KAKIMOTO round trips

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KAKIMOTO round trips - just ride off

The feature for everyone who cannot be bothered with planning: enable the switch in Settings, get on the bike and ride. KAKIMOTO notices that you are on the move and keeps suggesting destinations in your direction of travel - passes, sights, cafes or biker meetups - each with a ready-made curvy route. Tap 'Let's go!' to start navigating; 'Later' dismisses the suggestion and a new one follows soon. KAKIMOTO always keeps the ride home in mind: you set the maximum riding time and the back-home-by time once. The routing works fully offline - download the offline map of your region, the curve data and the elevation data once. If anything is missing, the round-trip settings page shows a notice at the top and fetches everything needed at the tap of a button. On Android Auto the suggestion pops up on the car screen with 'Let's go!' and 'Later' and is announced by voice. This works even when the phone sits locked in your pocket and only Android Auto is running. To make that possible, location stays active in the background as long as a car screen is connected and round trips are switched on - without a car screen, or with the switch off, it shuts down as before, so battery life away from the bike is unchanged. 'Later' is remembered: that destination comes up less often afterwards; a suggestion that simply expires unanswered leaves its rating untouched.

Interactive round trips - set up everything with one tap

KAKIMOTO computes on the road, without internet. That takes three downloads: the offline map of your region with the road network for routing, the curve data from which the twisty detours are rolled, and the elevation data for the gradient view. Plus the “Round trip suggestions” switch in the round trip settings. The button below does all of it in one go: it turns the suggestions on, downloads the missing packages for the region of your current position and opens the settings where you can watch the progress. Without a position it takes you to the offline maps instead, where you choose the region yourself.

Just ride off: the idea

KAKIMOTO round trips are for days when you want to ride, not plan. Enable the switch once under Settings → KAKIMOTO round trips — that is all the operation it needs. As soon as you ride off without a loaded route and without active navigation, the app notices within seconds and gets to work: it looks for a worthwhile destination in your current direction of travel, computes a route there using KAKIMOTO curve routing, and puts both on the map as a suggestion.

The suggestion appears as a card at the top of the screen: destination name, distance, estimated riding time and the expected time you will be back. “Let's go!” starts navigation immediately. If you tap “Later” or simply ignore the suggestion for a minute, it clears itself away — and shortly afterwards a new one arrives, again matching your (perhaps completely different) direction of travel. Declined destinations are not repeated within a tour. Bit by bit a spontaneous round trip emerges: ride, turn wherever you like, accept or discard suggestions.

Candidate destinations are passes from the built-in pass database plus your imported POIs — sights, cafes, restaurants, biker meetups. Which of these get suggested is up to the category selection on the settings page.

Prerequisites: maps, curve data, home, POIs

For KAKIMOTO to compute routes on the road it needs offline material. First, the offline region of your riding area (system settings → offline maps): it contains the road network for routing directly on the device, no internet needed. Second, the curve data (a separate package in the same place): with it KAKIMOTO rolls the twisty detours into the route; without it you get an ordinary super-curvy route.

Also set your home location (long-press the GPS button or use the settings): it is the fixed point every round trip keeps in mind. Without a home the app falls back to the starting point of your ride.

The feature draws its destinations from POIs. The settings page offers two import buttons: “Import biker meetups” searches for motorcycle meeting points within 200 km, “Import excursion destinations” fetches sights, cafes and restaurants within 100 km (both online via HERE search; the imported destinations then work offline). You can also import your own GPX/KML POIs as usual, or use the POI searches “along the route” and “in the map view” — both now offer the biker meetup category too. The pass database is built in and needs no import.

Important: round-trip routing works fully offline — no internet is needed on the road. Full functionality takes three downloads: the offline map of your region, the curve data and the elevation data. If any of them is missing, the KAKIMOTO round trips page shows a clear notice at the top with a button that downloads everything missing in one go.

The quickest way is the guided tour: the “Interactive round trips” page has a button that turns the suggestions on, downloads the missing packages for the region of your position and opens the round trip settings with the progress.

Rider profile and tour limits

Four either/or questions describe how you ride — KAKIMOTO derives the routing from them: Sporty/Easy-going sets how far away the individual leg destinations may be. Corner carver/Cruiser switches between full KAKIMOTO curve routing (with randomly rolled curve clusters) and the more relaxed curvy routing. Asphalt only/Asphalt + gravel controls whether unpaved roads are avoided. Well-built roads/Small back roads pulls the route onto wide roads or onto narrow lanes.

On top of that come the tour limits: the maximum riding time (default 6 hours) counts pure riding time only — an hour at the cafe consumes no budget, but you will be home correspondingly later. “Back home by” (default 20:00) is the hard clock limit; the tighter of the two limits always wins. The passes and cafe stops switches include or exclude those destination types from the suggestions.

On the road: what happens when

The suggestion assistant is deliberately restrained: it only speaks up when no route is loaded and no navigation is active — if you load a route or start navigating yourself, it stays quiet until the map is free again. Every suggestion disappears by itself after a minute if you do not tap it; nobody has to operate anything at the handlebars. After a declined suggestion the app waits about a minute and a half of riding before making the next one.

The ride-home budget works in the background: for every candidate KAKIMOTO checks whether the way there plus the way home (plus a reserve) still fit within the riding-time and clock limits. When no destination fits any more, the app makes a one-time ride home suggestion — with a ready route home. After that, silence again; if you keep riding anyway, you simply keep riding.

Good to know: the first suggestion of a session can take up to a minute (the pass database is loaded once). During active round trips the app activates the “KAKIMOTO round trip” routing profile; when you switch the feature off, your previous profile is restored. And: without Android Auto, suggestions only appear while TDM is visible on the display — say, in the handlebar mount; on the iPhone the app cannot bring itself to the foreground from the background. With Android Auto connected they also arrive while the phone sits locked in your pocket; see “Round trips on Android Auto”.

Round trips on Android Auto

The suggestion does not only appear on the phone but on Android Auto as well: an overlay above the car screen's map shows the destination name, distance, riding time and the expected time back, plus the buttons “Let's go!” and “Later”. When voice output is switched on, the suggestion is announced too — on a motorcycle that is the only realistic way to notice it at all. While the suggestion stands, the proposed route is visible on the car screen's map; it disappears again as soon as you decline or the suggestion expires.

Your phone may stay locked in your pocket meanwhile. Suggestions used to arrive only while the map was open and visible on the phone — which on a motorcycle was practically never. The suggestion service now works even when the app runs solely through Android Auto. To make that possible, location stays active in the background as long as a car screen is connected AND round trips are switched on. Disconnect the car screen or flip the switch and location shuts down as before — so battery life away from the vehicle is unchanged. The round trips switch on Android Auto also takes effect immediately, whether the phone is locked or not.

Not every head unit displays such overlays. If yours cannot, the suggestion is still not lost: a short message appears, and the Android Auto main menu carries a Round trip tile for as long as the suggestion is valid — that is where you accept it.

If the offline map of the region you are riding in is missing, the suggestion service cannot compute anything. When the app runs solely through Android Auto — with the map on the phone never opened since the app started — the car screen says so once per ride instead of staying silent; if you did have the map open on the phone in between, the notice stays away as before. And: a deliberate “Later” lowers the rating of POI destinations, so they are suggested less often afterwards — passes and the ride home carry no rating at all, and a suggestion you never got to see and that expires by itself changes nothing anyway.