John, so I have read your documents and have watched the videos and have found them enlightening as I really don't care for Basecamp, but maybe because I find it clumsy to use. But with that said I will give it another try.
I do have a couple of questions, either I missed it or you didn't cover it. First I currently have a 660LM so some of the items discussed won't apply, but let's use the 590 as the example. In your last couple of videos you talk a lot about profiles, how they work and custom profiles.
1. If when a route is transferred and imported to the 590 will it retain the profile that was used to create the route within Basecamp?
2. If so, then if multiple routes are transferred and imported will they each retain their specific profile configurations?
3. And finally if a custom profile is created in Basecamp and associated to a route will the custom profile be transferred as part of the process? Will the satnav now have that custom profile stored as an option?
I will have more questions but I need answers first. Thanks.
Now, there's a question.
I spent a bit of time looking at these issues and i have some pretty firm beliefs about what goes on, but i cannot be 100% certain that they are correct. However, nothing has yet cropped up to make me change my mind.
When a route is transferred, basecamp does seem to transfer an indication of the type of activity profile being used. I can see, for example, in the gpx file that is sent, that the word 'motorcycle' is sent if a motorcycle profile has been used in basecamp.
However, i have found no evidence that the detail used within the basecamp profile is transmitted to the zumo. By that, i mean things like travelling speeds, route avoidances, faster time / shorter distance etc etc.
In basecamp, the profile concept allows you to plot a number of routes with exactly the Same parameters as each other. Then if you decide that you want to change a parameter such as avoiding toll roads, you can change the info in the motorcycle profile. But that changes the routing of every single route that has benn plotted with the motorcycle profile. I tend to use custom profiles in basecamp because of this, then the preferences are saved in basecamp with the route.
On the zumo, you have 3 or 4 activity profiles. Car, motorcycle, off road. You can set the preferences on the zumo itself, and it will retain these preferences for each of the 3 profiles. You can change the zumo profile by clicking the tiny car or motorcycle icon at the top of the Display, or you can put the zumo into the appropriate cradle, and it will switch the profile to whatever mode you selected the last time it was in the cradle. Note that it possible to get the zumo to activate the car profile when you plug into the bike cradle, and vice versa. And you have to be aware that when you set the zumo up without it being in the cradle, when you plug it into the bike cradle, some of those settings will change. And they will change again when you plug it into the car cradle. That is true for the 660 too.
Ok. So to try to answer the question specifically.
Create a route with the motoercycle profile. The route consists of via points, shaping points and gpxx 'ghost' points. If you have the same version of the map in basecamp and on your stanav, the route will transfer exactly as it appeared in basecamp. Ie it will not recalculate. No matter what mode your zumo is in, and regardless of what profile was used in basecamp, and what profile is active in the zumo. The profiles are irrelevant at this point. It navigates the route that was transferred. Exactly.
The issue comes when the route is recalculated, for whatever reason. Now the satnav is using its own software to plot the route, and it willmuse its currently active profile in order to do that. That is, whatever you set up on the zumo for routing preferences in motorcycle, car, or off road - depending on which one is currently active.
It doesn't have access to the level of detail in the profiles from basecamp, as far as i have been able to make out. So info about speeds on different types of roads is gone ( but see later for the 595). There are other settings in basecamp that have no equivalent on the zumo. So when the zumo recalculates, it just uses what has been set in the zumo. However, the zumo does know that the route was set up using a motorcycle profile, so i believe that when it recalculates, it will use the settings in the zumo mor motorcycle routing - i assume it will do this no matter which cradle it is in, but i haven't tested this out.
The 595 builds up its own routing preferences as you ride. It knows which raods you prefer if you have ridden them a few times. It seems to keep track of how fast you ride on particular type of road. This is so that it can give a better ETA. but it may also affect calculation if you set navigation to 'fastest' time. You can clear this, but in doing so you have to also clear out your trip logs (20 of them on the 595), so if you like to keep these, make sure you have saved them on your computer first. You can also stop it recording this info, but that also disables the trip log feature, and i like to keep the logs of where i have been.
As i said, the zumo profile is used if the route has to recalculate, otherwise it keeps the original basecamp route. If you have auto recalc turned off, then it stays with what you had in basecamp.
If recalc is turned on, then and you go off route - even slightly, then the current section if the route is recalculated using the zumo preferences. That is the section between where you are now and the next routing point - shaping or via.
A few years ago. The maps and the logic seemed to be pretty accurate. I now find that basecamp or the satnav will try to take me up a small parallel side road when riding through a village - i assume because the road has no speed classification stored, so it assumes no speed limit and thinks it will be faster ! Ignore it and the route recalculates.
All of this was why i put so much emphasis on using via or shaping points on the roads you want to take after key points on the route. That way, the zumo tends to calculate the same route that basecamp did.
So short answer. I believe that the profile in basecamp has absoultely nothing to do with how the zumo calculates a route. Except for the name, which seems to use to activate the same named profile on the zumo, but which may have different oreferences set.
But all of this is what i believe. If someone reading this has other information, i would live to know about it !