Making Garmin use USB to connect to Laptop

Mountainbiker · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 7

I have managed to link the GPS 60 to my laptop and use waypoint manager to have a little play. My next plan was to use it to navigate using Microsoft Autoroute. The problem is the Link is not recognised by autoroute, it talks about comm ports. I am a little confused how to get it to talk to it!!

HELP!!!!!

Thanks in advance for time and advice

Darren · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 11:29 am Post subject:

Most USB GPS Receivers come with software drivers that create a virtual COM POrt for the USB connection. This enables apps to communicate with the GPS using the COM Port.

I'm not familiar with the GPS 60, is it natively USB and if so, is there a Garmin driver that will provide the virtual COM Port supplied with it?
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Darren Griffin

Mountainbiker · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 7

Wow, Thanks for the swift reply!

It came with garmin trip and waypoint manager which was firmly instucted to be installed BEFORE plugging usb in. I have managed to get the unit to talk to laptop like that, and in hardware manager USB connection looks fine. Just wont find it in any comm ports in Microsoft autoroute. Crying or Very sad

Darren · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 12:24 pm Post subject:

Have you tried setting 'NMEA In/NMEA Out' in the Setup Menu (See PAge 43 of your manual) this 'may' help.
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Darren Griffin

Pc-Mobile · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:12 pm Post subject:

I think you did not make it quite clear, what cable did you use?

Some newer Garmin have both USB/serial ports and 60 is one of them.

I think you may be using the USB cable which works with Garmin software, but NOT with any other which expects you to use serial port.

You need a serial cable and I think that is the solution.
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Pc-Mobile
http://pc-mobile.net/gps.htm

Pc-Mobile · Posted: Sat Feb 19, 2005 3:17 pm Post subject:

If your laptop does not have serial port, you need a software (other than Garmin ones) that can talk though USB and particularly in garmin protocol.

I do not think there is any popular mapping software currently on the market can do that.
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Pc-Mobile
http://pc-mobile.net/gps.htm

Mountainbiker · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 16, 2005 Posts: 7

I have connected with the supplied USB cable. My laptop does not have seriel port like you say.

Shame. I really like Autoroute and thought I could benfit from GPS sync.

Gutted.

Still Really happy with the GPS 60 though!!

tcassidy · Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 10:54 pm Post subject:

Take a look at GPS Gate http://franson.com/gpsgate/index.asp? . It has built in support for the Garmin GPS 18 USB and provides NMEA out on a virtual com port. At least one other type of Garmin unit has been tried (check the forums at the Franson site). I bet it would work for you with the least hassle.
Terry

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