Coastal Explorer on the PC and a Garmin 440 chart plotter
by SVMystery on 05-Aug-2010

Hello all

First off - is there anyone using this combination of tools?

I want to know how to move routes from CE to the Garmin

Thanks

Rik IC 34 - Mystery

No, but I am using the Garmin 551S which is similar garmin firmware, just a bit larger screen. I'll have a go at route transfer over the weekend if I get time and let you know.

Cheers

Steve

Route transfer

Steve

This is what I currently have to do using FUGAWI and the 440:

Export each route from FUGAWI as a GPX file Open each one in GPS Utility 5.0 Save it as a Garmin ADM called User.Data.ADM put it on a SD Card Walk it out to the cockpit, insert the card and then do a Data Merge From Card

Uggg - there has to be an easier way??? I hope!

Rik

Garmin has been removing the ability to transfer routes to their chart plotters from anything but their own proprietary software. However, the release notes for some of the plotters indicate that the capability sort of comes and goes. (Who knows what they're thinking!@#$?)

The options provided by Coastal Explorer include:

Exporting routes in a common file format, such as GPX, which might be converted to an acceptable format by some other software. (By the way, Coastal Explorer can export more than one route to a single GPX file.) At one point, Garmin's MapPoint could read GPX files and save them to the SD Cards used by their plotters. (This is one of those features that comes and goes and you'd need to check with Garmin for details.)

Using Send To GPS and the Garmin Transfer Interface which was supported by older Garmin chartplotters and is still supported by many of their hand-held GPS units. This was an extremely reliable way to transfer one or more routes, waypoints, and/or tracks between Coastal Explorer and a Garmin device. It's too bad Garmin decided to kill the feature in their newer devices...

Using Send To GPS using the NMEA 0183 protocol will usually get you a set of waypoints, but not a route. For some reason Garmin devices rarely if ever support the standard NMEA 0183 RTE sentence which is used to build a route from a list of waypoints. We have found that even those devices that claim to support RTE do not.

Unfortunately it appears that anyone who desires the ability to transfer routes to a chartplotter should really avoid Garmin products until they decide to re-enable that functionality.