Garmin Edge 705 - more help needed.

rflynnr

Ok. Took delivery of my Garmin 705 last week but I'm still confused as to what I need to do to plan routes on my PC and then transfer them across to the Edge itself. Granted, I'm completely stupid, but the nowhere in the included instructions or the garmin website is the relationship between the Mapsource software purchasable DVD, the Edge unit itself and route-planning clearly laid out.

I also purchased a City Navigator Europe mini-SD card from a seller on Ebay but when it arrived, it turned out to be a pirated copy (it was cheap but not suspiciously so) so I've returned it to the seller. Nonetheless I had it long enough to guess that it might not allow me to plan a detailed route.

I have downloaded Mapsource from Garmin's website and got it working but the basic (or should that be base) map included in the download is useless - national routes only. So here are my questions:

1. Am I in fact wrong about the utility of the City Navigator Europe mini-SD card? If I'd gotten the non-pirate version and connected the unit to a PC would I have been able to use the map on the unit via the PC?

2. Or do I need to shell out €100 for the Mapsource City Navigator Europe DVD and then buy a generic SD-Card to drag .gpx files onto?

Apologies in advance if I appear utterly clueless on this but trust me, I have attempted to figure this out for myself without success.

Raam

I use mapmyride and bikeroutetoaster
They allow you to download a gpc or tcx or crs or whatever it is.
Then you import that into training center as a course and transfrer to your garmin.

Not bothered with the Mapsource thing yet

kenmc

just to clarify the transfer bit...
from bikeroutetoaster, in the 'summary' page after creating the map you can send it to a garmin tcx - this connects to your edge (which you've plugged into your pc) and sends it to it.
I *think* you can also save the file to your PC as a .tcx file, and then copy it to the Garmin/Courses directory of your device, which should be present as a USB drive on your PC.

blorg

rflynnr wrote: »

1. Am I in fact wrong about the utility of the City Navigator Europe mini-SD card? If I'd gotten the non-pirate version and connected the unit to a PC would I have been able to use the map on the unit via the PC?

No, if you buy the genuine SD card you can only use it on Garmin units, not the PC. You can swap the SD card around as many units as you like however but can't copy it, e.g. only one device at a time.

2. Or do I need to shell out €100 for the Mapsource City Navigator Europe DVD and then buy a generic SD-Card to drag .gpx files onto?

This is generally the better option unless you have lots of Garmin devices as you can download maps from the PC to the unit. You are allowed unlock the maps to at least 1 device (I think it used to be two but not sure it is any more.) So you can plan your routes on the computer with Mapsource and transfer the maps to your device. The only downside over the SD is that you can't transfer maps to both your Edge and car GPS for example as they can only be unlocked to one device.

rflynnr

Thanks gents. Useful responses all: I'll wander over to Garmin now and check out the cost of the Europe DVD.

lafors

blorg wrote: »

The only downside over the SD is that you can't transfer maps to both your Edge and car GPS for example as they can only be unlocked to one device.

Not so sure about that blorg, I've got Mapsource on my work laptop for use with Garmin XT and a work collegue of mine is into MTB in Wicklow.
He got an Edge 705 for christmas and wanted to try to put topography maps on it (from here), and as I had mapsource I said I'd try it.
The topography maps appeared OK on Mapsource but we couldn't get them to fully transfer to the Edge, kept giving an out of space error even though there was loads left. But when we finished he noticed the maps on his edge were replaced, previously it was only main roads. So it seems you can connect to more than one device, btw its the official mapsource and europe city navigator maps. Could be just a glitch the Ireland topography maps caused it though?

Ryaner

Garmin have changed the way the maps unlock. You no longer unlock the maps for a pc but add an unlock code for your device and then have the device unlock them after you transfer them. Makes things a lot more expensive