Baby ‘bird Steps

Well, over the last 4 months I’ve had some “unique” conversations with folks with Lowrance.

To make a long story short, my bird came from JollyAnn Marine two days ago. Just opened the box last night and checked to make sure everything was included and in good condition. CHECK.

Then I went back to Jason’s link to the YouTube video to start converting my Lowrance WayPoints and Routes to the ‘birds format. I had a half hour to spend on this…so I wasn’t reading directions, just going on the fly so to speak.

After product registration that took all of 3 minutes a window popped up and said I successfully registered. Below that was a link to Humminbird PC. Clicked on that and found out I needed the latest version of Java. Click on that and then a couple more click to approve the installation and Humminbird PC was in my menu. Moved it to the desktop.

Time consumed: 15 minutes.

Spent 15 minutes with Woody and Forest..and called it a night.

Tonight, I’ll be connecting up the card reader to actually convert the information.

So far so good. (I was expecting incompatibility issues.)

I’m sure you will be happy with your HB. Being able to convert other manufacturer’s waypoints to use on the HB is easy, and was a wonderful surprise when I made the switch a couple of years ago now. In the past I have had Lowrance, and Garmin, and at least at that time neither of those two companies offered anything to convert competitor’s waypoints to use on their machines.

FYI, GPS Babel is a free program that will convert virtually any manufacturers waypoints between each other including Humminbird, Lowrance and Garmin.

Are any of these programs available/compatible with MACS?

Thanks,

FDR

Do a goggle search for online gps converters.There are several. You follow the directions.Upload your file,tell it what you want converted too,and it sends the file back converted,SLICK!!! I don’t think it will make a difference if you have a mac or pc!
Just make sure you have a backup file of the original,in case crap happens!

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Are any of these programs available/compatible with MACS?

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You FDR are my kind of guy!! (so to speak )

My question is:
Is mojogunter’s avatar a local girl ?

Would you look at it differently if I said she was my wife? I wouldn’t either I have no idea where she is from. I will say that I just liked the pink top she was wearing. If she was my wife I don’t know that I would find the time to be on this site. I guess I could change it if too many here find it in bad taste, but I have never had anyone complain. BrianK has refered to me as mojobouncer I think it was, but I didn’t take that as a negative.

Brian, when i asked a Bird rep about this process he directed me to this youtube video made by a Humminbird tech which really explains and “walks” you thru the process.

It literally is step by step directions and very easy to follow. I have not seen Jason’s so cannot compare the two. I thought this new one might help.

Thanks T, same one and thank for posting it here, now I don’t have to go find Jason’s link.

Mojo, I love that color of pink! Bret has the same exact top!

Gotta go, chip in the reader, found the .usr files…back to the video!

OMG! Done!!

And it would have been faster if I could have found where I left off last night on the video faster.

One glitch. I have one route that goes from the head of Pepin to L&D #3. It had the maximum number of Lowarance waypoint in it to make up the route…100. It appears the HB’s max number is 50 wp’s.

I guess I’ll just make two new routes in the day light this spring. The 9 other routes appear intact…onward and upward!

Brian,
If you can send just the route to me I can convert it to a trail and send it to you as a GPX and Lowrance USR files which the HB PC PLanner can import.

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Brian,

If you can send just the route to me I can convert it to a trail and send it to you as a GPX and Lowrance USR files which the HB PC PLanner can import.

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So easy evan a BrianK can do it.

Looks like Doc might want to fish some catfish in your spots, and not get lost doing it.

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Are any of these programs available/compatible with MACS?

Thanks,

FDR

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All of them are. After you install Parallels on your Mac.

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

Parallels installs a virtual OS on your mac allowing you to run anything a PC can run. Super simple to use… and very, very fast. If you run a Mac I couldn’t recommend it more strongly to someone that needed to or wanted to run PC based software. I run Lowrance emulators, my accounting software, postage software… dozens of PC based programs on my mac.

For what it’s worth, I bought a licensed copy on Ebay. $40. Money well spent.

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Are any of these programs available/compatible with MACS?

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You FDR are my kind of guy!! (so to speak )

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2 iMACS, 1 Macbook PRO, and 1 mac Pro for composing and arranging music!

My wife has a tablet PC only because it was given to her through a grant she is working with.

Love MACS!

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Are any of these programs available/compatible with MACS?

Thanks,

FDR

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All of them are. After you install Parallels on your Mac.

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

Parallels installs a virtual OS on your mac allowing you to run anything a PC can run. Super simple to use… and very, very fast. If you run a Mac I couldn’t recommend it more strongly to someone that needed to or wanted to run PC based software. I run Lowrance emulators, my accounting software, postage software… dozens of PC based programs on my mac.

For what it’s worth, I bought a licensed copy on Ebay. $40. Money well spent.

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Thanks for pointing me in the right direction James! I took a quick tour and didn’t find an answer to a question. Is there a limit to how many times you can download the program to a computer? I would really like to have it on at least 3 computers.

Thanks,

FDR

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Are any of these programs available/compatible with MACS?

Thanks,

FDR

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All of them are. After you install Parallels on your Mac.

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/

Parallels installs a virtual OS on your mac allowing you to run anything a PC can run. Super simple to use… and very, very fast. If you run a Mac I couldn’t recommend it more strongly to someone that needed to or wanted to run PC based software. I run Lowrance emulators, my accounting software, postage software… dozens of PC based programs on my mac.

For what it’s worth, I bought a licensed copy on Ebay. $40. Money well spent.

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Thanks for pointing me in the right direction James! I took a quick tour and didn’t find an answer to a question. Is there a limit to how many times you can download the program to a computer? I would really like to have it on at least 3 computers.

Thanks,

FDR

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I wish I could help you with this one but honestly I’m not sure as I only have it on one machine.

Lot’s of good info here!

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I guess I’ll just make two new routes in the day light this spring.

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Doc, I was goofing around with the long route when I discovered I could just CUT the last 50 waypoints. then create a new route and pasted them in the new route. 5 minutes tops!

Today, I’m going to hook up the HB to 12v’s and have the only couch in St Croix Beach that has it’s own depth finder and GPS.

Scratching my head here a bit guys.

Everything is working great connected to my Marcum Battery!

‘cept the anchor alarm keeps going off when set to 25’. Didn’t know my couch had a drift! Lowrance did the same thing and a change to 50 foot cleared that up.

Ok…the card is in the slot with the converted waypoints and route. Can’t seem to find any menu that says “upload” or “import”. I found the export nav info…back to the manual…I’ll check back here again later.

I’m a little scared of not having a compass rose like the Lowrance had…but we’ll see once I have a route in.

Got it…the answer was in the last few seconds of the above video…now to figure out why they aren’t recognized.

Only having 50 waypoints in a route was the problem. Seems the newly converted data will not up load to the card if a route has more than 50 in the route.

Once more, 50 wps in a route doesn’t get a person very far if a person’s boating on a river. -1 for Humminbird.