Hilarious ETA calcs

NigelO · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 39

I'd spotted elsewhere on the forum about ETA calcs being rather wide of the mark. Bit of a shame really, as my experience of the ETAs in CP3 were pretty good. Never more than a few minutes out, even over lengthy journeys.

Tonight, for the hell of it, I asked CP6 to get me home from work. Despite setting the preferences to favour secondary roads, it STILL tried to take me along all the major roads (it also tried to get me to use the M6 Toll, despite me setting the Toll option to 'never')

Anyway, leaving Coventry for my 40 mile commute at 5:30pm, I was bemused, but not suprised to see 20:30 as my ETA. Hmmm - two hours for 40 miles. As I ignored the repeated requests to "just ahead, turn around", I was stunned to see the ETA move to 23:45. Clever, expecting me to take over 6 hours for the remaining 35 miles.

However, as expected, the ETA started to tumble. But it carried on tumbling PAST the current time. At first, I thought that the ETA system was truly fubar'd, as it was expecting me to arrive before I set off (I'm fast, but not THAT fast)

However, the ETA carried on tumbling until, as expected, I arrived at home and the ETA managed to catch up. At this point, I realised that the original 23:45 ETA was for TOMORROW night, not tonight, hence it had dropped, past what I thought was current time (actually tomorrow's time) and then all the way back through the night to about 18:30 this evening.

So, according to ALK's ETA calcs, my 35 mile B road excursion would take about 30 hours - a staggering 1.16mph average.

Methinks there may be a slight glitch somewhere? Rolling Eyes

Robin2 · Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:46 am Post subject:

It was widely reported after CP6 came out that it can calculate ETA based upon 1 mph. Many people (including me) found that a simple reinstall fixes that problem - it has not yet returned in my case
Robin
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TomTom One v3 Europe, Navcore 7.903, Western Europe 835.2420
TomTom Go 720 Europe, Navcore 8.351, Western Europe 855.2884
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Plus a lot of other PDA GPS kit, seldom used

Redhotorange · Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 7:01 pm Post subject:

It happened to me yesterday - suggesting that I needed more than 2 hours to do 2 1/2 miles - luckily it does not happen often.

toxotes · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 18, 2006 Posts: 6

I find it very irritating. Never had problems with CP5 in that respect (although there were other small issues but I learned to live with them). I can't understand how it is possible to

up a function that was working in CP5 when it is transferred to CP6. ALK's response to my report of theproblem was "We do apologise the ETA (Estimate Time of Arrival) time indicated incorrectly on your device. We will report to our
developer and solve this problem as soon as possible. Thank you for your comment and using CoPilot." as though this was news to them. I only upgraded to CP6 last week and the program has been around for a few months now. Surely someone else must have reported it to them before?

Robin2 · Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:56 am Post subject:

Well, I reported it to them on 12th December - and I'm sure a lot of other people did at the same time
Robin
_________________
TomTom One v3 Europe, Navcore 7.903, Western Europe 835.2420
TomTom Go 720 Europe, Navcore 8.351, Western Europe 855.2884
Satmap Active 10
Plus a lot of other PDA GPS kit, seldom used

NigelO · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 39

Hmmm - now getting inconsistency

Did a 140 mile trip on Friday - ETAs were pretty good (and stable too, showing that my estimates of motorway averages must be close). The ETA stayed at either 8:25, 8:26 or 8:27 for almost 100 miles - to the point I thought it was knackered again, but in the opposite way to before. However, as the traffic ground to a halt near Luton, the ETA adjusted perfectly. The acid test was that once moving again, the ETA did very little last minute adjustment when closing in on the destination.

However, on the way home, I got the 1mph ETA again.

I noticed something as well - when in planning mode, the trip itinery confirms the distance and suggests the time - I was walking into Basildon from the place I visited - 4 miles - CP6 suggested 4 hours. It seems to me that the problem is deep-rooted.

Robin2 · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:25 am Post subject:

Have you installed the new patch yet?
Robin
_________________
TomTom One v3 Europe, Navcore 7.903, Western Europe 835.2420
TomTom Go 720 Europe, Navcore 8.351, Western Europe 855.2884
Satmap Active 10
Plus a lot of other PDA GPS kit, seldom used

NigelO · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 39

No, I haven't applied the patch. Too many people saying its a waste of an hour.

I don't have the "welcome to CoPilot" speech problem, and I don't recall anyone saying the patch fixes the ETA calcs either, so until there's something worth applying, I won't bother

Robin2 · Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 2:19 am Post subject:

In fact, applying the patch has, in my case, stopped the "Welcome to CoPilot" intro, but

It does not seem to have fixed one or two minor bugs, including

Speed indication occasionally changes to altitude when some other settings are changed

And we still await a re-issue of the CD Roms to correct some major routing errors in France and Italy (this has been promised within the next couple of weeks)

Robin
_________________
TomTom One v3 Europe, Navcore 7.903, Western Europe 835.2420
TomTom Go 720 Europe, Navcore 8.351, Western Europe 855.2884
Satmap Active 10
Plus a lot of other PDA GPS kit, seldom used

toxotes · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 18, 2006 Posts: 6

Funnily enough, I wrote to ALK again re: the lack of progress in correcting the ETA bug and received a response today stating that "We do apologise we do not have any solution at the moment. However, we would report to the application developer
and put your issues on the new release patches of CoPilot. There are also some new patches coming soon. "
So - who to believe? The info on ALK website does not say that the patch sovles teh ETA problems, ALK have now said that there is no solution as yet. Do i really want to go through the hassle of uninstalling CP from my MDA, then re-installing and installing the patch that may or may not work?
Has anyone else installed the patch and found that the ETA problem has been resolved?

toxotes · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 18, 2006 Posts: 6

To confuse matters further, today I planned a route with several waypoints (as opposed to letting CP6 plan the route). This time, CP6 gav me accurate ETAs to each waypoint. But I still can't get ETA when the software chooses the route. Most irritating.

BMWBiker · Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 1:16 am Post subject:

Toxotes, there were some workarounds discussed on nearby threads for the "1mph ETA" problem. Can't find them easily myself.

As Robin2 said above sometimes a reinstall fixes it.

My theory is that it should be fixable by doing some simple edit of the file USERTRIP.DAT, which corrupts the default roadspeed to 1mph. But I have never seen the problem and haven't heard whether anyone succeeded with the file-edit workaround.

Let me know if you want details, or maybe you will find the hints yourself.

I don't think the "1mph ETA" problem of CP6 has been seen in the USA. Anyone who knows otherwise, please correct me.
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Doug
CoPilot 6.0.1.24 (USA)
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