No Route Found!

[DrDan]

I've read several complaints of this and I feel obliged to add my own. I just upgraded from a Magellan ... at least I thought it was an upgrade!

It does not matter where you are if you let the TT place its position with its 'my location' function then it cannot navigate there. If you go there using the 'map' functions then it can plot a route to it regardless of the distance from a road. This is a rather bizarre bug I hoped TT would have corrected by now. I only hope I can get my money back from Santa.

I can walk or bicycle to any place well off road and it knows where it is but I cannot walk or bike back to it if I save it as a location.

Here is the crux of the problem. I live in the country a long distance from any published roads. If I used the "nearest road" scenario as put forward by the moderators I would be a couple of miles from home and have no idea of even which direction to travel to get there. Moving closer to a road is not an option. I almost bought a Garmin and now I wish I had.

From the number of complaints I see on this forum and from seeing how far back they are dated I am shocked TomTom has not elected to correct this obvious bug in their software. They haven't even chosen to address it in a sticky with a work-around!

'Nuf said,
Dr Dan

 

[dhn]

This is hardly a bug as you call it. TomTom units are strictly ROAD gps units, unlike higher end Garmins or other models.

TomTom's simply won't (can't) plot a route involving off-road locations.

 

[DrDan]

Not so dhn. I feel obliged to point you to a screen that suggests a walking route. Check out "Advanced Planning". It even has a bicycle route.

To exasterbate things even more I'd like to recommend a work-around I have found. If you select to display the lat/lon you can go to your "Favorite" location, the one you created as "My Current Position", and display its lat/lon. Copy the lat/lon exactly as it is to a scrap piece of paper. Then select "Add a favorite ... use lat/lon" and use that hand-copied lat/lon as input. Give it a name ... even Home ... if you like and you're done. Now when you ask it to navigate to "That" place it plots a route to it ... even well off road ... immediately.

So if you input the lat/lon manually it'll work. If you try to let it use a place it setup using your current location button then it will not plot a route.

My friend ... that IS a bug!
I've emailed tech support but they seem reluctant to respond. Could it be my naturally abrasive nature?

Love to all,
Dr Dan

 

[dhn]

I stand by what I said. You may be able to plan a route TO the location but you won't be able to plan a route FROM the location.

 

[DrDan]

I thought I had but perhaps not. I'll give it a go as soon as I get a chance and get back.

My real thought is ... and you think this is NOT a bug? One can use the TT to go to a place but cannot return from it. If that was generally known in the public I'm sure their sales would plummet. Amigo; That is a bug!

I'll get back either way as my memory is less than stellar but it seems to me I have already plotted a few routes away. I simply have not had the thing that long. If anything I would think it would not plot a route from an off-road to an off-road. I'll try both.

Later,
Dr Dan

 

[gs500zuki]

I thought I had but perhaps not. I'll give it a go as soon as I get a chance and get back.

My real thought is ... and you think this is NOT a bug? One can use the TT to go to a place but cannot return from it. If that was generally known in the public I'm sure their sales would plummet. Amigo; That is a bug!

I'll get back either way as my memory is less than stellar but it seems to me I have already plotted a few routes away. I simply have not had the thing that long. If anything I would think it would not plot a route from an off-road to an off-road. I'll try both.

Later,
Dr Dan

i've noticed this also. just last week i went for a ride to a point on a known (tomtom identifies it) road. stopped the bike, walked 20 feet to a pier to photograph the motorcycle by the water, and saved it as a FAVORITE. then i tried to navigate back home from the FAVORITE i just saved (20 feet from the road) and it said NO ROUTE PLANNED afterwards. while i found this odd, it didn't kill the day, or my interest in gps units.

is this common to -all- tomtom units ? i dont' know. mine is a entry-level tomtom gps. i didn't expect bread crumbs or whatever paths are called. it does do streets flawlessly, and this seems more like a limitation to the software on the unit than a bug. bugs generally cause crashes (memory dumps) and unit failures.

maybe there is a higher level tomtom unit that does what you desire ? i'm sure the people here can recommend another tomtom (or competitor) to do what you need.

you're not abrasive, that i can tell.

***EDIT***

here's an interesting bit i just noticed:

I can view the favorite while navigating in the "Browse Map" section:

but planning a route to/from it will not work. sure, it's only 20 feet off the road, but tomtom sees it as a spot in the water. no big deal, i'm sure the area floods from time to time.

i think this is only a limitation with the software, not a bug.

 

[cacherjoe]

I stand by what I said. You may be able to plan a route TO the location but you won't be able to plan a route FROM the location.

I have to agree with dhn. These units are for vehicle routing also. They may have bike and walking options, but these assume you are biking or walking along a road. If you are looking to do off road/hiking/geocaching I would suggest an alternate hand held unit (I also own a 60CSx) where you can have road maps (my unit will also autoroute fairly well) but can also put topo maps on board.

The TomTom units out of the box also do not record a track log as with the hand held units. This is also a key feature used in off road/hiking/geocaching to allow you to follow the same route back to where you came.

I believe there were some 3rd party apps that use to work with the older firmware versions of the Tomtoms that may have got you the same functionality, but they have been nixed for the most part with the upgrade to 8.x.

Just my $0.02.

J

 

[DrDan]

Problem is Catcher Joe that it does not work for vehicles either. Try parking in your garage (off road - No?). It appears a 'Place' can only be defined as being ON a road. It does not matter if you are walking, biking, skiing, driving, staggering, or whatever. It must be on a road.

I am familiar only with Magellans and Garmins. Neither of them limit travel to a mapped road.

There are many roads that are not mapped and they are too complex to be input to the system by a casual user. In my case they must wind their way around mountains. They are named and paved roads ... just not in any maps yet.

There are many other roads (traveled by vehicles) that it cannot manage because of this limitation. Consider the hunting lease. Over 7000 acres with perhaps 100 roads. TT doesn't even plot a bearing. It gives up because it is not a road in its database.

As we can change speed limits and street names I assume we can add and delete roads. Deleting roads is obvious. Adding roads is not so straight forward. It says this can be done ... just have yet to try. I plan to work with this feature and see if I can make it fly. My guess is the rubber-band line is the key. It always seems to point perpendicular to the nearest mapped road. A special 'Sticky' tutorial on how to add random roads would sure be nice.

Its fun living out here on the edge but it's hell on a Tomtom.

Later,
Dr Dan

 

[flyer1024]

Unfortunately the user cannot add any roads to the existing map in a tomtom. mapshare often confuses people on this matter. mapshare is nothing more than a reporting service when a road is missing and one can only hope that said road reported to tomtom might show up on a new map version which one then has to purchase.

 

[ruwafl]

as said before, tomtom's are strictly street machines. however, an option for you besides getting your money back may be map overlays. the tomtom still won't navigate in a map overlay but you can see where you are at. of course, a map overlay is only going to serve you if you know a particular place you are going to be beforehand. for example, if you know you are going to lets say, a national park for hiking or whatever, create a map overlay for that area and you can keep up with where you are at. i am just starting to play with map overlays and will be doing some experimenting with it to see how far i can go with it. any rate, good luck with it.

 

[BlackSilver]

I stand by what I said. You may be able to plan a route TO the location but you won't be able to plan a route FROM the location.

You can go there, but you can't come back.

I get it. It isn't a bug. It's a designed-in short-coming.

My TomTom came highly recommended, but I've never been this disappointed in a product in years.

The operating system is riddled with curious "non-bugs" like this.

As an exercise in futility, ask TomTon One 125 to plan a "fastest route" from St. Bonifacius, MN to Clara City, MN. (DOS Hint: Both towns are located on Minnesota Highway 7, a nice straight and well maintained road which passes through minimal towns along the way.)

Highway 7 is by far the fastest (and also shortest mileage) route between these two towns, but the TomTom simply will not select that route.

But that isn't a bug.

 

[dhn]

Once the route is planned, if not to your liking, select 'Alternate' and choose to go by #7.

 

[DrDan]

ruwafl,
I must disagree with the 'TT's are only street machines' thing. When you choose a route one of the 'methods' of getting there is walking ... another is bicycling. I, and I think most, usually choose the fastest route but the others are available.

dhl,
I did promise to get back to you Re: the FROM/TO thing. I plotted a route from and to a single hand-input place as well as both from and to pairs of hand input places. Everything worked. If one inputs the lat/lon of the location by hand it works as expected (that means the same as all its competitors). If, however, you select an off-road location and tell it to save that place as a favorite, it will not be able to plot a route to it.

I am not sure what one calls a bug. This is what I call a serious bug. It will not use a place stored automatically but it will use that same place if the user hand-inputs the same data for that place.

This is strange behavior. As long as there is no interest in it it will never get fixed. It seems to fall (so far anyway) on deaf ears at TT Central. I have not yet blogged about the bug. Its been too early with too many holidays to have given the good folks at TT adequate time to respond.

Have a Great Day,
Dr Dan

 

[dhn]

It is working as designed, DrDan. I repeat, TomTom's are NOT off-road navigation devices. Sure, you can save a favourite as it records the lat and long points. But how would you expect it to navigate a DRIVING route to that point? It will, at best, take you to the nearest road location.

As I said, there ARE brands that ARE off-road navigation devices and geocachers use them all the time. That is what they are designed for.

If you wanted an off-road gps device, I guess you should have bought one.

What do I call a bug? Well, the firmware 8.3 has caused significant issues with computer voices stuttering and slow map refreshes in models designed for computer voices. Now, that IS a bug .... and a darned serious one.

 

[canderson]

ruwafl,
I must disagree with the 'TT's are only street machines' thing. When you choose a route one of the 'methods' of getting there is walking ... another is bicycling. I, and I think most, usually choose the fastest route but the others are available.

Please understand what the walk/bicycle option does. As has been noted here any number of times, the TT firmware is road firmware, and it works only insofar as it is aware of roads.

As for walking, I will provide an example from recent experience. I was visiting in Lisbon recently, and was using my TT as a handheld to locate some shops. If I had used it in its normal "vehicle" mode, the routing would have carefully observed one-way streets and other traffic rules, and caused a far less than optimum route for walking. In fact, I had to remember to switch it -- it took me on about a 6 block excursion to go one block due to one-way issues.

So while the walk/bicycle feature can be critical for non-vehicle street navigation, it's still street navigation.

 

[sid_james]

DrDan,

You have simply made a bad choice of unit by not understanding what the thing is designed to do.

I don't think the Tomtom will navigate to any location that's not on a road, it will simply take you to the nearest point it can on the road closest to your destination. If you then take the unit across a field it can't of course even start the navigation back because there is no road to start on. You could still use it as a map to visually navigate back to a waypoint, but it's pretty rubbish at it.

I have a garmin Dakota 20 for walking and off road activity. (It will do turn by turn on the road but is fairly rubbish at that.)

 

[dhn]

While your comments are correct, you ARE posting a thread over four years old .......

Not sure the doctor is even around anymore.............

 

[sid_james]

lol. I just replied to "new posts"....should have gone to specsavers!

 

[dhn]

............

 

[Andy_P]

I don't think the Tomtom will navigate to any location that's not on a road, it will simply take you to the nearest point it can on the road closest to your destination.

Sometimes it doesn't even do that! It just sits there and says no route found.

I've never quite got to grips with why it sometimes does one and not the other.