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Uploading Geocaches on a magellan meridian platinum

Posted: 30 May 09 11:37 pm
by Storm Chasers
Hello,

A mate of mine has a magellan meridian platinum GPS and would like to put some geocaches onto it, but the only way he knows of is to manually input the coordinates. Is there a way to get the caches from a program like GSAK and put them onto the SD card of the meridian so it can use those waypoints? Or is there another way?

Andrew.
aka Storm Chasers

Posted: 31 May 09 1:57 am
by maccamob
Yes you can. You need a Magellan Meridian cable to do it - either the PC cable, or the PC Interface Cable with Cigarette Lighter Adapter. Both screw onto the connector on the rear of the Meridian, and have a serial connector at the PC end. Unless you have an older PC with a serial port, you will need a USB-to-serial adapter as well. GSAK can send to the Meridian via the cable, once the 'GPS Setup' in GSAK is completed, via the 'GPS' menu.<br><br>

If you don't have the cable, then you will need to take out the SD card and upload from GSAK to the card via a card reader using the 'File/Export/Export to Magellan eXplorist and SD Card' menu. The caches will need to be loaded onto the card as a file. Once you have the caches file on the card you then need to load them into the Meridian's memory using its 'Card Utilities' menu. Each upload from the card to the Meridian will overwrite what is already there.<br><br>

The serial cable method can be a bit slow. While faster, using a card reader can get a bit fiddly as you need to keep removing the Magellan's batteries to access the card slot. Either way, you can load up to 500 caches, but only the first 200 will have the cache name &/or code (set up in GSAK) in the 'message' field. You can have as many waypoint files on the card, under unique file names, as will fit and load them one at a time into the Meridian.

Posted: 31 May 09 8:57 am
by Storm Chasers
Thanks for the info. Pretty much what I thought but best to be sure. I didn't realise though that you could do a direct SD card transfer. Will see if my MAP330 PC cable will fit it, looks the same.