# www.bmw-routes.com now live!



## JSpira (Oct 21, 2002)

FrankAZ said:


> Remember, you can only claim VAT back on goods you export from the EU, so gas, accommodations, food, and such which you consume or enjoy within the EU don't qualify.


Not correct, there are ways of getting that MWSt. back, although for smaller amounts it may not be feasible.


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## JSpira (Oct 21, 2002)

*Driving in Austria*

While I appreciate that adc posted a link to the thread where I said that a U.S. driver's license is sufficient, a post I made later in the same thread *indicates *that the person at the Konsulat made an error. I had called the Konsulat originally after there was another discussion where this question kept going back and forth.

A certified translation (into German) is required.

It does not have to be a IDP, however.


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## adc (Apr 1, 2003)

JSpira said:


> A certified translation (into German) is required.


Why don't they require a certified translation into Austrian, while they're at it? :rofl:

This type of bureaucracy drives me nuts. I wonder where I can get a certified German translation...


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## JSpira (Oct 21, 2002)

adc said:


> I wonder where I can get a certified German translation...


The ÖAMTC provides them for members at no charge although typically they translate German into other languages.


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

_Attempting to redirect thread back to BMW Routes coolness_

Hacked away at the Wiki entry a bit. Next time I'm close to the dealer, I'll make sure to take some better notes and a picture or two.

Biggest challenge now is saving. I'm not dying to spend a lot of time on the BMW-Routes site when the work is lost. Translator for viaMichelin or iTrip or others is necessary.

BMW, if you're listening, let us save our trips! Macht schnell, bitte!


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

FrankAZ ... I thought I read somewhere in this post that a "must do before travel" list was going on the Wiki.

I've struggled to find it. Was this just a concept or is it out there and I suck at reading 

I want/need this list and want/need to help build it as I prepare for travel ...

Chris


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## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

gclabbe said:


> FrankAZ ... I thought I read somewhere in this post that a "must do before travel" list was going on the Wiki.
> 
> I've struggled to find it. Was this just a concept or is it out there and I suck at reading
> 
> ...


It is an idea. Happy to assist but nothing begun so far. I've been busy doing my bit for the economy by launching the _FrankAZ stimulus package _and putting down new wood floors throughout most of my home. Wife and daughter packed up and are out of town; furniture crammed into a couple of bedrooms; self living in a dry fog of slowly settling dust created by drilling off ~1400 sq ft of floor tile over 2 days. Neighbors hate me and my skip. House is now at the nadir of habitability and I've been spending the evenings huddled over a beer and small TV in an untouched bathroom. Very much like the bachelor life, except there are none of the comforts. Apart from beer. And SciFi.


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## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

gclabbe said:


> FrankAZ ... I thought I read somewhere in this post that a "must do before travel" list was going on the Wiki.
> 
> I've struggled to find it. Was this just a concept or is it out there and I suck at reading
> 
> ...


You spurred me into some late-night wiki action. I made a stab at re-jigging the ED Wiki a little to organise it more chronologically into Plan/Order/Wait/Collect/Enjoy/Wait. I can see that the simple subdivision will become cumbersome but let's begin to populate some content and see where we go. I'm not a wiki editing expert by any means and created the structure by just inspecting other pages I liked the look of and reusing some of the syntax. I'm sure they can be improved upon.

We probably need to start a new thread for this Wiki refresh collaboration rather than dragging this one off topic again. Mea culpa.


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## csg1600 (Aug 25, 2008)

*USB Routes Update*

I think this may now have been posted elsewhere, but just in case: it appears that you can only import one trip into iDrive at a time. So if you have two or more stored in the "NavData" directory, the system will only pick up one (I think the latest in date/time, but not certain). Since these trips can have quite a few stop-overs, that may not be an issue for some. It does say in the instructions that you should be able to import "route(s)" so it would seem to be possible, but no explanation as to how to load more than one or how they should be stored on the USB (see my comment below as far as getting anyone from BMW to clear that up).

My workaround (planned...will execute and report back) is to use a combination USB adapter/microSD card that loads into my Blackberry. Using a file utility, I can then copy over trips to the directory as needed, and import those into the iDrive. This is for those times when I don't have my netbook with me. Otherwise, that is the easier way to copy over new trips.

Also, I had a question from several folks and I can (re)confirm--the USB drive trip import does work for a US-spec car (at least for my 2009--Sept 08 production--M3 E90 with navigation/iDrive etc). This works for the European maps--I am stationed in Europe--and I'm using a generic 512MB USB key. After I try the microSD card, I'll let you know how that works as well.

As an aside--and a partial response to someone who was told that BMW NA says this won't work for US cars--so far I have heard from BMW NA, BMW AG and BMW France (including the international diplomatic sales people in Munich) that this should not work, but it does (I had been asking about the USB trips since Sept 08, when I saw this option listed in the owner's manual). This response is pretty much SOP for the BMW sales and technical people in these organizations; they don't appear to have a clue as to how the technology in their company's products functions (or does not). As an example, I've been trying to get BMW to explain why RTTI no longer works for 2009 BMWs (but did for 2007/2008)-- even the BMW AG engineer in charge of traffic information systems--I found his name in a press release--was clueless about this and had no interest in trying to figure it out (and it has an impact on all US military and US/NATO diplomats posted in Europe who own or will buy a BMW).

Its pretty sad when a complete technical neophyte like me (albeit used to learning new topics quickly for litigation) can end up knowing more than the techies on the other end. Oh well, jumping off the soap box now...


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Well, that's bad news about one trip at a time. Guess I can plan to upload a new trip each morning or take them all on a series of small memory cards.

The gmaps -> BMW project needs a tester. I can only get to my local dealer maybe once a week or so ... interested? At this point, I have several mockup files that I'd like to see loaded before I embark on the translator.


Original simple BMW Route will all "optional" waypoints removed - want to see if a cleaned up route will load

Mockup of converted gmaps info to BMW route format

Same as above but with XML tag "standalone" set to "no"

Basic idea is to build route maps in gmaps, where we can save our work (by copying the link to a blog or something), so that you can reload the work later. I'll probably do the same for viaMichelin's output to Garmin format.

I'll then throw up a quick website with a simple conversion ... put your gmap file here, and out comes a BMW route for you.

Until BMW allows us to login and save routes, their site is cute but unusable except for simple, one time routes. Plus, if we can get another system to function, US routes might be possible.

Chris


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## csg1600 (Aug 25, 2008)

Chris,

Be happy to help try out your work-around. Send me the info/instructions when you've got it up and running (I'll PM you my email). It would come in handy here as well, even with the Euro-routes working, as we're about to take a trip next month from Paris via Switzerland to Stuttgart/Munich/Garmisch, and then to Austria, northern Italy and back through southern France home to Paris.  Be kind of a homecoming for the M3...

Cheers


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Excellent!

The files are on my home system, so I'll send them along tonight.

Can you log in to the bmw-routes site? No one else has accomplished this so far that we know of, so no saving ... that's why I'm after other sources.

I've run into some troubles with very complicated routes. It appears that gmaps has a limit to the number of inter-trip waypoints it can map.

This does not show up if you create a map of say 5 destinations and then mess with the road between two points (i.e. to follow die Alpenstraße) until you then add a new destination and tell it to re-map. Choke city.

However, doing all the work to map die Alpenstraße is not something I'd like to do twice, so not being able to save to the BMW-Routes site has pretty much eliminated it from my interest except to feed the need to upload my routes 

Now I've broken my route down into each day and then saved the resulting gmaps link to a link in my blog. Then, if I want to revise that day, click on the link, tinker, copy the new link to the blog.

Chris


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Here are the files to try out. I've renamed them from .xml to .pdf so that they will upload. Please rename them back to .xml before trying to upload.


BMW-Andechs-Fussen.xml = original routemap from BMW-Routes
BMW-no_optionals.xml = original routemap, but remove all intermediate "optional" waypoints
gmaps_mockup.xml = manually created version of what I'll program
gmaps_mockup_SAno.xml = same as above but "standalone" set to no in case #3 doesn't work as is


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## csg1600 (Aug 25, 2008)

I have not been able to log in to the website to save trips. I asked BMW France to set up an account for me (explaining that I just wanted it to save trips, not to access connecteddrive from the car, but they said it was impossible without a valid VIN number that reflected an active account...). 

I've been playing around with it more and it works pretty well for my needs. You can shift the route by dragging the pointers around, and you can add quite a few intermediate points (and then drag them around if you want to shift the order of stops).

I'll give your files a shot this week and let you know how it goes.


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

O.K. New files that are properly tar'ed and gzipped. Forgot that the files are in this format after unzipping them.

Just strip off the PDF extension ... leave the rest and put them on your USB drive in the BMWData\Nav folder.

Chris


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Posted this in the Do-it-yourself forum ... repost here since a few ED members have been asking about this activity.

O.K.

Status on this project -- stalled 


Built several mockup files for testing -- they did not work
Initial work for simply "input your link" website -- done
Parse input link and show all waypoints via website -- done
Provide mock-up code via web (copy/paste to file) -- done
Learn how to create and download the resulting file to users machine -- open

Three issues now

Mockups were tested by a Fester and they did not import
Attempt to parse route of die Alpenstraße resulted in a waypoint of "unknown road"
My trip starts Monday

So, back to the drawing board, so to speak. This is tough since I don't have a car to experiment with.

The "unknown road" bug came as a total surprise and means I'll have to learn how to reverse geocode the hex-coded string that Google must be using. There is a ton of info on Google's site on this. Maybe I'll get tired of driving my car in the Alps and work on this during the trip 

If the reverse-geocode via php isn't proving a quick path, I'll probably switch to massaging the Garmin output from viaMichelin created routes and see if I can make that work.

In the meantime, if anyone has spare time and wants to find code that will let you take the gmaps geocode string and turn it into a PHP array ...


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

*Good news and bad news*

O.K.

After playing with the nav system for a day, I can now say that I am both impressed and not impressed. It would be nice if there was a feeback system for them to work out the bugs in this beta level software they've put into our cars.

The bad:

after spending a couple of hours creating an "Alpenstrasse" route, that I cannot save and work on again, the import of it went fine, but it would not start the guidance. I spent 30 minutes messing with the system, gave up, started driving, stopped driving in some Germany family farm, then had to suffer through the laughter that ensued when I finally got across to them that I wanted to drive from Berchtesgaden to Fussen on the Alpenstrasse. I believe what she said to me was basically (in a nice way) "that is crazy. Drive to Munich and then back to Fussen and enjoy your day" ... she's obviously never driven an M3 

So, when she told me for the 3rd time that the road in front of her house was the Alpenstrasse and I just needed to get on it and start driving, we did.

Sometime after that, guidance started.

The root of the problem is thus:

the start point for my guidance was the hotel we stayed at. However, we woke up and decided to visit the Obersalzburg Documentation museum (very excellent ... all in German with the walkie-talkies). I started guidance from the Museum several miles off route. We need the system to understand that it should at least route to the beginning of the route from wherever we are. It did not. It, in fact, did nothing, leaving me to believe that the route import did not work.

After this, the very complicated route guidance was excellent. Except, the route waypoints I added to force the system to route along the Alpenstrasse were mostly in parking lots or alleys which led to a lot of "you have reached your destination" followed by "please U-turn if possible" ... tad bit annoying. I learned quickly to navigate to "set guidance to next destination point" prior to arriving at the current one for these non-stop waypoints. All-in-all the nav system saved us way more time that it cost us. And it ended up giving us a triple tour of Tegernsee! Nice place, if not a bit crowded.

I was also able to confirm that it will only import ONE trip from a USB stick. However, I had two USB sticks, so I got two trips loaded. For a many day trip ... either one mega trip, or a series of USB stick, or a computer/USB stick juggle is required to get it all loaded at once.

I'd give it a solid B- for the implementation and effort.

Now, if only BMW would hire me and move me to Munich ... I could fix up their software, and I might be in my version of heaven 

Time to go write my 12 hour nearly 24 hours too late.


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## scar1900 (Feb 12, 2009)

*Monaco GP*

Ok, so the wait for my ED date is driving me crazy. To kill the time I came up with a route that is the Monaco GP circuit. I'm going to try it when I do my ED in late May.

If anyone is doing an ED feel free to download it. I had to rename it a .PDF to upload it but when you save it just rename it a .ZIP. Hope it works....

BTW, says it should take 9 minutes. Someone tell Hamilton that...


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Had another couple of moments, good and bad, with navigation today.

To start with, we loaded up the Sammstag saved file. No problem.

I then proceeded to throw the system a curve-ball and tell it that I wanted to visit Linderhof on the way to Innsbruck. This was quite easy. Mission accomplished and Emmy happily guided us to Linderhof.

However, when leaving, she insisted that we backtrack to Reutte and then down and across the Innsbruck. This did not make sense to me, so I chose to ignore her and headed towards Oberammergau and Garmisch. No amount of driving would re-route the trip over Brenner pass, even though is only about 30 miles Garmisch to Innsbruck. At one point, the route back West and East that the Nav wanted us to take was around 110 miles.

Brenner pass was smooth sailing and we made it from Linderhof to Innsbruck in about 1:15 vs the original 2:30 estimate offered by Emmy. Not cool.

Then, when coming back, we were tired and decided to cut short the scenic route I had programmed in. My brain wanted to then delete the non-desired waypoints and have Emmy do her thing. I could not find a delete waypoint operation. What I had to do instead was keep telling it "proceed to next destination" until I got the first one (in this case the end) that we wanted to head for. Then everyone was happy.

I absolutely adore the little touches, though, like pointing out exactly which turn to take to leave a driving circle you are about to enter. Makes that so much less dizzying and I have yet to pull an American-Double on a round-about.

Beware, though, that if you drive by voice, Emmy gives instructions like my wife:

"Prepare to turn right"
"Turn right NOW"

I've blown through a few turns on that game.


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## wolfgang0524 (Sep 5, 2008)

How did you end up getting the route import to work? I went to the dealer today to try to import a route on a 3 series, but I could not figure out how to do it.

We leave May 1st for my ED. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Somewhere in either this thread or the thread in the "Do it yourself" forum, there is better advice on this.

Basically, you have to go to Nav view and then click on "Options" (the button by the wheel). Scroll down to "route with multiple destinations" or something similar.

Now, you can select "New Trip" (???) and then press the option button to find "Import Trip".

At this point, the Gmap trip tool is not working, so the only known trip creation method is via the BMW-routes site. Save exactly what they download for you, directories and all. If you just put the file on your USB device, it will not work. The file has to be in the directory structure they use.

I'll wander out to the car in a while after taking a tour with the Night Watchman of RodT and take some better notes, maybe a picture or two.

Tschüss


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## wolfgang0524 (Sep 5, 2008)

gclabbe said:


> Somewhere in either this thread or the thread in the "Do it yourself" forum, there is better advice on this.
> 
> Basically, you have to go to Nav view and then click on "Options" (the button by the wheel). Scroll down to "route with multiple destinations" or something similar.
> 
> ...


Any update on this?

I was able to find the "Import from USB" option on the idrive of a 2009 3 series, but the option was grayed out. I read somewhere on the forum that the option was believed to not be available on US cars yet. Is that still the case or was I doing something wrong?


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## csg1600 (Aug 25, 2008)

*More experience with USB trips*

Just returned from an extended trip through Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and I used the USB trips import function several times. I set up a couple of trips that had about 10 legs...I had the same experience as some others, you have to be super-careful about setting up waypoints manually on the map (ie. selecting them with the cursor). Otherwise you end up with a waypoint that takes you down some back alley. After a couple of experiences like that, I tried to drill down at the most granular scale possible when I had to select a waypoint that way. When I was able to select a waypoint by the address (ie because the map had an entry for the place) it worked flawlessly.

Also found that if you blow through a waypoint, its best to manually select the next one: sometimes the iDrive would intelligently select the next one, sometimes not. Must be something about the proximity of your travel near to the waypoint.

I was pleased to find that I could easily insert new waypoints on the fly, and that I could save the waypoints as individual contact points. This came in handy to save the gas stations that we can gas up duty-free right before we leave France and return to minimize the need to use full-price Euro-gas. I am thinking this will be a useful way to quickly add multiple addresses to my iDrive (since I can't send them via Google).


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Sorry,

never had time to simply sit in the car and make a tutorial.

If the import function was grayed out, it probably means that you don't have the "trip with multiple destinations" option checked.

I'd recommend a read through some of this thread and the info on BMW-Routes about how to import a trip. I think they cover where this option is ... from memory, it's found by pressing the options button when on the first screen of the Nav system.


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## smithtravel (Nov 11, 2006)

Great news. I got BMW Routes to work in the US! 

The problem appears to have been the BMW Routes website. It was not working properly for US trips. At least it wasn't working properly for me.

The trips I created in March and early April, once extracted, ended up being empty files (file size 0 KB). Today I created some new trips, for the exact same routes and, once extracted, the files work fine (file size approx. 40 KB).

Two things to watch for: 1) the vehicle must be running and 2) "trip with multiple destinations" must be checked.

It was nice to be able to select way points using the map, satellite view, or addresses. Quick and easy way to create a complete route before getting in the vehicle. If only we could by-pass the USB and send it directly to the vehicle, that would be really cool.


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Or save it so the work isn't lost.

BMW, you paying attention, yet!


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## wolfgang0524 (Sep 5, 2008)

smithtravel said:


> Great news. I got BMW Routes to work in the US!
> 
> The problem appears to have been the BMW Routes website. It was not working properly for US trips. At least it wasn't working properly for me.
> 
> ...


I went to the dealer to play around with this feature again today. This time I tried the usb port in the glove box and I was able to apparently import something from the usb stick. The last time I tried to do this, I was using the usb port in the center console and it doesn't seem to work - the import function is greyed out.

Once the import was completed all I was able to do is click on "OK". I didn't see any trip lists to select from.

Process:
Created a sample European trip as well as a trip coming back from the Performance Center.
Downloaded both of these to my desktop
Extracted them into the BMWData/Nav directory
Copied the BMWData/Nav directory to the usb stick
Plugged in the usb stick into the usb port in the glovebox
Navigated to the import function
Imported the trip

What did I miss? Will the trip only work if you are near the starting point of the trip? Will this only work for a single trip saved on the memory stick?


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## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

It will only get one trip from the memory stick, not both.

Did you copy the contents of the directory, or the entire directory structure? What needs to be on your memory stick is:

/BMWData/Nav/file.tar.gz

I'm not sure if anyone has successfully loaded a US trip, yet. The ability to make US routes was just recently fixed on the site.


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## wolfgang0524 (Sep 5, 2008)

gclabbe said:


> It will only get one trip from the memory stick, not both.
> 
> Did you copy the contents of the directory, or the entire directory structure? What needs to be on your memory stick is:
> 
> ...


I copied the entire directory structure.

I'll try putting different routes on different memory sticks and try again later this week.


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## rahul09 (Mar 15, 2009)

Does the new hard disk based Navi allow you to put destinations using this site's data from USB stick?


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## turpiwa (Jun 13, 2005)

tudmbmw said:


> Does the new hard disk based Navi allow you to put destinations using this site's data from USB stick?


I think you need to read this thread form the beginning to answer the question - not just skip to the last page.


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## need4speed (May 26, 2006)

Great Site. Thanks!


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## rusky_335 (Apr 26, 2009)

This short BMW video makes several comments about the future potential of the routing system, and how they plan to develop it further. I expect that most car companies will offer something like this in the near future.


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## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

I think they are about to launch a big push on Connected Drive, in some geographies at least if not ours. I noticed the engine covers of the BMW-Sauber F1 cars had a very large 'Connected Drive' message on the side last weekend at the Barcelona GP. That is prime advertising real-estate and anything positioned there is there for a very very good reason. It would not be a casual 'look what we have' message - it would be a preliminary interest elevator for a campaign. With 600 million unique viewers they are going large. It is the Monaco GP in 2 weeks. If the message is still there, well, wow!

It ought to be interesting in the next month or two.


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