I need a Garmin Whisperer, I think.

[JediJD]

Used boat, bought from Florida. During sea trials, the electronics were awesome (rest of the boat needed help, but that's another story). My goal is to have the chartplotter actually give me information about the lake it is on, Lake Allatoona, GA, like it was in Ft. Lauderdale and so far, I'm apparently unworthy.

Bridge has a Garmin 5212 (also Garmin HD radar, sonar and autopilot) that seems to be working perfectly. Transom has a Garmin 498 which also seems to be working fine as well. No chip in the 5212 (but on boot said it was preloaded with 2.1 something or other) and an odd chunky chip in the 498 dated Apr04 for lakes and rivers. Since I moved the boat from Florida to an inland lake, my chartplotter showed GPS based location, but no detail...just a page of yellowish beige...but showed a boat and tracked course fine. I got a BlueChart g2 HUS039R, thought I read the instructions to say to turn everything on and insert the card...which I did. There was some activity, things seemed to happen, and while leaving the card in, the next boot showed the 5212 still having the preloaded map, and acknowledging the existence of the secondary map card. However, the screen is still beige. I got nothin'. I went into the card management page and tried to merge or copy, and the screen showed a "Reading Data" bar, which seemed to hang at zero.

I looked at every button possible, saw nothing that appeared to tell the 5212 to look at the extension card, and no way to overwrite the card to RAM that I could see. I brought the card home to a PC that could read it, and it seems loaded with both an EULA directory which has multi-language Blue Chart support and a Garmin directory with an xml file and what looks like a huge and fairly recent gmapsupp.img file. The 5212 SD card isn't locked (I tried it though, both ways, locked and unlocked).

Could somebody point me in the right direction?
1. Is my procedure off? I thought I read directions, but certainly possible I misread them.
2. Bad chip?
3. Garmin doesn't work in fresh water without goat sacrifice?
4. Won't work until I finish the renaming ceremony?

I love the equipment, it looks great, and other than the small issue of actually telling me anything important, sure looks nice. Would appreciate any input...thanks.

 

[Bob & Sue]

You did it right power unit on insert card follow prompts.

Did you buy this g2 card or download it from Garmin?

If this card is a used g2 card it won't load on your Chartplotter once it's loaded it has that chartplotters id code on it.

Contact Garmin tech support Monday their great at resolving issues.

 

[JediJD]

OK...in anticipation of closing the thread...I called Garmin this morning. Got a very pleasant, US based tech support woman who was a bit perplexed by the problem and researched it fairly thoroughly, ultimately gently leading me to the conclusion that there was user error. It seems that, despite the description of the SD card that I purchased for the chartplotter saying that it covered the entire US...that didn't include my particular lake, which was covered in the LakeVu chip and which was a different animal entirely. I have ordered the new chip, and as an aside, learned that the transom GPSMap 498 is also obsolete but there is a datacard update that Garmin will send me for $8 of postage (plus a $50 deposit to guaranty my return of the chip so they can send it to the next guy). So, in theory, the new chip will arrive, I'll install it, and instantly gain vast amounts of information. If anything untoward occurs, I'll update. Thanks all.