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Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 3:42 pm Post subject:
No offence taken Erik. You make very valid points. Though I bought the PDA/CP5 /Clipon combo rather than a Garmin because I wanted the ability to change products, upgrade easier and give me a bigger degree of flexibility than a proprietry product would. It certainly wasn't the money but those on a more restricted budget might be swayed. A lot of folk here have configurations that are more expensive that, say, a Street Pilot III. So I don't think money is the point.
I don't think we have missed the point.
CP5 clearly has some very serious bugs. This is unacceptable. They are basic and avoidable. The impression is that ALK don't care. For whatever reason the point stays the same. Whether the product costs £5 or £135 it should work, end of story. Don't forget I like CP5 but I recognise the problems and I think its time "we" stood up and made some noise.
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 4:14 pm Post subject:
Rattle wrote:
Looks like you guys are missing the point here. Ok, so you went and bought a SatNav for a hundred quid or so.
please don't set your expectations above the price you paid for it.
You pay £135 for CoPilot plus £100 for the full European Maps, Plus £120 for a GPS receiver, plus the cost of a Smartphone or PDA (my phone was free on an Orange contract, so I'll leave that out).
That adds up to £355 for a Sat nav system, Garmin's Quest can be had for about £350.
So, for the amount paid I would expect a sat nav system which is comparable to the Garmin Quest (not exactly the same of course - the two products have different features, strengths and weaknesses).
If CoPilot did what it was supposed to do, then I wouldn't have a problem with it. But it doesn't. It can't calculate reasonable routes, it crashes frequently while running, stops warning about speed cameras and there are many other bugs.
People who say that CoPilot was cheap so you get what you pay for are missing the point. Even if it was cheap (which is is not), the fact is that in the UK, a product must be "Fit for purpose". This is regardless of how much you pay for it. _________________ Gone fishing!
Following the thread the tweaking road speeds (this forum is now locked?) it was encouraging to see that I was not alone with this very frustrating problem. Using CP5 on SPV C500 Smart phone, I have discovered the following tweak;
NOTE- I HAVE ONLY TESTED THIS USING CP5 SMARTPHONE SOFTWARE AND DO NOT KNOW IF THIS FIX WILL HELP POCKET PC/PDA USERS
1/. Using the PC route planner setup a typical journey which you know gives an obscure route,
2/. Go into OPTIONS and select Quickest Route option
3/. Go into ADVANCED. In this menu it allows you to manually adjust the road bias. Play around with these settings until the route planner calculates what you know is the best route- This does take time to get it just right however but is possible! Save the settings in the OPTIONS menu.
4/. Try out the setting on various different routes of which you know the best route, and tweak the settings if required.
5/. Now save this trip onto your PC.
6/. Using notepad or similar open the trip save file; <filename>.trp
7/. Edit 'Start Trip= ...' to 'Start Trip=Default Trip Options'
8/. delete all text after END TRIP line.
9/. Save this file as both DEFTRIP.DAT and USERTRIP.DAT and copy these files to your smart phone.
Now when planning a journey using your smart phone, it will default to the quickest route option, and also give a more accurate route based on your road bias inputs setup on the PC.
If this sounds all too complicated, then simply open 'DEFTRIP.dat' from your Smart phone, delete all text and then paste the following and save back to your smartphone;
This all sounds very well MC, but the whole point is, WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO TINKER WITH THE PROGRAMME TO GET IT TO WORK PROPERLY.
If you are a programmer, or technically minded, and you enjoy altering the configuration of the programme, then fine. But what about the rest (non techy people) who bought the product thinking that it would actually do the job and work without all of this faffing about.
By saying, you can alter this, or re-programme that, takes the onus away from ALK to actually get their product right in the first place !!
Incidently, according to the people I bought my GPS from, ALK were meant to have contacted me on Wednesday about the problems that I'm having. But guess what ?? Silence. Now why doesn't that surprise me.
DAVE, the first job when you take up your new role with ALK, give their Customer Couldn't Care Less department a kick up the backside and get them to do something about all the disgruntled customers out there.
Quite simply, ALK are losing a lot of credibility and goodwill, and the many disatisfied people out there will not support ALK in the future, and will take their business elsewhere.
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 5:00 pm Post subject:
MC wrote:
Oops! When I stated 'Quickest' above, I in fact meant 'Shortest'
-Apologies for any confusion this may cause!
MC
I tried your settings but I still get strange routes. I think the routing algorithm in CoPilot is designed to ignore certain road types - probably because it would run out of memory trying to calculate the route otherwise (it sometimes crashes with out of memory errors anyway)
The major problem we are having is with the "Quickest" route, not the "Shortest" one. Quickest route examples are:
London to Dublin (Routed hundreds of miles away via Scotland/Belfast when the quickest is via Holyhead)
Southampton to Hastings (Routed via the M25 when the quickest is via the south coast)
M40 Junction 9 to M3 Junction 9 (Routed via the M25 when the quickest is via the A34)
As for "Shortest" routes, CoPilot will ignore many road types and route you via major roads rather than via minor roads which would give the shortest route.
Set the routing to "Shortest" and create a route from Knowstone to Chawleigh in Devon. Select View->Trip Map in CoPilot to see the whole trip. The shortest route is about 13 miles, CoPilot manages to make it 26. :x _________________ Gone fishing!
Hello Skippy, Dave,
Valid point re. ALK should provide a stable robust solution, and fully agree with you. Back tracking through this Forum however suggests however that a solution from ALK is not forthcoming, hence, my attempts to improve the trip routing function myself.
I'm only a novice to this system and am acting upon suggestions posted in this forum- it seems to me that the key is with RoadWeightAdjust in the DEFTRIP.dat file.
Using the values mentioned in my earlier note seems to give much improved results for my phone (maybe I've also accidentally changed something else ?...)
Inputting the trips you mention (sticking to shortest route for the time being) gives me 15.6 mi (0:17 hr) for Knowstone to Chawleigh. London to Dublin gives 363.8 mi (17:37 hr !? probably incorrect setting of the Ferry speed) routing via Holyhead following M1-M6-M56-A55. Southampton to Hastings gives 101.7 mi mainly following A27. And M40 J9 to M3 J9 correctly specifies the A34.
I do however still get the old problem when calculating from Thame to Southampton (A34 being quickest/shortest) but being routed via M25 and down the M3. I'm sure however that with some more tweaking I can get it to work for all trips. At the moment however I'm now much happier, and have a reasonably degree of confidence that it can plan the best journey right when I need it. (i.e. a rainy dark evening miles from home with no access to a PC!).
I'd be interested to know if any other users get any improvement using the following RoadWeightAdjust parameter (which only works well with shortest route option selected);
Joined: 24/06/2003 00:22:12 Posts: 2946 Location: Escaped to the Antipodies! 36.83°S 174.75°E
Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 8:16 pm Post subject:
MC wrote:
Inputting the trips you mention (sticking to shortest route for the time being) gives me 15.6 mi (0:17 hr) for Knowstone to Chawleigh.
Hmm, that's interesting! You might have found a fix for CP's aversion to using non A and B roads. I will do some more tinkering and see if I can get my one to do that too. Are you using version 1.0.1.69 ?
You are right in saying that a work around to the wacky "Quickest" routes is indeed to use "Shortest" instead, but then that doesn't always produce the Quickest route which is what you want. Quickest and shortest should mean just that. _________________ Gone fishing!
Hopefully it will work for you too. The settings I stated have been tuned to what I would call my 'personalised ideal', i.e in the area I live my preference is to use minor A & B roads as much as possible whilst avoiding the local towns, but also making use of any Motorways and divided roads on route.
In different areas (e.g central London) or for people with a different preference to road usage then my settings may not be ideal. You'll have to experiement to find your 'ideal' setting.
Cheers.
ps. I've just been modifying my config file to standardised road colours, it's looking really good- what I can't figure out though is if their any differentiation between standard and major A roads (i.e. Red and Green in a road atlas). CP seems to have combined these roads only allowing 1 colour. -Not worth losing sleep over though!
Some good work there lads. I found on my PocketPC I can get all 3 of skippy's routes to work properly if I use
RoadWeightAdjust=647878646464646464
HOWEVER - if I try Southampton <City Centre> to Birmingham <City Centre> it reverts back to going via the M25. I am suspecting some mapping funnies on the M3. I think Stephen Hawking has put a wormhole in the centre of Southampton as the reverse journey give the correct route.
To help those tweakers out there the string of codes translates to:
Hex Decimal Road type
== ===== ======
64 100 ?
78 120 Motorway
78 120 Motorway (no ramps)
64 100 A road
64 100 B road
64 100 Secondary road
64 100 Ferry
64 100 Local road
The number is the percentage avoid/prefer (100% being the default)
A higher number means "avoid" rather than prefer
MCs weightings translate to (in decimal)
Motorway 75%
Ferry 150%
Local road 50%
everything else 100%
Personally, I have found weightings more than 20% either side of 100% give some odd results.
Be aware also that MCs road speeds are non-standard:
Motorway 70mph rural and urban
A road 70mph rural; 60mph urban
B road 60mph rural and urban
Secondary road (C road?) - 60mph rural; 30mph urban
Local road - 60mph rural; 30mph urban
Note: What is called a Dual Carriageway in the desktop program is in fact an A road whether dual carriageway or not. Primary Road is a B road.
Having tweaked colours and road biases I am starting to get a feel for how the routing algorithm works and the problems being encountered may well be a case of: "That's not a bug - that's a feature!". _________________ --Ken
HP iPAQ h2210 ROM 1.10.07 ENG
Windows CE 4.20
Sandisk Ultra II SD 512Mb
Haicom 303MMF and BT-401 slipper
Copilot Live 6.0.0.68
Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 1:51 pm Post subject:
Its good work Ken but for the vast majority of owners, non "programmers" the point is its not a bug, its certainly not a feature (i'm thinking you're tounge in cheek there) its a serious fault in the software. As many have said, you shouldn't have to tweak all this on a product cosying £135, or even one costing £10 for that matter just to get from A to B. It just does not do what it says on the tin. ALK should be reading your posts and others like them and thinking "Mmmmm, all this free software fixes, shouldn't we we doing that?" _________________ TomTom 720
Nokia Lumia 800 with Nokia Maps, iPhone 4S with Apple Maps (sigh)
Joined: Nov 24, 2003 Posts: 1441 Location: Swansea
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 3:30 pm Post subject:
I have tried editing DEFTRIP.DAT and usertrip.dat using MC's suggested values of RoadWeightAdjust and DefRoadSpeeds (I have kept the old ones as DEFTRIP.OLD and usertrip.old in case it all goes pear shaped!). It seems to calculate sensible routes for all the examples quoted when set to Shortest, but obviously the original default road speeds and weightings still apply when calculating Quickest. This leads to some stupid inconsistencies, eg
Southampton to Birmingham
Shortest 138.1 miles 2.05 hours
Quickest 167.7 miles 2.28 hours
Obviously what is needed now is to change the road speeds and weights for Quickest calculations. How do we do that?
Robin
If you use defaults when calculating Quickest and MCs values when calculating Shortest you will get inconsistencies due to the different road speeds. Personally, I would keep the road speeds at their default values. The weightings I gave in the post above are for those who want to use the Quickest option.
topgazza - Please don't take offence but I think that everything that could be said about bugs, ALKs responsibilities etc has been said and all I'm doing is trying to help those who want to make the most of their investment. Overall I am happy with the product and whilst it has some annoying problems I do not consider them to be serious in my case. _________________ --Ken
HP iPAQ h2210 ROM 1.10.07 ENG
Windows CE 4.20
Sandisk Ultra II SD 512Mb
Haicom 303MMF and BT-401 slipper
Copilot Live 6.0.0.68
Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 589 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2005 8:30 pm Post subject:
None taken Ken.
I'm a happy CP5 camper as well. I don't mind doing my planning on the PC so rarely come across the problems others do. I totally support their gripes however. Who ever improves CP5 is welcome of course. If only it ran as good as TT3. Its the only part I wish it had. _________________ TomTom 720
Nokia Lumia 800 with Nokia Maps, iPhone 4S with Apple Maps (sigh)
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MC
I think the routing algorithm in CoPilot is designed to ignore certain road types - probably because it would run out of memory trying to calculate the route otherwise (it sometimes crashes with out of memory errors anyway)
