Is it possible to download a GPX Route (versus a GPX Track)? I successfully downloaded the GPX Track and imported it into Garmin’s Basecamp. This is for a ride that we are planning and a friend created on MotoWhere. But the GPX Track file doesn’t include waypoints that are in the ride on MotoWhere. I’d like to download a GPX Route so that I get the gas stops, break stops, lunch stops, etc - rather than having to re-create them in Basecamp. I use Basecamp because I have a Garmin navigator on my bike, and so I’ve adopted Basecamp as my main library and route editing tool.
Hey Joe,
You make a very good point; and you’ve exposed the fact that when I hurriedly implemented the “download GPX” feature I didn’t include way points.
Agreed that it really should - when I get a chance to do some more work on Motowhere I’ll get this fixed.
Thanks for the feedback!
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Download the GPX and feed it into a motorcycle GPS/RIDES app called “Calimoto”.
This app let’s you 1)open the GPX and turn by turn as you planned 2) tracks rides you’re on if you’re riding a new route and want to track the route 3) shows routes near you (not as many as motowhere but still 4) share the route with other friends!
Calimoto all the way.
Hey Mit,
Thanks for the suggestion to try Calimoto. Hadn’t tried it before. But it doesn’t solve the problem I described. The downloaded GPX Track file from MotoWhere does not contain the waypoints that are shown when you view the ride on MotoWhere. So, when I imported the GPX Track file into Calimoto, the waypoints were still missing.
Plus, I as I mentioned in my original post, I already have a Garmin GPS on my bike (which I like alot!), so I don’t need a phone turn-by-turn solution like Calimoto.
Hey @joe.alwan I’ve made some changes to the GPX export; it now includes waypoints.
Can you try downloading again and importing into your Garmin software and see if it works?
Hi Jules,
Very cool - happy to know that you’re working on this!
Just tried to “Download GPX” and then import into Garmin BaseCamp. BaseCamp was not able to import the file. I’ve attached a screenshot of the error I got from BaseCamp.
Unfortunately, BaseCamp isn’t giving me any additional details about the error.
Regards,
Joe
OK I’ve managed to do some testing in Basecamp and have made some more changes; it seems to be happy now!
Can you try it again?
Hey Jules,
OK, imports successfully into BaseCamp now. But, still not all that useful. The route I imported has 3 waypoints named Lunch, Gas Stop, and Alternate Gas Stop. The start waypoint is called Harbor House Cafe. And the last waypoint is called “Finish”. This is what I can see in MotoWhere.
When I import into BaseCamp, I get a track with 16 waypoints all numbered sequentially. What I wanted to see was 5 waypoints labelled like I see them in MotoWhere. Is that possible?
I also noticed that the ride appears as a “Track” in BaseCamp. I don’t believe Garmin GPS units will announce waypoints when you are following a track. Ideally, I’d be able to get a “Route” with the waypoints, such that my GPS would announce the waypoints when I’m out on my ride.
Here’s the ride from MotoWhere that I used for testing: https://www.motowhere.com/explore/route/Outbound-Solstice-Ride
Hope this is helpful. Really appreciate that you’re working on this!
Regards,
Joe.
Hi Joe,
Ok I’ve made another update which only includes waypoints containing some sort of title or description; so the other waypoints (which were used by the author to define the route) will no longer be included.
As for tracks vs routes; both the GPX spec and the Garmin documentation indicate that a “track” is the correct entity to define a specific path to follow. The waypoints are seperate elements - I don’t have a Garmin device so can’t advise on how to have them announced. But I’d assume there must surely be a way.
Hi Jules,
Just wrote you a pretty detailed reply with 3 attachments - 2 screenshots and a GPX file. But my email was rejected because apparently I’m not allowed to send a GPX file and I’m not allowed more than one attached image. Do you have another email address I can use to re-send my reply?
Regards,
Joe.
Hi Jules,
The new GPX download feature is awesome! Thank you so much for being so responsive and adding this new capability. Today I did a GPX download from MotoWhere. Then I imported it into BaseCamp and I saw that the downloaded MotoWhere GPX file now includes a Route in addition to the Track and waypoints. This is fantastic! I was able to copy the Route from BaseCamp to my BMW Navigator V (basically a Garmin NuVo 590LM) and get turn-by-turn directions (which of course, you don’t get with a Track).
I really like how the GPX Route that MotoWhere generates includes all the points that the author used to create the route in MotoWhere. That makes sure the route in BaseCamp (and my GPS) matches the route displayed in MotoWhere. I also love how the unlabelled points from MotoWhere are all shaping points (and don’t announce). And how labelled points in MotoWhere show up as a waypoints in the GPX route and are announced by my GPS.
Here are the steps I used to make this work.
- Create or find a Ride in MotoWhere
- Click on “Download GPX”
- Import the downloaded GPX into BaseCamp
- Open the Route in BaseCamp and click on “Recalculate”. Now you should have a route in BaseCamp that matches the Ride in MotoWhere.
- Connect my GPS to my laptop and copy the route from BaseCamp to my GPS
Thanks again! Great new feature addition to MotoWhere!
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Hi Joe,
Tracks can easily be converted to routes in basecamp.
Highlight all the tracks you want to include in the route, right click on them and select “Join selected tracks” it will create 1 continuous track. Then, select that track right click and select “create route from selected track”
At this point you can upload the route to your device, save as .GPX or add to a Garmin adventure.
You can also make fine tune adjustments at this point and redo the route.
Hi Jules,
Great site and thanks for the hard work.
I just want to touch on your explanation of tracks vs routes.
Tracks are a visualization and record of WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN. So even if you are not following a route, your device records where you have been like breadcrumb.
A ROUTE is a path that you follow to get somewhere, or recreate a ride/walk/adventure.
Tracks are stored by the device and can be imported into garmin software (basecamp or mapsource)
For example, lets say you went for a great ride following a friend. You are unfamiliar with the roads and it was a very long ride. You can upload the track from the day to basecamp and it will show you exactly the path that you took on the ride. It will generally break it up into multiple pieces of the journey.
You can combine all the track bits, and then create a ROUTE from the data, upload and now you can relive that ride by yourself or with other friends.
Hope this helps.
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Hi Sonny,
Thanks for reminding me about the ability to convert tracks to routes in BaseCamp. One of the reasons that I think the new ability to download a route from MotoWhere is so great is that people don’t need to become proficient BaseCamp users to get a ride from MotoWhere into their GPS. I know a lot of folks that have Garmin GPS devices but do not use BaseCamp. They find it too difficult to use. So, this new feature makes MotoWhere a more friendly alternative to BaseCamp.
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Hi. Thanks for the advice. However, I changed to TomTom from Garmin. Will you’ve including god files for TomTom?
Hi there, I am wondering what garmin product or products do you offer for uploading gpx files which can be used by both Moto and Car? I do appreciate if you name few (as an example zumo 660, Nuvi 2597LTM, Dezl 580,…)
Thank you