Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - Garmin "off course" message

How do I turn this message/alert off? On a long (300K) ride yesterday, it probably came on over 1000 times. It would sometimes cycle between "off course" and "course found" three times in about 10 seconds. It's really annoying. Can anyone help?

Walter

The only way that I know is to turn off ALL the alerts and messages. I dont know how to turn off just this one.

Or, you could tell the unit to stop navigating the course.

No idea, but I've always found a phone call to Garmin 800-800-1020 choice 2 choice 2 gets me to a person who speaks English and has the answer. I'm sure it depends on the time of day of the the call, but I've never waited more than a couple of minutes.

Or, you could tell the unit to stop navigating the course.

Is there a way to still see me and my course on the map display if I stop navigating?

Is there a way to still see me and my course on the map display if I stop navigating?

It is not easy but yes you can. Go to: "Training", "Courses", select course, press "Enter", "Map". Not sure it that helps or not.

It will set the zoom to show the entire course. Your location will be the usual triangle. Zooming only zooms into the middle of the screen.

Or you could get the 705 and then you can see a map and can scroll around using the thumbstick ;).

What unit do you have? I have a GPSMAP 76S (http://www.gpsnow.com/gmmap76s.htm) which is "only" $210 nowadays. Yes, it's a little big and bulky compared to some of the newer units, but it's still pretty nice and has a large, high contrast display that's very legible in even low light, and goes for 17 hours on a pair of 2700 NiMH's without the backlight or about 10 hours with the backlight going the whole time. You can load up various street maps too, albeit the 2006 maps are the last ones that this unit supports; all the newer street maps require one of the newer, more expensive units to work.

http://www.sporksports.com/brandon/2008-02/bike02.jpg

Why is all of this talk of a 5-year old model relevant? Well it lets you not only pick and choose which alarms you want to enable and disable, you can also set the distance off course to permit before triggering an alarm.

http://www.autocrossing.com/misc/junk/offcourse_alarm.gif

That's a screen capture from my actual unit, so I know the feature's there. :) It's always struck me as odd how many of the newer units are missing features that existed in the old units. This is especially true of the Colorado; their latest unit which has many new features but lost a lot of the old features too for no known reason. Anyway, I'm guessing you have a Garmin Edge, since that's the one they have aimed at the cycling market, and which is much smaller and a little less than half the weight of my 76S. As such, my screen capture showing how to configure the off-course alarm won't do you much good.

If it's the eTrex Vista:

Main Menu --> Setup --> Routing --> Follow Road Options --> Off Route Recalculation to Off

While you're in there choose 'Calculate Routes for: Bicycle'

If you have your route saved as a track, just bring up the track, say 'Show on Map,' go to the Map and start riding. You'll see if you're following your route or not.

What unit do you have?
...
Anyway, I'm guessing you have a Garmin Edge, since that's the one they have aimed at the cycling market, and which is much smaller and a little less than half the weight of my 76S. As such, my screen capture showing how to configure the off-course alarm won't do you much good.

Yes, I have the Garmin Edge 305. Looking back at my map, it appears the route was not drawn very accurately. I think I downloaded the course from Bikely, but not sure. Courses I'm creating in Mapsource and other conversion tools have it plotting a more accurate route. We will see next long trip if this problem persists.

I wish the Edge had that nice "how far off course" do you want to alarm feature. I have one of the older, larger Garmin GPS units, but I like the 305 for my bike.

Walter