Getting around Garmin Waypoint limits

[Ladyworldcyclist]

We are planning a long tour that will cover about 1/2 of the Trans Am maps, a couple panels of Lewis and Clark, most of the Great Parks maps, several states of the GDMBR maps, plus the British Columbia portion of the Trans Canada trail.  All of these have GPX files available with hundreds of waypoints and many routes.  The problem is, we are working with a Garmin Etrex Vista CX.  I can easily put the City navigator 2011 maps on an SD card.  But how can I get around the 500 waypoint and 50 route limit?  We won't be carrying a laptop so we can't just load data on the Garmin as we go along.  I don't think this Garmin will read waypoints and routes from the SD card and those limits will really cut down what we can take.  Is there a workaround?

Thanks

[FredHiltz]

Hi Caryl. You are right, the eTrex will not store routes and waypoints on the SD card. You can easily reload it with a few minutes of borrowed time on someone's computer en route, though.

Consider carrying a CD or a USB flash drive containing several route and waypoint loads that have lots of overlap, along with G7toWin, a program that runs fine directly from either medium without being installed on a Windows machine. Find a computer shop, bike shop, or a friendly cyclist who will let you use a computer for a few minutes. Most libraries will not let you connect your own devices for security reasons, probably a good policy. Don't forget to carry a short USB cable.

http://www.gpsinformation.org/ronh/g7towin.htm

G7ToWin stores its settings in an INI file in its program folder. Make all its settings, then copy the whole folder (C:\Program Files\G7ToWin on my machine) to the CD or flash drive. Of course you will practice using this at home, right? <grin>

Welcome to the forum.

Fred

[Ladyworldcyclist]

Thanks Fred.  What about converting the waypoints to POIs using GPXtoPOI and then merging the many routes so there's just one per map section which would wind up fewer than 50.  Would that work?  I think POIs get written with the maps onto the SD card.

[FredHiltz]

The eTrex cannot use points of interest to build routes. It can navigate from your present position to one POI, but cannot string them together to form a route. You could save some waypoints by turning off-route waypoints like lodgings, libraries, and bike shops into POIs, but reloading waypoints will still be necessary.

The ACA routes are short, <= 30 waypoints, as that is the limit in some receivers. Combining them into a few longer routes would be a good idea with the eTrex.

Your questions and related ones have arisen several times. I think I will compose a sticky topic summarizing what we have found about them.

Fred

[knolltop]

Your questions and related ones have arisen several times. I think I will compose a sticky topic summarizing what we have found about them.
Fred

:thumsup:

[Ladyworldcyclist]

Fred, we bought the 2011 version of City Navigator which includes some 6 million POIs which I'll bet include almost every off route waypoint that ACA has with the exception of perhaps a few bike shops and the more out of the way places.  So I'm tempted to delete the ACA off route waypoints and then combine the routes and then see what I wind up with.  If that's still too much for the Etrex I'll just include off road routes; i.e. Lewis and Clark thru Lolo pass and the GDMBR.

We've been riding ACA routes since 1988 so we're used to not having a GPS so it's no big deal.  It just makes finding services easier.  Even the GDMBR didn't give us any problems with getting lost.  Too bad Garmin put such a dumb limit on their handheld units.

[FredHiltz]

Sounds like a plan. If you are camping, you might want to keep the Forest Service and state park campgrounds. Last I saw, City Navigator was pretty good on the private campgrounds, but not these.

Garmin has increased the waypoint storage in their newest units, at a hefty price.

Fred