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Geocachingfriendly vehicle for your Nüvi


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I've been caching since august last year using my Garmin Nüvi 205. Doing the paperless way with the macro from Pilotsnipes and it works very well.

 

However, I never managed to find a built in (or downloadable) vehicle that was good for geocaching.

I ended up doing my own using this converter: http://www.techmods.net/nuvi/

 

In 3D mode it still uses a car (or the blue triangle if you want to) but as soon as you switch to 2D-mode it will look like in the screenshots below.

 

Day-mode:

circle_with_dir.jpg

Night-mode:

circle_with_dir_night.jpg

 

Four versions of the vehicle can be download here: http://kallt_kaffe.milliways.st/vehicles/

I personally use the one with a blue car in 3D mode and shows a direction marker in 2D mode. However since direction aren't always updated when walking slowly I also did a version without a direction marker for those who may prefer it that way.

 

I've personally tested it on Nüvi 200, 205 and 255 but other have reported that it works fine on other models aswell and although it has not been tested (afaik) I would not be surprised if it turns out to work fine on the Zumos too.

Edited by kallt_kaffe
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I'm not savy in the ways of car designs for the Nuvi so forgive me if this is a dumb question.

 

I have a Marley and Me car going now. If I use this do I lose my car or can I do the circle with the red dot in 2D but keep Marley in 3D?

 

Thanks.

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I'm not savy in the ways of car designs for the Nuvi so forgive me if this is a dumb question.

 

I have a Marley and Me car going now. If I use this do I lose my car or can I do the circle with the red dot in 2D but keep Marley in 3D?

 

Thanks.

 

You won't lose it but you you will have to manually switch back to your old vehicle when going to 3D.

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kallt_kaffe,

 

I downloaded one of the files, it works well. I have some technical questions. Do you have to create 8 or 12 unique views of the vehicle or can the Nuvi rotate the object for pointing? Also, do you know why it shows as a blue triangle in the select window, yet as a circle on the screen?

 

UtahNuviVehicle.gif

 

Thanks for your post.

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I downloaded one of the files, it works well. I have some technical questions. Do you have to create 8 or 12 unique views of the vehicle or can the Nuvi rotate the object for pointing? Also, do you know why it shows as a blue triangle in the select window, yet as a circle on the screen?

 

There are actually 36 different views, and you have to create each one separately. Oh, and the "3D" view is a different part of the image from the "top down" view. The blue triangle is probably what you'd see in 3d mode. The Nüvi uses the image from the top half of the file for 3d view and the bottom half for the top down view.

 

I'd recommend converting one of the existing vehicle files already on your Nüvi and opening the .png file in an image editor to get an idea of what I'm referring to. Or, take a look at the snippet below. The actual image file is very long (2881 × 160 pixels), but here's a small piece of the "dirt bike" vehicle file from the Garmin Garage. I hope it's okay for me to post for copyright reasons.

 

65c606d5-3157-479b-9df1-4b6926ee56ec.jpg

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Wow, thank you kallt_kaffe! I tried this on my wife's Street Pilot c550 and it works fine in the 2-D mode! Now when she takes it out of the car to find a cache, the cache icon can be seen inside the circle. One little thing on the c550 is I don't see that globe/beachball thingy icon in the preview like in your screen shot. It displays there as a blue car, but I get the blue triangle icon Ok. This is great, thanks again for sharing this trick.

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Thanks for this! Having the little car block my center point as I zone in on cache locations has one of the few annoyances with my Nuvi 250W.

 

How difficult is it to create vehicles? I'd love to use the circle in 2-D but continue to use the silver coupe I have downloaded for 3-D mode.

Edited by frostyrides
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Is the purpose of this so that the icon does not cover up the cache icon? If so, then I can offer another solution: Get close to the cache using whatever icon you want and then switch to viewing the actual coordinates when you get really close so that you can hone in on it. This is much more accurate than just looking at the icon representing you and trying to move around to get it right on top of the cache icon.

 

If this isn't the purpose of the new icon, then nevermind my post.

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