[One GPS for Golfing and Geocaching]

Firstly, I’m GPS newbie and never had one until about a year ago. I’m at the bottom of the learning curve. Consequently, I don’t know what features are available for your unit but hopefully some of this will at least make things clearer about what I’m doing.

 

Can you tell me what the recreational profile is so I can see if there's some equivalent on my Legend HCx? Thanks.

The Colorado has multiple user profiles (e.g. automotive, recreational, marine, fitness, etc.). I think it’s just a way of keeping certain features appropriate to the profile (e.g. automotive sticks to roads). Maybe your Legend simply has them all in one.

 

Now let me make a suggestion right back. Try using Don's page to get the waypoints. It works just as you're doing with Google Earth now except you end up creating a GPX file with all the waypoints in it. Each waypoint will have the name you have assigned to it (#1 Green Front, #1 To frwy bnkr, #2 Carry Crk, etc) as well as the coordinates already in the file. Mapsource is happy as a clam with the GPX file that Don's site creates. That will save you quite a bit of work, I think.

 

Give it a whirl and see what you think.

I tried this with a couple of waypoints yesterday and it should save me considerable time from my current Excel method. Thanks – a lot.

 

Okay, I've given this a bit more thought and I have some questions. When you create the route, surely you don't include every waypoint on the course in it? That would be tedious to set up and it would make a real mess on the screen, wouldn't it? Or are you just using, say, the middle of each green as the waypoints to include in the route?

I include every waypoint in the route. For some of my courses I use over 50 waypoints. Any “mess on the screen” isn’t a problem with the way they’re viewed on the Colorado. That is, they are not viewed/used like this

 

 

but rather like this

 

 

I assume you are manually setting the route to force the holes into the right order? There's no way any routing algorithm in Mapsource or my Legend will get it right if I let it autoroute, even in offroad mode.

In MapSource you can easily put the waypoints in the right order for the route/course. They come over in the gpx file like this

 

 

Then I highlight them, edit/create route using selected waypoints and move them up or down in the proper order

 

To make sure they are in the proper order and where I want them I view the route in Google Earth

 

 

Do you include the tee boxes in your setup so that you have a route that resembles the course?

No. I see no need for the tee boxes.

 

Hope this helps.

[One GPS for Golfing and Geocaching]

I haven’t used don barger’s site yet and it may be easier than my method. But what works for me…..

 

i) Use Google Earth to locate the course and then mark waypoints along holes for what yardages I may want to know when I play the course (e.g. creeks, over/to sand, front/back of green).

ii) Copy these waypoints into an Excel file to get them into a format that MapSource likes.

iii) Open MapSource and enter the waypoints. Make a route with these waypoints (holes 1-18) and download the route to the Colorado.

iv) At the course, use recreational profile, call up the route and use the ‘active’ route screen. Then simply set the format to yardages and scroll thru the waypoints you’ve made as they come up.

 

I’ve done this for about 20 courses in and around the St. Louis area; as well as some courses I visit on vacation. Takes about an hour per course with about 50 waypoints and I haven’t had much of an issue with Google’s inaccuracy – yet (at least to where it affects my game).

[Colorado firmware 2.95 Beta]

I was one of many who complained in the 2.94 thread. So feel it's only appropriate to post that I have had no problems with the 2.95 version and it's worked smoothly for me; note I pretty much only do "basic/beginners-type" stuff with the Colorado.

[Colorado software version 2.94 Beta]

I loaded 2.94. Then tried loading a new route & waypoints via MapSource 'send to device', uncoupled the GPS, turned it back on, looked for the route and it wasn't listed (no memory card in unit).

 

Went back to 2.90 re-tried loading route & waypoint and now it's listed.

 

'Course going back to 2.90 also changed some of my settings and "lost" my City Navigator 2009 update version because device only shows 2008 loaded. Arrrrgggggggh.

[Free Lake Depth Maps?]

Bumping this to see if anybody has located sources for downloading lake depth/structure data for individual states or lakes so that maps can be made for Colorado GPS. I'm especially interested in Missouri lakes or rivers.

[Colorado Firmware 2.6]

Deleting waypoints -

I upgraded to 2.6 on Sunday morning. Then went in, deleted a route and its associated waypoints thru route planner. Turned unit off. Came back to do some other programing and noticed the waypoints were still there but the route was gone. I didn't have this problem with previous 2.51(?) software version and in fact didn't upgrade to 2.54 because others had described the unit crashing when deleting waypoints thru the waypoint manager.

 

So, I was wondering if in Garmin's haste to fix the crashing problem with waypoint deleting in 2.54, if they inadvertently changed the waypoints from being deleted from a route thru route planner in 2.60.

[Colorado update, Montana & California build thread...]

f.w.i.w. I'm trying to make an upgraded topo for the state of Missouri by following the tutorial at gpsfiledepot.com. Having never done any mapping I'm not sure how well this will work out. So far I've downloaded all the *.tif files (~ 17hrs) and am now in the process of making *.mp files using the dem2topo freeware (probably another ~ 30 hrs). I expect the whole Missouri project will take several weekends since that's the only time I have to work on it.

[Garmin Colorado FAQ and Issues List]

Issue: Deleting Waypoints associated with a Route.

 

Is there a simple way of deleting a Route and the Waypoints associated with that Route at the same time. I had assumed when I deleted the Route the Waypoints would have also been deleted. Unfortunately, I had to go in and manual delete each and every Waypoint along that Route (and the wheel wouldn't let me go backwards in the Waypoint list from the start - which would have simplified things at least a little). I can understand why they would not automatically delete them, but it'd been a lot nicer if when I deleted the Route it had given me the option of 'delete Waypoints along Route' (or it could have simply asked the question "Do you want the Waypoints deleted ?").

f.w.i.w. Apparently the Colorado will let you do this, since I stumbled upon it after manually deleting about 40 waypoints one-by-one. For anyone else who may need to do it; go to Others/Route Planner and select the route, then Options and Remove All.

[Garmin Colorado FAQ and Issues List]

Issue: Deleting Waypoints associated with a Route.

 

Is there a simple way of deleting a Route and the Waypoints associated with that Route at the same time. I had assumed when I deleted the Route the Waypoints would have also been deleted. Unfortunately, I had to go in and manual delete each and every Waypoint along that Route (and the wheel wouldn't let me go backwards in the Waypoint list from the start - which would have simplified things at least a little). I can understand why they would not automatically delete them, but it'd been a lot nicer if when I deleted the Route it had given me the option of 'delete Waypoints along Route' (or it could have simply asked the question "Do you want the Waypoints deleted ?").

[AVATAR TESTING and INSTRUCTIONS]

testing

[Garmin Colorado FAQ and Issues List]

I'm entirely new to Garmin and GPS. Got my 400T about a week ago and I've installed City Navigator NT. Throughout the week I have been reading this forum and playing with the shortcuts/options on the unit in hopes of trying to figure out how the unit works best for my needs (e.g. auto, hiking, fishing, golf). One thing I agree with everyone on is that the manual is horrible - especially for a new user like myself.

 

A couple of simple questions....

i) How do I find out what software version I'm running (i.e. 2.4, 2.51, etc.) ?

 

ii) What are the "auto", "default" or "normal" values ? I know what the terms mean but, for example, in the automobile profile, shortcuts "setup", "tracks", your "record method" can be "time", "distance" or "auto"; and then the "interval time" can be "normal". How am I supposed to know what the "auto" record with "normal" time is (e.g. every 30 sec or every 20 min) ? Their "auto" value may work fine for stop-and-go city driving but may be overkill for highway driving. I realize I can just pick a setting that's not "auto" but I was just curious if there's any place that shows what the Colorado's auto/default/normal settings are for each of the various options.

 

iii) This is more specific....I have a route planned and I can read the turn-by-turn instructions. If I click on a particular turn-by-turn direction a map displays the road and turn, but without any detail (no road signs or waypoints). I don't even see any road signs when I zoom out to 20-50 miles. On the other hand, if when the same turn-by-turn is displayed, I go into the shortcuts and click the map icon, a map comes up with all the detail (e.g. road signs). I believe I've gone through all the setup options and picked highest detail for maps. So why aren't I seeing any detail on the map displayed when I click the turn-by-turn direction. Is this an 'issue' or have I simply not got some option somewhere set to what it should be.

 

I apologize of for the length of my first post, but I had hoped to resolve these issues before now, but I'm desperate. Thanks for any help.