Once the GPS is recognized by the program, you can go to the Waypoint, Track or Route menu to Upload data from your GPS. DNRGarmin should determine that you have a GPS connected if it doesn’t, go to the GPS menu, and make sure the right port is selected.

But it should work fine with the vast majority of Garmin units past and present, and it supports both serial and USB connections.Īfter downloading and installing the program, hook up your Garmin unit to the your computer, turn it on, and run the program. While it can connect with any serial GPS unit via the NMEA interface for position measurements, it can only download waypoints, routes and tracks from Garmin units, and there are a few Garmin units it won’t work with (e.g. Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources produces this tool, and has generously released it for use by the general public. If you’re using a Garmin GPS unit to gather data for GIS, you have to get a copy of DNRGarmin.

First up – an easy solution for Garmin GPS owners. But what if you have a consumer-grade GPS unit without the ability to run this software (or you don’t feel like coughing up hundreds of dollars to buy a copy)? This post and the next one will cover some options for downloading data directly from a GPS and converting it to the GIS-friendly shapefile format. Geodetic-quality GPS units are usually able to output data directly into a GIS-friendly format like shapefiles, either with built-in software or with add-on packages like Trimble’s Terrasync or ESRI’s ArcPad.

Garmin custom maps arcgis