Google is off, or the map in your TomTom is off, or both."
Can the map in my Tomtom be adjusted for accuracy, to coincide with googlemaps.?

No, and even if you could, the errors are different everywhere. There's no consistent offset in the errors between where the road really is and the position assigned to it by the GPS map, and to keep it fun, there are several different organizations doing the geolocation of roads for these maps, and their errors don't agree, either.

The only reason that your TomTom or any other GPS always seems to have you on a road on the display is that it's taking its best guess as to which road you're really on based the position that it believes you're in from satellite data v.s. what someone, somewhere, decided was the position of the road. We call it "road snap". Your TomTom might calculate that you're having an off-road adventure 100' to the side of an interstate highway, but if there's no frontage road there, it will use its "reasonableness" algorithm to place your icon on the highway - that based upon the assumption that you're not blazing a new parallel trail in a Jeep Rubicon at 70mph!

 

[daveyjane]

workaround for mismatched maps: google and tomtom

"move your itinerary point down the road a ways from an intersection"

this is a great workaround for the mismatch of maps. It works like a charm on an experimental trip across a nearby city. Halfway down a block is about as far as I can go from an intersection without getting close to another intersection. The only place it lets me down is when I reverse the route. What a mess. Loops and turnarounds, even circles around a block, and onward again. This, i remember now, is why i wanted to place the waypoints exactly IN an intersection, so it would know the itinerary back home again. With the added, intentional, asymmetry the reverse route is a mess.
Is there anyway to avoid a manual input of another itinerary, of 40 odd waypoints, to reverse a route that is already laid out perfectly, loop free, in the original direction?

 

[canderson]

Is there anyway to avoid a manual input of another itinerary, of 40 odd waypoints, to reverse a route that is already laid out perfectly, loop free, in the original direction?

The following assumes you're not on any divided highways (aka dual carriageways) where your original points are on the wrong side of the road!

You can open the [somename].itn file that you created (it will be in your TomTom's itn folder) with a word processor (I'd use WordPad) and carefully swap all of the lines of coordinate data top for bottom (let me see a sample of the 1st and last 2 of your entries - there may be a single digit at the end that needs to be changed) and save the results to an itinerary file of a new name, or if you're going to make a habit of this, try this simple application that will swap them for you and create a new file:

Le Web Bazar !!! ReverseItn !!!

Note that you'll also need this little patch program if your TomTom is running anything close to current firmware:

Le Web Bazar !!! Applications Tomtom !! Patch Tomtom v8.350 !!!

That link is included on his other TomTom applications that need it, and his chart shows that it is required, but he didn't leave a link on the ReverseItn page for some reason.

 

[Arno]

Is there anyway to avoid a manual input of another itinerary, of 40 odd waypoints, to reverse a route that is already laid out perfectly, loop free, in the original direction?

What is wrong with opening the itn with TYRE and click on reverse.
The only proviso when testing it is that your former end point, now start of the itn will not show as start for this trip as the simulation will now go from your current location to # 1 (now start) of the reversed trip.
This will of course not apply once you start the return from the original end point.

 

[daveyjane]

thanks, all. Waypoints, POI, and map mismatched.

thanks Canderson for the nice manual approach to reversing the waypoints. I understand the caveats that you mention. And the reverseitn looks good too.

and to Arno, there is nothing wrong with using tyre. Its elegant with the ease which it reverses the waypoints. But, having moved all the points to places just beyond the intersections (to work around mismatched map data) the waypoints are now just before intersections. And this creates havoc with the reverse trip. It causes loops, and U-turns, the dreaded "turn around when you can", and even circles around the block and back to the original route and direction. So the workaround for that is to redrag the waypoints to a similar but different place taking great care to choose one that is innocuous and not near any other features which might create another little detour. (map mismatches, again.). Workarounds that require workarounds.

But, thanks to all for the suggestions. I'm back on the road again and all is working well. Just don't place any waypoints near any intersections. And reset the waypoints to nice bland places after reversing a route. Or, of course, abandon waypoints and use POI, instead, as was mentioned, by Arno.

from Dave and LesleyJane, in Pennsylvania, creating country routes from place to place, that are neither short, nor quick, but they sure are scenic. And there is no choice for 'scenic'. So I'm making one with POI, and/ or waypoints.

 

[Arno]

I am glad you got it all sorted in a manner comfortable to you.

Should you ever have a little extra play time I would suggest you try the Routenoptimierung programme.
It is rather slick, except for the naming / renaming of the itn.