Adding route to Garmin Vista HCx when the Basemap doesn't show the roads needed.

Hi

Has anyone got experience of how to get a detailed route onto the Vista hcx or similar?

I am doing a charity ride with a friend on Saturday OF 130-odd miles, and right now were a bit short of the ability to upload the route.

I have Mapsource, and a basemap on the eTrex, but it’s lacking the smaller roads and I want to push this route onto it.

Any ideas? I tried adding this [/url]map and saved it to the SD Card in a folder called Garmin, [or garmin] but it’s not showing anything different when I reboot/show map. Going in to the Map/manage map function doesn’t seem to show others available to display.

I figure there’s could be three ways to do it:

To add a better map to Mapsource, then create a route on that and upload it along with the map

To add a better map to the Garmin itself and navigate with it or have it navigate me along it.

To import a route from google maps, etc and then plot and upload it to the Garmin, even if it doesn’t match the detail on the screen I can follow the line. A routable map is what I really want, so I can just concentrate on following the device and turning the pedals, not getting directions out!

But, I don’t know what I’m doing, so I could be wrong.

Help! I need it working on Saturday Morning :/

This is the easiest website for getting maps in MapSource: http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/
Just pick a country and download the osm_generic_windows.exe file, then run it to add the maps to MapSource. Then you can use Mapsource to send them to the Etrex.

I use that .nl site above to generate a custom map (I live on mainland EU and ride in several countries, and the German full country one is huuuuuge).

The maps and the routes are independent of each other.

Those custom maps are routeable too afaik (but i don’t use that feature).

Will take a look at the goggle route (thats in the other thread i think) tonight, but my feeling is you probably need to save it to google’s KML format (but making sure it saves the actual data points, and not a link to the online map), then convert to GPX track, then wack that on the garmin (transfer via the software). GPSBabel can do both of those steps.

Copied in from the other thread:

Not trying to Hijack the thread, but has anyone got experience of how to get a detailed route onto the Vista hcx or similar?

I have Mapsource, and a basemap on the eTrex, but it’s lacking the smaller roads and I want to push this route onto it.

Any ideas? I tried adding this map and saved it to the SD Card in a folder called Garmin, [or garmin] but it’s not showing anything different when I reboot/show map.

Help! I need it working on Saturday Morning :/

Thanks
Posted 17 hours ago #
jambalaya – Member

If you are really wanting to go into the wilderness you should get a GPS which takes batteries so you can take a spare set. I have a Garmin Map60 I use for sailing, we can be away from land/charger for 5 days.

Posted 16 hours ago # Report-Post
muppetWrangler – Member

I’ve the Oregon 550 which I think is the older version of the one that pawsey bear has. No real complaints, it’s been used on and off the bike and generally mistreated for a few years and is still fine. Does everything you’re looking for, so it might be worth looking on eBay for a used version and maybe saving yourself a few quid. I bought it for the ability to swap the batteries out on multi day trips.
Posted 16 hours ago # Report-Post
rancid – Member

Some good food for thought there fellas, cheers.
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
boblo – Member

gofasterstripes – Member
Not trying to Hijack the thread, but has anyone got experience of how to get a detailed route onto the Vista hcx or similar?

I have Mapsource, and a basemap on the eTrex, but it’s lacking the smaller roads and I want to push this route onto it.

Any ideas? I tried adding this map and saved it to the SD Card in a folder called Garmin, [or garmin] but it’s not showing anything different when I reboot/show map.

Help! I need it working on Saturday Morning :/

I’m just working from memory here so I could be wrong. It looks to me like you’re using Edge logic on an Etrex. IIRC, they don’t have routable maps in just vector ones (scalable pictures). I’m not familiar with Etrex file structure but your describing what you’d do with an the Edges which I know well.

With the Etrex H, I connect to a pc with a silly proprietary serial cable and upload a route from Memory Map in .mmo format. You don’t even get into the units file structure so I can’t say where the route is saved to. I can’t see what format your route is in as I’m on a Tablet.

Have you got Memory Map? If your stuck why don’t you just key the waypoints directly into your Visa with its existing mapping?
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
dyls – Member

Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
andytherocketeer – Member

for the OSM maps, to get them on a Vista HCx, you copy the gmapsupp.img file in to the Garmin folder on the SD card. there can be only 1 gmapsupp.img file on that device, althoug I get around that by having multiple folders, and renaming the one I want on a laptop, or generate a custom map containing all the tiles you’ll ever need.

for the route/track in a .gpx file, you need to transfer it to the device using garmin or similar software. I use GPSBabel on linux to do that.
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
gofasterstripes – Member

Yeah, I’m till doing something wrong. I have a gmapsupp file, no difference on the device. I successfully got an open street map file to appear in mapsource, but neither the track nor route I drew on it appear when I “send to device”.

There’s a .gpx showing in tracks/setup/data card setup, but the only option there is to delete it. I have told the device to log tracks to the SD card, still not showing in the list of tracks saved.

The info in: data card setup/menu button/data card info shows 0mb maps, .07mb tracks, 342mb misc, so it’s clearly not recognising the map file on the SD. And there no way to show that pushed track or route
Posted 15 hours ago #
boblo – Member

What size sd card are you using?
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
boblo – Member

.
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
gofasterstripes – Member

2gb, fat 32
Posted 15 hours ago #
boblo – Member

With the Vista can you save a map file to the device. Is there one already there and the one one the card is supernumerary?
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
andytherocketeer – Member

the .gpx showing in tracks/setup/data card setup are probably the ones recorded by the garmin to SD card? (they’ll be date.gpx)

how are you getting that google map in to a .gpx file? and is it a track or a route? (I could understand it being truncated, since I guess it’s quite long)

strange about the gmapsupp file. never had any issue on mine.
Posted 15 hours ago # Report-Post
gofasterstripes – Member

I’ll check that when homehomew
Posted 14 hours ago #
gofasterstripes – Member

I mean I’ll check if there’s more than one map.

The Google route is just what I want to copy, I don’t think I can import it, sadly.
Posted 14 hours ago #
TurnerGuy – Member

The satmap can run on AA batteries as well as the usual li unit.

A good thing about the satmap is being able to have it orientate the map to the direction your are riding, which makes following a route easy. I normally zoom it down to 1:3k so it relates to riding speed quite well.

I have OS maps on my phone but my app (omm) seems quite primative compared, for usability. I haven’t seen other apps to compare, but I have been relatively frustration free using the satmap, which is pretty good going for me.

I don’t know how well you can scroll the bike garmins in and out and move the map around in order to actually look around the area and work out where you are going next, but the satmap is good for that as the screen is quite big.
Posted 12 hours ago # Report-Post
gofasterstripes – Member

I’ll have another go in a few hours.

Really, if anyone wants to continue helping [please ] the make the jump to my thread about it:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/adding-route-to-garmin-vista-hcx-when-the-basemap-doesnt-show-the-roads-needed#post-6874741

Cheers.
Posted 11 minutes ago # Edit

Post

Thanks, Andy.

Hmm – it’s still not working as expected. Neither sending routes drawn in MapSource, nor receiving things from the GPS. I took the data card out so it’s all on the internal, but still nothing.

It seems to detect whether maps or routes are draw, and therefore whether they’re possible to send, but nothing. When there isn’t a an SD card present, it fails totally, when there is it just makes no difference.

Aaargh, why is this so complicated?

Nearly ready to, go 57 hand-coded waypoints:

[donations still possible – place your bets on whether I get us lost]

Downloaded that map (saved the Jul13_gmapsupp.zip file)
unzipped it
renamed the file to gmapsupp.img (on a Vista HCX it must be called that exactly)
copied to microSD card (mine’s a 1gig) in folder “Garmin” in the root of the sd card
popped sd card in Vista HCx
map appears, but it’s very very slow, and you need to zoom in quite a way to see anything.

Still trying to work out how the **** to save a Google route to KML or GPX since they boogered up google maps.

I used to use gmap-pedometer and a script to draw routes/tracks and export to GPX, but now do these in Endomondo (other sites are available). That one does snap to road, but not route calculation.

edit: and ouch at 57 hand entered waypoints! (been there, done that, while away from a PC before)

PS but I couldn’t get it to autoroute in the Garmin, but that might be because I’m off the map and it keeps choosing here as the start point even when I told it not to.

Have you tried Gpsies for file conversion? I thought Google maps saved to kml?

it was easy in the end.

do the google map in one window
open another window and go here http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input
copy paste the google url for the route in the box on gpsvisualizer
select gpx, in advanced options choose 500 for the max. number of track points (else the garmin will truncate the route)
convert
transfer the file to garmin

job done.

can also do a gpsbabel command on the file too, to turn it in to a route rather than a track.
gpsvisuzlizer is basically a web interface to gpsbabel anyway, which is free and available on all platforms, and can do 1000x as much as you’d ever need when converting and transferring files.

edit: before transferring the file, I opened it in an editor, just to rename the track name to something obvious, since it defaults that to GPS coordinates, which aren’t so obvious.

I’m with you until

do the google map in one window
open another window and go here http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert_input
copy paste the google url for the route in the box on gpsvisualizer
select gpx, in advanced options choose 500 for the max. number of track points (else the garmin will truncate the route)
convert

HERE

transfer the file to garmin

If I add the .gpx to the SD card [/ or /Garmin/GPX] it shows in
>Main Menu>Tracks>Track Setup>Data Card Setup

but not on the map. The only option on the Data Card Setup is
>select>delete

?!

on a vista HCx (and old garmins), you need to transfer using the garmin transfer software over USB

newer ones (eg edge etc.) I think you can just copy the gps to the SD card

not used the windows garmin software for years, but iirc there’s something like an option called “send GPX” or “send route/track/waypoint” ?

since I use Linux, I use gpsbabel to transfer the file.

strangely, the tracks that get recorded, *can* just be copied from the SD card (or internal memory).