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UConnect Trail Recording

nerp

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Did you know you can record trails that you have travelled using your UConnect in the Jeep JL? It's not only useful but like so many UConnect features it is also frustratingly incomplete. To get to it, open your NAV application and press the "Where To..." button. Scroll down and some new options you've probably never seen before will appear - and one is "Trails."

Ucconnect-Trails-Location-IMG_20190107_142341.jpg

Jeep Wrangler JL UConnect Trail Recording {filename}


Once you get in there, you can record your progress on a trail using the "Start Recording..." option. It's pretty cool and really helpful to "unwind" your way back out of a trail and your location doesn't need to snap to a map road. You can record your drive through the forest or ungraded desert!

  • Your drive paths are saved on here.com's internal servers and you have no way of accessing that data except through the UConnect. (Here.com is the new provider of the Navigation application for the Wrangler JL - previously, it was Garmon. I made a call to UConnect to see if I could get access to this data, and they said to call here.com. Of course, calling them went about as well as you would think it might (not well at all). If anyone knows more about this, I'd love to hear.)
  • You need to "start recording" every time you turn off the car and turn it back on. I guess this is ok, but I like to stop frequently when I'm 4-wheeling and I typically don't leave the Jeep running while I survey the road or rocks and ruts ahead. There's no way to combine the paths or continue a recording.
  • There seems to be no way to rename the recordings. They are named simply by the date and time that they were recorded. If you have google location recording turned on (most of us probably do), then you can use http://myactivity.google.com or your online calendar to figure out when you went to "XXX Wildlife Preserve" in order to find that one trail you were on last year.
Has anyone else found this a useful feature?

Terry
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sigsegv

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I tried the same feature when offroading. It's so woefully incomplete that I gave up and won't use it again unless it's improved.
 
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nerp

nerp

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I tried the same feature when offroading. It's so woefully incomplete that I gave up and won't use it again unless it's improved.
Yeah I couldn't agree more ... it seems like they never quite had the user in mind when writing some of these features. I want to be able to use this feature in three ways: 1) To "back out" of a trail the way that I came, 2) To get back to a trail that I've been to before, and 3) To chart a collection of my trails on an application which is more dedicated to tracking paths and coordinate lists like Google Maps, Leaflet, or OpenLayers.

UConnect manages to fail on all three of these use cases making me wonder what the heck it's good for or what it's intended for. What did you feel was incomplete about it?
 

sigsegv

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You nailed all three of the things I was hoping to use it for. If it could do any ONE of them, I'd have been pretty happy. It can do none of them, and on top of that, as you mentioned it takes a lot of effort to get a good path recorded and stored solely on your head unit, since each time you shut the car off the recording stops.
 
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nerp

nerp

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Maybe @JeepCares can take this to UConnect and we can get an OTA Update to make this a much more amazing and useful feature.
 

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Deezus

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Did you know you can record trails that you have travelled using your UConnect in the Jeep JL? It's not only useful but like so many UConnect features it is also frustratingly incomplete. To get to it, open your NAV application and press the "Where To..." button. Scroll down and some new options you've probably never seen before will appear - and one is "Trails."

Jeep Wrangler JL UConnect Trail Recording {filename}

Jeep Wrangler JL UConnect Trail Recording {filename}


Once you get in there, you can record your progress on a trail using the "Start Recording..." option. It's pretty cool and really helpful to "unwind" your way back out of a trail and your location doesn't need to snap to a map road. You can record your drive through the forest or ungraded desert!

  • Your drive paths are saved on here.com's internal servers and you have no way of accessing that data except through the UConnect. (Here.com is the new provider of the Navigation application for the Wrangler JL - previously, it was Garmon. I made a call to UConnect to see if I could get access to this data, and they said to call here.com. Of course, calling them went about as well as you would think it might (not well at all). If anyone knows more about this, I'd love to hear.)
  • You need to "start recording" every time you turn off the car and turn it back on. I guess this is ok, but I like to stop frequently when I'm 4-wheeling and I typically don't leave the Jeep running while I survey the road or rocks and ruts ahead. There's no way to combine the paths or continue a recording.
  • There seems to be no way to rename the recordings. They are named simply by the date and time that they were recorded. If you have google location recording turned on (most of us probably do), then you can use http://myactivity.google.com or your online calendar to figure out when you went to "XXX Wildlife Preserve" in order to find that one trail you were on last year.
Has anyone else found this a useful feature?

Terry
Yes I have used it u fortunately you can't use the tracks you record if there off paved roads which is completely stupid and makes the navigation head unit for off roading useless. I mean why have navigation and trail recording in an off road vehicle if it doesn't work off road?
Head unit is a waste of money for off roading.
 

DickZip

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I am so disappointed with this feature. When I first heard about this, I was very excited but, with most things on the JL FCA just can’t seen to get it right. I feel FCA is just in business to overcharge and underperform. Bummer for us Jeep fans, maybe i’ll Become a diehard Ford bronco fan when it shows up.
Oh and btw, you can rename your recordings.
 

jhmartin

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That's really too bad, the vehicle mounted GPS antenna would likely result in better data than a handheld.
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