Garmin Streetpilot 2820 Settings

Having resolved an interesting issue with my Garmin 2820 in the past 10 days or so, I thought I'd publish a few notes here on my observations, problems and steps taken to resolve them. This unit is one I've had for a few years now and I've been very happy with it, overall. While I'd like to say I bought it because my older (Garmin Streetpilot 2610, now discontinued) receiver was "adopted" by my (then) girlfriend, I confess that I also wanted Bluetooth phone capability and, well, it's always fun to play with new toys, eh? Plus I was making good money as a systems engineer and so the price wasn't a big factor ... enter the Streetpilot 2820.

All that said, my experience with commercial GPS receivers is that they are usually quite user friendly but there are settings in the units that sometimes result in receiver outputs that are unexpected and/or difficult to understand. By the way, one of the most useful settings (to me, anyway) is found by going to the Settings>Navigation 2nd page. There you will find "Off-Route Recalculation:" and in a great step towards eliminating unnecessary noise in the cockpit, you can set it to "Auto (Silent)". Without doing this, anytime you are navigating a route and make a turn that is not "correct", according to the Garmin, it announces "Off route, recalculating", repeating it ad nauseam until you "return to the path". By setting it to "Auto (Silent)", two things are accomplished simultaneously: anytime you leave the route a recalculation automatically starts and the voice announcing the recalculation process is (mercifully) silent. In a recent examination of a (newer receiver) Garmin Nuvi 750, I did not see a similar setting, so perhaps that's one thing that they've missed the boat on (although I didn't examine all the Nuvi settings in detail, so maybe it is there ... somewhere).

Back to the main point of this article ... on the same page, Settings>Navigation 2nd page, there is a setting called "Avoidance Setup". On its 3 pages of options, entries are made to do one of three things, Prefer, Avoid, Don't Avoid, for various road conditions. The settings are applicable to driving situations you may find yourself in, including 9 preset categories and a 10th called "Custom Avoids". The 9 preset categories for Avoidance setup are (in order): Major Roads, Medium Roads, Minor Roads, Traffic, Unpaved Roads, U-Turns, Toll Roads, Carpool Lanes and Ferries. Then, under "Custom Avoids", there are two subcategories: "Add New Avoid Area" and "Add New Avoid Road".

To touch briefly on Custom Avoids, this is a nice feature for (primarily) local operation but also, for example, if you are traveling to another city and are made aware that there are specific neighborhoods or streets that are to be preferred or avoided. The two subcategories allow the user to make selections by generating a 4 point "blocked off" area or simply by selecting beginning and ending points of a specific street. This is done directly off a map display. I have not used this feature but mention because it could easily be overlooked and it is pretty cool.

The original problem I ran into involved the first 3 settings identified above. For Major Roads, Medium Roads and Minor Roads, I had set Prefer, Prefer and Avoid, respectively. The reasoning being that I'd like to be on "better" roads than not and "Minor" roads felt like they would not be as good as the other two types. Additionally (although not related directly to this problem as far as I can tell), in deference to my motorcycle's performance and preference for dust/rocks/dirt avoidance, I had set "Unpaved Roads" to "Avoid". I do not know what the internal (to the receiver) definition is for these various road types but I have had multiple times where the Garmin would try to direct me in crazy directions and I never really suspected the road preference settings. Usually, as I now recall, the issues did involve minor vs. major roads and that should have tweaked me ... alas, live and (finally) learn is all I can say. Anyway, I had been again given the runaround as I tried to get to a somewhat "out in the country" address. The 2820 wanted me to go around an extra 1.5 miles or so when I was only .5 miles away via (what I would call) a "minor" road. Having finally had enough, I resolved to pull over and check out my preference settings. In the process, I changed "Minor Roads" to "Prefer" so that it now agreed with the other two (Major and Medium) road settings. To my surprise, it recalculated the route correctly, making me a happy camper (er, driver).

The point here is that the Avoidance settings may have unintended consequences and if you find yourself regularly routed down non-optimal roads, take a look at them and see if some changes might be in order. Perhaps "Minor" road avoidance might be important for, say, a large Recreational Vehicle. But it really was not a problem for my Camry or motorcycle. I am glad that there are categories for both Minor and Unpaved roads, however, as I do want to avoid Unpaved roads, if possible. Again, the "human in the loop" often has a better idea of the correct road to pick than the GPS receiver ... so don't hesitate to use your instincts from time to time. After all, GPS can always "rescue" you if you do get lost somewhere. And that can be a part of the adventure of it too. Happy navigating!