Garmin spanner program

Home Port download. Nuvi and other models which connect to the PC as media device. The latest Garmin Nuvi models and other models which use this method connect to the PC as a media device - OziExplorer requires these models to be connected as a mass storage device.

These Garmins can usually be changed to mass storage mode so that they will work with OziExplorer. To change to Mass Storage Mode. Press the upper right hand corner of screen for 10 seconds.

This is a very expensive consumer hardware product, and for it to have only this lame excuse for a manual as the only official documentation is a disgrace. Garmin should first be ashamed of themselves, and then fix this problem.

If you go to the section in the manual that talks about the USB computer interface, you get this:. Looks like this unit supports the serial NMEA interface for position data that many programs require, right? Except …. Using this option lets you power the unit off a USB cable connection, and also transmits position information to a computer via the standard Garmin USB protocol.

Magellan did it right with the Triton series; if you set those units to NMEA and connected them to a computer with the USB cable, a virtual serial port was created through which the unit could send data to programs that require NMEA. The only place I know of to learn of many of them is the Oregon Wiki site ; while not all Oregon features have a counterpart in the 62s, many do, and this wiki does a good job at explaining many of them.

The USGS is well on its way to having updated all its , scale topographic maps the classic 7. As of today, the coverage map looks like this:. On one hand, the maps are very nice — they have multiple data layers, each with a separate kind of data, whose view can be turned on and off. On the other hand, the maps are currently only available in GeoPDF format, which limits their usability, particularly in GIS-related software. This was a conscious decision by the USGS :. It was designed to serve users who need medium-scale topographic and orthoimage maps, but who are not GIS users.

Almost all these data are from USGS and other government sources, and most are available for free through web services or file download sites. The US Topo represents a repackaging of these data, not new data creation. The primary design objective was to provide these data in a convenient and familiar form to people who need maps but who are not professional cartographers.

The traditional 7. The latest version 4. Garmin GPS units can have contrast issues when used in sunlight. So I loaded the GeoTiff into Photoshop to enhance contrast, and saved it under a different name; this process improved visibility, but also stripped out the geo metadata:. Registering the program removes these limitations. This way, you can test the tool to make sure it works for you. This is a good assumption for newer maps, a poor assumption for older ones. The help file includes a mildly-convoluted work-around hack that will let you create GeoPDFs with data layers turned off.

More information about G-Raster, and a link where you can download it, can be found at the G-Raster web page. However, the demo version will let you import up to two GPX files, edit them, convert them to. Interface is clean and simple; load in your files and view the data in a map window. But if you want to bypass those complexities, and just quickly generate simple Garmin map files from your own data, GPX2IMG works and is easy to use.

Even the limited demo version has enough utility to make it worthwhile. Up until recently, handheld GPS units have been a fairly limited specialty market, allowing manufacturers to control interfaces and map data, and charge exorbitant prices due to limited competition. Android has the capability to turn GPS into a commodity market, meaning less control and more competition, leading to lower prices. And this is an environment that the old-school GPS vendors may have trouble with.

Magellan : Magellan is still struggling to overcome the disastrous premiere of their Triton line in decent hardware with capabilities unique at the time raster imagery, 3-axis compass sabotaged by horribly buggy software. Most of these problems got fixed, but too late to make a difference. For standard GPS models, the specs on these look pretty good, and the prices are very competitive.

No touchscreen? No apps? These were probably the best-selling handheld consumer GPS series of all time, and four years later are still among their most popular units. The question is whether they can move past their own proprietary hardware and software designs and move quickly to an Android platform, using their strong GPS expertise to bring additional features that will differentiate their models from the rest of the market.

Their first attempt to move Garmin technology to a cellphone platform, the nuvifone, was universally despised by reviewers. Their second effort, the Garminfone, was based on the Android platform, and received much more favorable reviews ; the car navigation software of the Garminfone is generally considered to be the best Android car navigation system so far. If the phone had come out in the latter half of as originally scheduled, it could have been a huge success.

But instead, it was first released in June , and was crippled by:. In short, simply not competitive with other Android phones. And they need to leverage their GPS engineering capabilities and map data into advantages that make their units stand out. Took a while, but this is the final installment of my epic part series on free tools for making custom Garmin vector maps. I covered the free map compiler mkgmap in part 13 , which converts OpenStreetMap data files.

Run the executable:. Use the button at upper-right to select the. The only problem is the JOSM program won't download real large areas due to server limitations. Pawlowicz's instructions to stitch together maps, instead of overlaying them in Mapsource of which I didn't have much luck with.

Then I did the whole conversion deal, and stitched the maps together, had the GPSMapEdit check for problems which there were - overlaps, duplicates, etc , fixed them, and then re-created the a new map and uploaded it to the Garmin. Worked great. Post a Comment.

Fortunately there's ways around that for both. Google Earth is amazing when using the above programs. This basically lets you do a screen capture from your Garmin GPS. See the examples under the next heading. You can also upload screens. Supposedly you could change the startup screen, etc. Why isn't there an icon for water? I'll have to make my own.

Next I want to put on some topographical maps too. If I understand it proprly, spanner mode on the GPS gets it to send data through USB instead of connecting it as a mass storage device , while the spanner program that runs on XP grabs the USB data stream and makes it look like it's coming through a regular serial port. I think it depends upon your GPSr model. I'm not sure about the other models, as I don't have any of them left any more to check.

I could be wrong. I have no idea what software or hardware can deal with it. Not sure about that going to USB directly. I'm quite sure you could just splice a serial connector to any old USB cable both of which are pretty much free. I noticed "Spanner" mode was available on the device's setup menu and was curious about that kind of data it was sending and if there were any alternatives to the Windows XP driver for using it. Since I think I know you're a Mac user, the answer to the question you're not actually asking is "no".

Really, this device will live on the handlebars and only rarely see my computer.