Garmin Drivesmart 51 and 61, stuck at 0% calculating route for a while..

Go away from your house. Far enough that the GPS does reliable routing. Go to Settings Navigation and turn the GPS off. Search for your house, then Set As Location. Now create a route the the address you are using and see if there is a delay in calculation.

Wow, that is definitely an odd problem and one I have not heard others report in the forums. I am thinking that it has to be a mapping issue rather than a GPS signal or device issue since it only happens at your home location and on two different devices. Hopefully it will correct itself after some future map update.

yep.. it is very slow as expected. All indications are this is a map related problem, nothing else. I'll update for the next one later in the fall and see what happens. Thanks for your input on this.

A few years ago when I tried to make ONE route from home 1;000 miles into Mexico.
Turns out a long route like that needs to be done in 2-3 sections.

This is a problem still for local driving, radius of 30-40 miles. Something is wrong with garmin gps map. Depending on where I am, routing to the same location, about similar distance of 60 miles, i get routing in 2-3 seconds vs. a while, stuck at 0%. I'm slowly losing confidence in Garmin GPS.

Instead of waiting for the next map update, why not update the map again? Half the time, my DriveLuxe 50 doesn't really have a successful map update when Garmin Express says it did. After updating the map again, everything is fine.

Remember to charge the GPS fully before updating it. When using a computer USB port, this will take many hours. Make sure the computer doesn't go to sleep while charging.

I am going on the assumption that there is nothing wrong with the Garmin map, just that the update really didn't complete.

dobs108

Have re-installed 3 times, factory reset few times and nothing works. The fact that routing works fast in some locations and very slow in other locations, it's gotta be the map or routing algorithm issue. Losing confidence in Garmin GPS slowly...

I have noticed various units which I have owned have taken longer to calculate a route depending upon whether or not I have allowed tolls. Allowing tolls seems to speed up route calculation. I do not know what other avoidances you have selected. Since they are local routes it may or may not have anything to do with the tolls, bu maybe another avoidace that was enabled.

Swyc2011's home address and his destinations all involve many roads with tolls. The roads around northern New Jersey and Westchester County NY are a bunch of spaghetti. There are so many choices for the software. And, another wild card - is traffic enabled?

The roads around his home have more than one state road with continuous Jersey barriers without U-turns or cloverleafs available. My 3597 could not deal with this. It's not the Garmin - it's the New Jersey roads!

Swyc2011, do you live near route 17 in Bergen County?

This was posted by dobs108 in another thread on 1/28/19:

I was in Lancaster, PA trying to get home to nyc. I inadvertently left the setting on to avoid tolls. I noticed that the unit was taking a long time to calculate. When I looked at the route, it made a circle taking me out west to several other states and then looping back East to NYC. I should have saved a screenshot of it. That "featue" was fixed several map updates ago. The moral of the story is to always double check the routing to make sure it is correct.

Don’t go to Jersey if you can avoid it.

A good tip and very timely for me. In a week, I'm leaving Wisconsin and heading to PA for a Road Scholar program which would normally send me through or just around Chicago will all its tolls. I hate tolls, and it's even worse now that states figure I'll have one of these toll-paying devices which of course, I don't.

The route calculation for my first day's motel was so very much longer than a normal several hundred mile route when avoid tolls was set. I will still be choosing a more scenic non-toll route.

yes, not far from Rt 17. However, I've tested GPS in other parts of NJ as well and it almost looks like a random location where I get normal routing vs. a long wait stuck at 0%. I still think.. map version 2023.20 has some issues. It used to be not like this until recently. Even if i route to a store from my house, literally 5 minutes by WALKING, still stuck at 0% for a while. Either map has some issues or routing algorithm has bugs.

If I use google map on my phone, even 1000 miles away, literally route calculation is within 2 seconds. I feel Garmin is falling way behind.

Tried both settings and still stuck at 0% for a while... still think 2023.20 map has some issues or routing algo has performance issue

This is helpful information.

When my DriveAssist 51 updated to Firmware 6.60 seemed do every thing more slowly and, if a route was loaded that returned to the same starting waypoint location (which I've done on many routes) it would fail to compute the complete route. This problem did not exist in all prior firmware versions..

Just upgraded to Firmware 6.70 and it seems to have resolved the slow operation (everything seems faster) and I believe the "return to starting waypoint problem appears to be resolved.

Need to take it on a drive with the return route including several of the same intermediate waypoints and, going back to the origination waypoint to be sure problem resolved.

Sometimes the obvious solution is the best. Any strange behaviour after an update is often resolved with a master reset, or if you simply allow your device to go to sleep try a full shut down first.

A drive with several intermediate waypoints and the origination point used in return route to origination point now works with Firmware 6.70.

Also the pop up screen offering to skip or continue to a waypoint (if driving nearby but not to a given waypoint works better)