Voice directions
 

Is there a device that gives voice directions of a route that you programed that gives
as you are cycling? I do not want to use my phone. Does Garmin have one that is independent of your phone that can do this?
Mike Adams

I use a general recreation GPS (Garmin 64) instead of a cycling specific model because I also use GPS for backpacking, canoeing, hiking, etc.

If I have a route in the GPS that I have laid out at home on my computer, I get beeps before I should take a turn. Not verbal directions, just beeps. That is good enough for me because it warns me to look at the map. I think it is two beeps, one a good distance away for warning and one close by. If I am in heavy traffic with a lot of noise like in a community at rush hour, I might not hear it but otherwise I hear it.

Also when I tell it to take me to a specific point, it calculates the route and beeps every time I should take a turn. If I miss the turn, it recalculates and tells me later when to turn. This can be a bit of a hassle, last summer on a bike tour I decided to follow a bike trail for most of the day but it kept trying to re-route me to roads. So, every road intersection with the trail it would give me a couple beeps because it was telling me to leave the trail.

If I am following a track, I get no beeps. The track is shown on the map in a heavy purple line, thus I need to look at the map occasionally to make sure I do not miss a turn. For example, when I use it for riding a brevet, I put the track into my GPS and follow the track, a couple times I glanced down and found I was off the track, so I had to turn around and go back a few hundred yards to get back on track.

I have occasionally taken a wrong turn with the beeps because of heavy traffic prevents me from looking at the map or complicated road like an odd shaped round-about in traffic, but I consider those rare experiences to be user error.

My automotive GPS gives me voice, but that device is not waterproof and the internal battery only lasts a few minutes.

I have never owned a cycling specific GPS so I can't comment on those.

I have never seen voice directions on a dedicated gps device. I have used the ride with gps app for voice directions, and I found it was less than fully successful. I have thought about using my airshox bone conduction earphones (don't block ears) so I could hear them better.

The Garmins can do this but it works by relaying the information though the Connect app on the phone.

This lets the phone do the texxt-to-speech stuff (rather than letting the slow Garmins do that work).

​(​​​​​I have no idea how well it works.)

Hammerhead Karoo can give audio turn by turn directions.

Do you need bluetooth ear buds to hear audio turn by turn directions?

or a BT speaker. Audio TbT on a bike computer is a game changer. To my knowledge only the Karoo can do that. Garmin and Wahoo only have a little buzzer and no BT audio capability.

I know you don't want to use a phone, but in the interest of completeness, I'll mention that the Ride with GPS smartphone app does give spoken cues. It's different from what you're used to if you've used Google Maps navigation: RWGPS does not recalculate your route if you ride off it, it just gives you a buzzer to indicate that you're off route (it also doesn't tell you how to get back on route), so in that sense, it's a lot like following old-fashioned cue sheets. Garmins will recalculate on the fly. From what I've read, the Wahoo Elemnt Roam will tell you how to get back to the point you rode off-route.

I had the funny experience of riding off-route on a curving road when RWGPS wanted me to zigzag along grid-plan roads, and every block I'd be close enough to being "on the route" that it would give me directions that I would continue to ignore. Eventually I got back on the route properly and it synced up.

In my case, I don't get rid of my old phones, and I have one with a data SIM card that I keep loaded with minimal apps, only the bare necessities. It usually lives in the car on long road trips (literally--it stays plugged in, in the center console, for a few weeks, to provide nav to the car's head unit), and it would be nothing to put it in either of the holders on the bike to provide navigation. I wouldn't use my good/main phone for this purpose, but it's not a big loss if the older phone gets damaged.

It's too bad someone doesn't have a remote screen for a smartphone, similar to how Android Auto works in a car. You tuck your phone safely away, start up an app called Android Cycle, and it projects video and sound to a rugged remote screen with your TbT directions. It could even be a "digital paper" LCD screen so that it is readable even in bright light.

Wahoo did have such a product, called the RFLKT. Discontinued but apparently still available on Amazon.

It just shows basic stats as relayed from a supporting app on the phone (I use Cyclemeter, which I know supports it)--I don't think there are any apps that support it that also do turn-by-turn. I'm guessing there wasn't enough demand or support to make it worth continuing.

If you have an old smartphone laying in the drawer, you could use that without a sim card. I did have one that wouldn't work without the sim, so I just keep the data turned off and put it in airplane mode. I don't use them for cycling, so YMMV.

You should be able to use it standalone with it's own GPS and mapping program or link it to your Garmin, Wahoo, Lezyne or whatever and still do many of the suggested methods that were suggested above. Then you won't be using the battery of the phone you might want to use for emergencies or ET calls.

For things you might need a data connection for at home before the ride, just use it's wifi to connect to your home wifi.

I know you said no smartphone, but locus map on Android does everything, with voice navigation, rerouting, offline mode, gpx import export, tracking, route building, Bluetooth connection to speed and cadence sensor, etc. And on my tiny phone, the battery can last more than 10 hours with it running with automatic screen on/off which switches on each voice announcement at the time interval that you can set. There are so many options that it takes hours to learn every single one of them, but it's not difficult to just get started with simple navigation. I put the phone in a waterproof klickfix bag on quick release handlebar mount. The bag has space for a power bank in the back.

That's actually a good choice. Keeping an old phone around always comes in handy. Phones that are maybe 2-3 years old are also not that expensive if you find a used one. (I use Swappa if I'm looking for a used phone.)

Mine all have SIM cards, since my wireless provider lets me have up to five SIM cards on the account (one primary, four data) and only charges for the data used, with no extra surcharges. Even so, I could stick my primary phone safely in a bag on the bike, turn on its WiFi hotspot, and connect the older phone to it that way if I couldn't use a SIM card.

But with offline navigation apps, a connection wouldn't even be required. So that's another possibility too.