Viewing SD card on Nuvi 680

To your computer it should show up as a drive.. Look for garmin and on my computer it's the one below that drive...

Ooops just notice you said on unit, It should be in the "extras" of "where to", if you are looking for poi's mp3 will be listed in the music..

Thank you Gary for your response. I am looking at the screen on the Nuvi in Extras under "where to" and it says I have "no extras loaded." "For details, please visit www.garmin.com/extras." I will check that out now in hopes of locating what I need in order to read the card on the Nuvi unit. I have had no problem with the mp3 music. I see the icon for the SD card and click on it and there is the music I have loaded so I know the card works. I'll let you know what I learn and if this works after visiting garmin.com/extras.

LJD

How are you adding them to the SD card? You must use the POI loader that you can download from Garmin's website.

When you run poiloader and when it gets to part finding unit use the pull down screen and select the sd card.

You cannot actually view the card from the screen of the unit. Any custom POIs that you might have loaded to the card or the unit will show up under Extras/Custom-POIs, and mp3s should show up when you use the browse features of the MP3 player. Travel Guides will show up under Extras, and you will be given the opportunity to purchase such items when you visit the Garmin/Extras url.

If nothing showing up under Extras, no POI's were loaded to your unit OR your card. I am not a fan of MapSource nor very knowledgeable about it, but I know it can sometimes put waypoints into your Favorites; you might want to check there.

I believe that when using mapsource, if you use the direct transfer, it saves the waypoints as favorites. If you want them to appear in Custom POI's you need to save them as a .gpx file to your computer then use POI loader to transfer.

And you see the sd card then there should be a poi folder in the Garmin folder if you succeeded in loading the poi files. Use this guide to load the files to your sd card or unit:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/85
or:
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/13918

As stated in another response be sure to select your card rather than the unit to download to.

If you use Mapsource and you locate somewhere and save it on mapsource as a waypoint, you can transfer that waypoint to your Garmin 680. It puts it in your Favorites. If you load custom poi's into your Garmin 680, they will be displayed in Extra's, Custom POI's.

After talking with Tech Support for the umpteenth time, I finally got someone who told me point blank that the SD card is good for music and photos--that's it. I can't believe it won't work for waypoints especially when one is planning an extensive trip with many waypoints. Althought, the GPS unit does hold 500+ waypoints so I guess I shouldn't be too disapppointed. I find all my waypoints under Favorites so I just need to be patient with the planning and have my computer close by for the larger maps and details. I plan to do a little with POI's and see how that works with the unit.

Extras is still empty. I suppose that's where games would appear if one were to use the GPS to play games.

I appreciate your comments and look forward to working with this form of communication for help.

FYI: The MapSource program is very user friendly and very similar to nRoute which I have used for several years. I was able to map out our plans on nRoute and transfer all that information to MapSource once I realized I could not load nRoute to the Nuvi680. Worked like a charm getting all the waypoints and routes to MapSource.

Thank you Nuvi 660 and Gary.

I'm confused because I have a whole bunch of POI's on my SD card in my 660. I thought that part of the 600 line was all the same. They come up under Extras as Custom POI's. Most of them came from this website.

Lots of members use the sd card to store custom pois.

If you use the procedure described here I'll bet you can load them to an sd card. I have a c550 and I just loaded poi's to an sd card using using the method I previously posted...

If he or she is wrong it won't be the first time...

When you access them you will be asked if you want to copy them to your unit. If you don't and don't want that nag screen every time you access them say yes and then check the box not to ask again and then ... don't load them..

to load poi's into my garmin unit (KNA-G510) in my truck I had to make sure the directory/file structure was as follows...
/Garmin/poi/poi.gpi
If you choose the 'Garmin unit' choice at the beginning, the loader will create the directories for you. If you choose the 'custom folder' option then you will have to create the directories yourself. I wasted about 4 hours of my day trying to get this to work. Wish Garmin.com had made this bit of info available on their web site.

After selecting Garmin Device, instead of selecting your unit, click the dropdown button (Or whatever its called), then select the sd card and it will make all the folders for you also...

That is what I posted immediately above your post when I said,

"If you choose the 'Garmin unit' choice at the beginning, the loader will create the directories for you."

I thought you were refering to the following page where you actually select the deivice.

Actually, on a 680, the first screen, not the second, should offer a checkbox to not ask again, and you can therefore choose the NO button. One of Garmin's programming quirks.

As for the tech saying you can't use the card, she may have been talking about using MapSource and thus saving waypoints into Favorites (only on the unit).

No, no, I wasn't trying to be a smart ass. Just wanted to clarify the issue. Thanks for the reply. It's the page where you have three choices...

1) Garmin unit
2) Mapsource
3) custom folder (advanced)

That particular page is what I'm referring to. The 'Garmin unit' selection will provide a 'find device' button and below it a drop down menu. Using a SD card, the user doesn't have to do anything. It may take a few more seconds for the loader to recognize the card but it will show up in the window. Then the user just continues on to the next page to finish the load. I don't know if you could have just...
drive_letter/poi/poi.xxx
or
drive_letter/garmin/poi/poi.xxx
haven't tried the poi only directory name. I do know it works with
drive_letter/garmin/poi/poi.xxx
It's a bit confusing to have the loader software choice of 'garmin unit' refer to the SD card as a 'garmin unit'. Initally I thought the SD card would need to be loaded under the 'custom folder' choice. Doesn't seem to be the most intuitive selection of words.
Chuck

I understood your meaning when I re-read the post. And that isn't the only thing you will find about Garmin that isn't the most intituive slection of words. Cheers

If you are using Mapsource, you have to make sure you save the file as a GPX file not the default GDB file.

Save that gpx file to a folder, then load that file using Garmin POI loader to your gps unit, with SD card in the unit, select that as the destination. Then follow the prompts within poi loader.

If you just copy/paste/drag/drop a poi file to the SD card you won't get what you're expecting. You can however copy/paste/drag/drop mp3 files to the SD card and it will work fine.