My experience with a dedicated GPS (Garmin 810, Garmin GPSMAP 62) for biking is they're great for recording your ride and for finding out where you are, but are poor in terms of dynamic routing and way finding, even with screens and stored map info. (The 810 assumes I'm a car, and routes me as one...) I'd always augment the GPS with "something else" like Google Maps or ridewithgps.com as other people have noted. I especially like Deacon's approach with paper/weatherproof maps for trailblazing in the wilderness, which I'd couple with paper, sharpie, and a handlebar clip to create route sheets on the fly for trail markers and turnoffs. In the city, I take the time to stop and use a smartphone to do the routing, and sometimes use Google Streetview to check if a route is too sketchy for a bike or if there are pedestrian shortcuts available since, as I said, all that dynamic routing software assumes I'm a car.
For the kind of riding you're planning to do, I'd recommend a Garmin handheld used for hiking like the eTrex 20 (for something elegant) or the GPSMAP 64 (for something that's absolutely bulletproof) coupled with a RAM mount (https://www.rammount.com/). (H/T Vikapproved - https://vikapproved.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/garmin-etrex-20-review/) These can work as bike computers with the mount, and are useful on a hike as well. Both have displays that give you a rough idea of where you are relative to trails so you can find your "solved" location on a larger paper map. A note on digital maps: I'm not familiar with Wahoo, but stock maps on Garmin's hikers are normally low resolution. Map resolution isn't so important for road maps but extremely so for topography maps. (In the city, most navigation algorithms assume you're going to be on a road.) Garmin does have higher resolution maps (https://www.garmin.com/en-US/maps/outdoor) for a price beyond the unit - kinda cheesy but people recommend to budget for both the unit and the topo map of the region you're interested in when shopping. If the extra cost of topo maps is an issue, there are open source topo maps available for download onto the Garmins - see https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ - but that requires a bit of work and experimentation to get up and running. For road maps on the 810, I use an OpenStreetsMap - http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ - of my region. On uploading your rides, for Garmin they have a free site called "Garmin Connect" which can be linked to other sites (https://connect.garmin.com/en-US/) to record and analyze your rides. I upload the rides from my 810 to my Garmin Connect account, then the Garmin Connect pushes those out to my Strava and ridewithgps.com accounts automagically. The upload can be done via a USB cable on the computer and a web browser; alternatively, for models with Bluetooth, that can be done by syncing through an app on a smartphone which happens automatically when the unit connects to the phone and the phone has a connection to the internet. --Ed C. On Monday, February 18, 2019 at 6:38:42 PM UTC-8, Drw wrote: > > I know nothing about garmin things or other things that do mapping for > hiking/biking, though I’m moderately tech savvy in other areas of my life. > I’m finding myself very overwhelmed by online information > I’m looking for something that can: > > -show a map on a screen but not need internet > -locate current actual location > -show trails as well as paved roads > -show elevation > -be no larger than a smartphone > -be charged via usb > > It would also be cool if it could sync to something in a way that could > > -provide directions in either step by step or linear format. > -link to an online history of rides and routes > > Any direction of where to look and what to look at would be appreciated. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
