If you don’t already have a large-capacity microSD card, you can get a 2 GB card from Amazon along with a compact USB 2.0 card reader for less than $25: You can buy a USB 2.0 card reader capable of reading/writing to such a card for less than $10 shipped just make sure it’s fully USB 2.0 compatible, and can take SD cards. When you buy a new microSD card, it usually comes with an adapter that allows you to use it as a standard-size SD card (Garmin doesn’t supply one with its units, though). There’s an easy and fairly cheap solution to the upload speed problem. : If you use a card reader, you can load more than 2025 individual maps, but your Garmin may not be able to read them all, leaving gaps in the coverage. But combine that with a set of Garmin Topo maps, or some other map sets, and you could hit that limit easily. For some map sets, like MetroGuide, you can cover the whole US easily without coming anywhere close to this limit. There’s a limit of 2025 individual maps in a map set. If you were to upload a full 2 GB of data, it could take as longer than two hours! The read-write speed of a microSD card is 80 Mbps, which is about 6.5 time faster than USB 1.1, but about 1/9th the speed of USB 2.0, so it could benefit from a USB 2.0 connection.Ģ. Uploading these into my Garmin with a 512 MB card, even with USB, takes about 50 minutes: 10 minutes just to put together the map set index and data, and 40 minutes to upload the data to the GPS unit. For example, I have a set of 1300 MetroGuide and Topo maps that cover much of the western US and take up about 470 MB of space. While not a big deal for the default 64 MB microSD card that comes with most of these units, filling up a 512 MB card using USB 1.1 can be time-consuming. Maximum transfer speed for a standard microSD card is on the order of 80 Mbps, well below USB 1.1’s speed. It appears as though the USB connection used for uploading map data is USB 1.1 at 12 Mbps, not USB 2.0 at 480 Mbps. But there are two drawbacks to these large-capacity microSD cards:ġ. Added : Recent hardware upgrades to some Garmin units may have increased this to 4 GB, but there are apparently issues with some cards. I’ve seen 1 GB microSD cards for less than 15 dollars, and Garmin says that their units will support 2 GB cards (but not SanDisk Ultra II cards). And the microSD (aka TransFlash) memory cards allow for lots of room for Garmin’s uploadable maps, like the Garmin USA Topo or City Navigator series. While not geodetic-quality, if you use any of the SirfStarIII units with some care it’s possible to achieve 1-2 meter real-time positional accuracy repeatably. The HCx models also use the SirfStar III chipset. The first four are very similar in their electronics and capabilities I own the first on the list (the 60Cx), and it’s fantastic! The SirfStarIII chipset allows fast position acquisition with incredible sensitivity – I can get fixes in heavy tree cover and mountainous terrain that gave my old Garmin eMap fits. Among the models with this capability are: The new Garmin handheld GPS units with the “x” designation now offer removable microSD cards for map storage.
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