GPS's and saving some bucks

There have been several threads about gps's and gps fish finders. Here is a tip of the day that may save you some bucks.

If you have a fish finder unit that is gps compatible with no internal gps. Dig out the documentation on the unit, find out which GPS's are compatible, then go buy one off of ebay. It will plug into your finder with an accessory cable and work as well or better than the $150 antenna made for the unit which can only be used connected to the FF. With the hand held, you can unhook it and connect it to your PC and use software like Mapsend to create your own lake map with your own gps waypoints as well as manually plugging in waypoints from other sources. The waypoints can then be saved to a backup file or if new waypoints have been added from sources other than your gps, be uploaded back to the unit.

I have personally done this using magellan products interfaced to a humminbird 718. The connected gps unlocks several features normally not available on the stock 718.

So for $25 ebay bucks and the price of an interface cable for your unit, you can be rolling. Remember....bid early and bid often:yikes....I'll see if I can find the interface compatability list to use as an example

The y cable is 35 bucks on the humminbird site, but that price can probably be beat. A link to the humminbird documentation is http://store.humminbird.com/media/do...531324-1_D.pdf

Here is a pic of the compatbility sheet.

Attachment 115031

Sometimes you are handy.:highfive But then there are those other times!:bash:Rofl

Good work there, Randle! Sure that will help a lot of folks. I didn't know you were such a techie!!! :yikes I may have some questions for you later. I'm gonna take a picture of my boat and send it to you to show you what I'm trying to do, up front and back by the driver's seat. I may want to pay you to bend me some metal like that you posted a day or two ago. Boat in the shop being tuned right now but I should get pictures tomorrow when in Little Rock. Thanks, man! :highfive

hey Rcc i was going to do that very thing but could not find any info about how it would work. thanks for the info
How do you like the 718? Looking at buying one.

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Originally Posted by jphunter

hey Rcc i was going to do that very thing but could not find any info about how it would work. thanks for the info
How do you like the 718? Looking at buying one.

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It's been a great unit for me. Low dollar, larger display, dependable. I have less than 200 bucks gps cables and all in it and the 718 was brand new. What can I say...

I did spend the extra $3 on the "FTCB" feature which is an extra button that you can push and it will automatically "Find The Crappie Biting". Many of the high dollar units do not have this:Rofl In the clear water lakes, I hit the button and it never displays anything on mine. It must be somewhat defective.

All you hooligans up there trying to jack my thread just lay off:Rofl

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Originally Posted by creekslick

Sometimes you are handy.:highfive But then there are those other times!:bash:Rofl

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You been talking to Carol again I see.:Rofl

Quote:

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Originally Posted by RCC

It's been a great unit for me. Low dollar, larger display, dependable. I have less than 200 bucks gps cables and all in it and the 718 was brand new. What can I say...

I did spend the extra $3 on the "FTCB" feature which is an extra button that you can push and it will automatically "Find The Crappie Biting". Many of the high dollar units do not have this:Rofl In the clear water lakes, I hit the button and it never displays anything on mine. It must be somewhat defective.

All you hooligans up there trying to jack my thread just lay off:Rofl

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Hmmmmmm, Carol told me that was her FTCB button and she had it disabled for you. I know who I'm following at camp.

I have a old hand held Garmin 12. I wonder if it work for something like that?

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Originally Posted by Gindog

I have a old hand held Garmin 12. I wonder if it work for something like that?

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A 12xl is on the list

if you want to save a waypoint do you have to save it on both units or just on the finder an it will put it on both??

Which every unit you save it on is where the waypoint will reside. If you want it on both, you need to save it on both.

Rcc I got me a 718. So how do u hook up the garmin gps to it. I see they have a cable but it has bare wire on one end so not sure how that works. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Jp

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jphunter

Rcc I got me a 718. So how do u hook up the garmin gps to it. I see they have a cable but it has bare wire on one end so not sure how that works. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Jp

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You will need a cable that comes out of the gps with the nmea output. You can splice the 2 cables together to get the gps out to the 718 input. Let me see if I can find any documents on this. Which Garmin is it?

CAUTION do not use the 12v out of the Humminbird to power the GPS unless you have the adapter for the GPS. Just use the NMEA leads and the ground lead. Someone on here has made these connections. I saw their reply maybe on the first page.

Attachment 116758

Working with Garmin - Interface topics

Connect the brown out of the gps side to the green of the 718 side and the black to the black. Ignore the rest.

It's a garmin Ventura hc.

The nmea cable is that the same cable that come with the gps that u can hook it up to a computer for downloading waypoints an maps, or is it a different cable I have to buy??

Does the cable have a DB9 connector on the pc end or a usb connector? If it has a db9, it should be pretty easy to make an adapter.

Does it look like any of these.

http://www.weethet.nl/english/gps_ga...x_to_rs232.php

Usb.

Not sure of this, but you may be able to come off the center 2 pins of the usb connector to get the data.

Thanks for the help.