Display track?

[danham]

I am about to head out on a fun trip and am meeting a friend who has a 660. I am bringing an SD card with our planned routes saved as tracks. Can I put the SD card in his 660, import the tracks, and display them on his map screen?

Online research suggests I need to use the 660's offroad tracks menu to import and display. Will this display correctly on the roads? I just want him to be able to see the stripe, not hear turn by turn directions.

Thanks in advance for any detailed instructions.

-dan

[FrankB]

@danham
Hi Dan,

I have driven a few times with someone who has just exchanged his 660 for an XT. I am certain that you can import a track and use that as a trip. I have serious doubts if you can just display the track on the map and nothing more. (like on the XT) I once proposed that to him, and he had no idea what I was talking about.

(Not detailed, sorry)

[danham]

Frank,

Thanks for the reply. I'd try it on my old 660, but it is stone cold dead. It's no sweat for me to bring the SD card and try it regardless and we will be following the routes on my XT anyway.

-dan

[Peobody]

Dan, since you'll be leading, why not just send him the .gpx and let him load it? I know it will be susceptible to a different calculation but he can ignore it and follow you, but should you get separated, he'll have something that could be useful. Besides, it could be interesting to see what the 660 comes up with for a route.

[lkraus]

I feel confident the track will display and it will never recalculate. It may not follow the road exactly if the map is different, but it will be close enough that if you are separated he will be able to follow the line to catch up. I would email the .gpx containing both the route and the track in advance just so he can familiarize himself with the plan and experiment with it on his 660. Take a copy on your sdcard as a backup anyway, in case he flubs the import.

I've never used a 660, but a quick search indicates some folks had issues with shaping points in routes. It's not clear if that was user error or early software glitches. I would not be confident an XT route would work reliably on a 660, but would be happy to be wrong.

[jfheath]

I honestly cannot remember. I know that it created track logs 'cos I still have all of the logs from my 660 days.

So I went hunting.....

This is worth a try. It is from a video relating the BMV Nav IV, but claims to be relevant to the 660 and 665. I know Garmin provided modified versions of the 660, 5900 and 595 for BMW (The Nav IV, V and VI respectively) - but they also added some extra tweaks for the BMW versions.

Anyway - give this a try : Tools -> My Data -> Import Data -> Off Road Tracks.

The gpx files probably have to be in the Internal Storage (it will be a drive letter) / GPX.

Heres the video that I found. 0:34 onwards. Stick with it becasue it goes on to show how to make it visible on the map and how to change colour.

Please report back whether this does what you want on your 660.



The video is from touratech dot com - but seems to have been put together from individual screen captures - so some of the key parts at the end are just talked about, rather than showing the screen. Nevertheless - it is a starting point - and good information as to how to progress.

[danham]

Thanks everyone for the helpful suggestions. Here's where we are at...

I got my old 660 to boot up briefly, but it took several attempts to import the track using the Off Road method. It crashed numerous times attempting this, so I can't rely on the results, but it finally did import it from an SD card and it shows up in the Off Road Tracks menu and I could tick the boxes to display on map and change color. Unfortunately my 660 went back to permanent (?) sleep before I could scroll the map enough to see if the track was displaying properly. But I'm encouraged to try it on my friend's 660.

As for trying to share my routes, he and I tried this on a previous trip and his 660 flat out refused to even find my routes on an SD card. No idea why, but between that and his older map versions and 660 quirks, I think tracks are a better way to go. He is also not technically proficient (OK, he would admit he's a disaster with technology), so emailing him GPX files would be a waste of time, sorry to say.

-dan

[jfheath]

I remember that the 660 was quite low on memory and after/during a long trip it would be unable to refresh the map fast enough to keep up with the movement. So I'd find my bike positioned very accurately on a background of yellow. No roads.

It would take a side-of-the-road reboot to get working again. I decided that it was either 'thrashing' - constantly shunting stuff into storage to claim back a bit of memory, or it had a memory leak - where program routines claim memory to carry out their task but 'forget' (or are unable) to make it available for other routines when they have finished with it.

Whatever - it was memory related. So I went through and got rid of areas of maps, removed most of the language files, keyboard files etc etc. I took a backup onto my pc first of course. Deleted the gpx files that I didn't need in the GPX folder, put music onto the SD card. Anything that I could do to recover some of that precious space.

Routes, tracks etc stored in GPX files can be put onto the SD card, but they have to be in the Garmin/Gpx/ folder. I think. Thats where they have to be on later devices - its been so long since I swapped out my 660 plus a very reduced fee for a 590. Sometimes, I wish that I still had it.

[danham]

Routes, tracks etc stored in GPX files can be put onto the SD card, but they have to be in the Garmin/Gpx/ folder.

That is correct and my 660 can find tracks there, if it's in a good mood. I need to get organized for the trip, so my plan is to stop fussing with the 660, whose mood is not good right now, enjoy my XT's superior screen and (mostly) superior routing, and bring the SD card to try in my friend's 660.

Thanks again for the help.

-dan