In-Ride list of POIs: Suggestions for improvement

The recently released POI in-ride drawer (see the somewhat hidden documentation here) was the reason why I've purchased the Karoo – I wouldn't have done it if this view wasn't available. Read below, why it is so important to me and how it compares to the capabilities of Garmin.

Though it is a great addition, especially for bike travelling, I have some suggestions to make it more useful. To clarify, here is the screenshot from your documentation:

Suggestions

These are my suggestions in order of importance. BTW: Garmin has all of them – see below for details.

1. Distance "from here"

At the moment, the distances of the POIs are additive. So in the screenshot above, "Bob's bikes" is not 29.4 km away from my current location, but from the POI before. So the distance from my current location is 33.2 km.

This is the same logic as for the turn-by-turn (TBT) instructions and as it might make sense there, IMHO it doesn't make sense in the POI list. If I need a bike repair, I'm not interested in the fact, that this is 29.4 km behind the restaurant which is 3.3 km behind the bar which I will arrive in 0.5 km. I simply what to know that I still have to go 33.2 km until I get my bike repaired.

BTW you are using my suggested logic already on the climb tab, where all upcoming climbs are displayed with their distance from my current location.

2. Data Fields

It would be awesome, to have a data field "Distance to next POI". On the Garmin this field displays the distance to the next "course point" together with an icon indicating the type of this point. An additional "ascent to next POI" would also be nice.

(I planned to create an extension providing such data fields, but unfortunately the required information isn't provided by the current API)

3. Estimated time of Arrival

It would be awesome, if not only the remaining distance would be shown in the POI drawer, but also the estimated time of arrival for each POI. Use case: I have several campsites in my POIs and I want to see, which one I could reach probably before sunset. My current average speed might not be helpful here, if there are climbs in between.

Background and Comparison

As mentioned already in another post, I was a Wahoo-user since 2018. But last year I started with bike travelling. And though the Wahoo navigation made me find my way, I suddenly recognized that I need POIs or "waypoints" or "course points". Why? Just cycling day after day and seeing the "remaining distance" counter decreasing slowly from 150 km to 0 isn't quite motivating for me. I want to define points on the route for shops, attractions and other stuff, to slice the long distance down into smaller parts.

Quickly I recognized that there isn't any support for POIs in Wahoo and so I looked for alternatives supporting this feature. None of the manufacturers is advertising this. At first I haven't found this for Karoo at all, why I've ordered a Garmin Edge 1040. It definitely has the best in-riding support for POIs (they call it course points): 

1. You can add a data field to the screen which shows the remaining distance to the next course point and an icon indicating the type of the point. You can find it in their documentation here.

2. You have a dedicated screen showing an overview of all upcoming course points, each one with the following information:

• icon indicating the type
• name of the point
• distance from the current location
• ETA

You can see a photo of it, for example in this blog post.

The downside of Garmin and where Karoo shines

So, why don't I use a Garmin then? Well, there are a few reasons:

• In my opinion, Garmin is simply ugly – this is true for the hardware (chrome-plated plastic) and especially the UI. And I'm mainly interested in navigation and not in all the training stuff (though I'm missing calories from hart rate in Karoo, but that's another topic).
• In Garmin there are no custom global POIs. I sync my routes from Komoot. I would have to duplicate each synced route and add the POIs. If I want to change something in Komoot, while I'm on my way, it will be a different route and I would have to set all the POIs again. In Karoo in contrast, I can simply make my POIs global and can use my original Komoot routes, even when they change. This is awesome!