Garmin on the RX3...The Chinariders way!

[fjmartin]

I've been trying and trying to use my iPhone as a GPS on the motorcycle. Works great for road rides but the screen size, brightness and decent apps for following GPS GPX tracks for mostly offroad have been really frustrating. I've tried all the high rated apps and none fit the bill. So, I decided to research Garmin GPS's for the bike and found the motorcycle specific ones are REALLY expensive. So then with some more research I found a cool solution that I'm now using. It goes like this:

1 - I purchased a refurbished Garmin Nuvi 57LM off Amazon for $80.
The Nuvi series are for cars you say...sure, but they don't have to be.

2 - OpenStreetMaps is an open/free platform with awesome worldwide coverage for roads, topo and marine. They are even routable and have ton's of POI's(Points of Interest). There are a bunch of websites available and tools to get OSM on your Garmin.
http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/
http://osm.thkukuk.de/
http://www.raumbezug.eu/osm-garmin_en.htm
https://www.gpsfiledepot.com/
http://www.gmaptool.eu/en
https://www.openmapchest.org/
With these websites and their tools you can download just about any region in the world for road or topo that's routable in the IMG format the Garmin GPS's wants AND you can download the installer or build an installer to install the maps into MapSource and BaseCamp. MS and BC are Garmin free tools for creating waypoints, tracks, routes and adventures and put them on the GPS. It also allows you to control what maps are loaded on the GPS.

3 - I stuck a 32GB Micro-SD card that I already had a bunch of from my gopro type cameras into the Garmin and then stuck on 20 different maps I wanted. I did this as the Nuvi 57LM does come with lifetime maps but only for North America and only for Roads. Now I have maps for the world and have road and topo maps. Nice thing about OpenStreetMaps is anyone can be a contributor so the maps are very up to date. This winter we just opened up a new mountain bike trail about 20 miles from where I live. OSM has the trail on the topo map in detail!!! And the maps are FREE!!!!

4 - On the Nuvi you have activate more than one map at a time so if you want roads and topo for an area...no problem. The maps all looks really good on the screen.

5 - Next though you'd say that the Nuvi isn't waterproof. True, but you can make it very water resistant very easily. First, I put some 3M tape over the speaker and Micro-SD port. I put some dialectic grease in the USB port. I can still hear it beep loudly through the tape but don't really care since on the moto I can't hear anything! Good news is the unit is positioned where it's very easy to see and not miss turns. Next is where most of the water penetration threat comes in. From the edges of the screen down into the frame. This is an easy fix I found on Youtube. I took some blue painters tape and covered the entire screen except I left a millimeter or so exposed right up against the frame of the unit. I then took come cardboard and made a spatula and worked clear silicone into the edges. I wiped off the excess with some paper towels and peeled off the painters tape and let it dry. Now the front won't let water in. Finally as you'll see in the pictures, the position I put the Garmin is both easy to see and keeps it mostly behind and under the windscreen

6 - I mounted the garmin using an angled RAM Mount base which is connected to one of the windscreen bolts (middle left) and a tie wrap to keep it from twisting...see the pictures. I then put on a medium 3" RAM arm and a Nuvi 5X series RAM Mount with the diamond base.

7 - On the front of my bike I already had a dual USB port and a cig port. But, both USB ports are used for my iPhone and my Spot and the cig port is holding a temp/volt gauge so I added a 3rd USB port to the front. This time instead of running a wire all the way to the back of the bike and connecting into a switched set of pins on the big white block I plugged into the 12v switched port that is on the bike if you were to purchase the accessory plugs from CSC. It's the one on the left side of the bike. I dremeled down some spade clips to fit the narrow sockets and then used my hot melt glue gun to waterproof and hold them in place. The USB ports plug in is mounted to the metal plate at the base of the windscreen. You'll see it in the pictures.

8 - Next I needed to figure out how to use the Garmin. First was its basic functions of street use and that took about 5 minutes to figure out. Next I had to figure out how to load GPX routes on it and have them work how I'd want. MapSource and BaseCamp can be used but I generally use a free account on RideWithGPS to build routes and add waypoints for things like gas stations and such and then export them. I could get them then loaded into BaseCamp and could tell them to load onto the Garmin by converting the tracks to a route. The big thing I had to figure out beyond these basics was to have these routes set as "direct" routing rather than using intelligence for routing. Direct means that the Garmin will point you along the way of the GPX tracks rather than just trying to route you from waypoint to waypoint which won't work for most offroad rides.

I'm really happy with how this turned out and also how my dash cluster looks like the controls for the star ship Enterprise!

Total cost for the project was;
$80 - GPS
USB port - $11
RAM Arm - $10
Nuvi Mount - $13
RAM Diamond Base - $7
Hard case for storing the GPS - $10
32GB Micro SD which I already had but would cost $13
I already had the angled base on the bike but they are $12
$156

Here are some pictures, please let me know if you have any questions as I'm happy to help others with this.

http://s1042.photobucket.com/user/jo...%20Nuvi%2057LM

Take care!

Joe

[SpudRider]

Thanks for posting this excellent information, Joe.

[BlackBike]

I have an old garmen I put on mine and found out that it won't take those base camp uploads (rats).

Also you could just use a zip lock bag during those super soakers(which I know you've seen).

[pyoungbl]

BB, I tried using a Nuvi (car GPS) on a previous motorcycle with bad results. After getting caught in a frog strangler rain storm the screen itself took on water and stopped working. I had the unit in a zip lock bag but evidently there was still enough moisture in the air to partially kill the screen. The good news was that the Nuvi was inexpensive and thus not a big loss. Now I use a much more expensive Garmin and swap it from bike to bike. Recently I saw that someone in China is selling a motorcycle specific GPS for about $100. That might be worth looking into.

Peter Y.

[SpudRider]

Originally Posted by pyoungbl

BB, I tried using a Nuvi (car GPS) on a previous motorcycle with bad results. After getting caught in a frog strangler rain storm the screen itself took on water and stopped working. I had the unit in a zip lock bag but evidently there was still enough moisture in the air to partially kill the screen. The good news was that the Nuvi was inexpensive and thus not a big loss. Now I use a much more expensive Garmin and swap it from bike to bike. Recently I saw that someone in China is selling a motorcycle specific GPS for about $100. That might be worth looking into.

Peter Y.

I believe I also heard of an inexpensive GPS unit from China. If anyone knows a link to the vendor, please post it.

[pyoungbl]

Darn, I cannot find the link to the Chinese GPS. A Google search brought up something from 2014, about $90, waterproof, Bluetooth, SD card memory upgrade....but absolutely no map support!

[jbfla]

Joe, I'm always impressed by your ingenuity.......even if it makes my head hurt

I have used Nuvis for several years.....cheap and no big loss if stolen.

However, I have had 2 succumb to vibrations, and 1 to water intrusion.

Still using one though.

jb

[SpudRider]

Thanks for trying the search. Perhaps someone else has found a link?

[rjmorel]

Originally Posted by SpudRider

Thanks for trying the search. Perhaps someone else has found a link?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Motorcycle...AAAOSw5VFWOYhx

your welcome, rj

[SpudRider]

Originally Posted by rjmorel

http://www.ebay.com/itm/5-Motorcycle...AAAOSw5VFWOYhx

your welcome, rj

Thanks for posting the link, RJ.

[fjmartin]

I'm hoping that the unit will be protected based on the waterproofing I did but we'll see how it does with vibration. Do you know what component failed due to vibration? Screen, motherboard, USB interface, buttons? If the motherboard or USB port I could possibly do something to solve that but I'd have to worry about heat build-up.

In my initial post, topic 8 was what I still needed to figure out. How to use the unit for non-road routes and how to have it track me and how to access that data. Well, I've blown a number of hours and have these two issues solved. On the off-road routing I had to do a bunch of experimentation and found that there are a couple of different types of points in a route. ViaPoints and ShapingPoints. ViaPoints are very much like a waypoint but strung together in a route. Between the ViaPoints are ShapingPoints. These are simply a bunch of dots to help shape the route to follow what you had drawn out. Now, on the Nuvi I have it can have up to 232 ShapingPoints and 29 ViaPoints. But I discovered a trick that allows you to put strings of these together to allow a much larger number of points. Think of a starting ViaPoint followed by a hundred ShapingPoints that connect to the next ViaPoint...repeat this over and over. But the memory is limited in my Nuvi so I found that the total number of points I should run in a route are 800. Anymore and it might crash the unit. The good news is that 800 points are a LOT. Enough for a solid day of riding. This just means a multi-day trip will have multiple route files. I kind of like that. Next though was how can I take the track files that get generated by many of the tools I use like RideWithGPS and convert them to a route that works on the Nuvi. Well, since I have a background in programming I decided to use PowerShell to take the source track file which may have thousands and thousands of points, shape it down to 800 points and then evenly place ViaPoints in the file to keep from hitting the maximums. The program then generates a well formed XML document in GPX Route format that works perfectly on the Nuvi. The script also generates another GPX file but this one contains a Waypoint to the start of the route. This is nice as many times you ride the road to get to the start of a dirt trail and by selecting the waypoint the Nuvi will use auto road routing to get you there and then you select the dirt route to have your offroad fun. It works perfectly for me and I have a buddy testing it also to make sure I haven't missed anything.

On the topic of getting tracking info from a ride, I found that if you turn on the follow me feature and then plug in the Garmin into the PC and open BaseCamp you will see the tracks by date/time. You can export these and if you run them through my script they will create a route file you can use later.

So I'm all geeked out for the moment. Yes, I'm a nerd!

Looking forward to the Touratech rally in a few weeks and then I leave with a buddy on July 2nd to head up to Hyder, AK, the Yukon Territory and then down through British Columbia. 10 days.

[jbfla]

Joe, the 2 Nuvis that became unusable because of vibration were because of screen problems.

The Nuvis would randomly jump from screen to screen several times a minute.....sometimes in seconds.

jb

[fjmartin]

Thanks JB. I'll watch for that issue.

[jbfla]

One more problem related to my current Nuvi.

As of today, while riding, the Nuvi restarts itself every few minutes....like it is turned off and then back on.

It is connected to the USB port on the dash.

Can't yet determine if it is vibration related, or a bad/intermittent electrical connection.

jb

[BlackBike]

Originally Posted by jbfla

One more problem related to my current Nuvi.

As of today, while riding, the Nuvi restarts itself every few minutes....like it is turned off and then back on.

It is connected to the USB port on the dash.

Can't yet determine if it is vibration related, or a bad/intermittent electrical connection.

jb

If power issue, you can bend the usb metal on the cable ends to makefor a better friction fit .