Eagle Fish Elite 502c

[Tunzafun]

Gentlemen,

I have a Fish Elite 502c and wish to be able to take it of the boat and connect it to the PC to edit marks, etc etc. Have been on the Lowrance (Eagle) site but to no avail. Tried the dealer where I got it but nobody seems to know.

Can any of you throw some light on the subject? Can it be done? Where do you buy the cable? Is there specific software? And most importantly, how much does it cost and is it worth it?

Ross

[Ozie_3]

u can leave it in the boat and use a sd card to transfer info...u need eagles proggy... GDM6.. available here as a free download...
http://www.eaglenav.com/en/Downloads/GPS-Data-Manager-GDM/
http://www.eaglenav.com/en/Downloads/GPS-Data-Manager-GDM/

you enter your waypoints, routes etc... save on your hard drive as backup save to card then put card in plotter and go to data transfer...load data...

DO NOT USE YOUR MAP CARD..... this can ruin the map data making the card useless.....use a second card for this, dosent have to be large... 250meg is plenty but then 2 gig cards are cheap today...

i cant seem to get gdm6 to read the saved info from the plotter...but the plotter reads it ok...so i just load file ontop of file...works fine....

mine is a 642c..... so the 502c should be pretty much the same...

now if i could find software to change a route to a trail id be happy....

honda 900 knows heaps of stuff about this i bet :)

hope this helps, cheers chris

[Moonlighter]

Hi Ross & Chris

Ross

I'm not familiar with the fish elite - if it doens't have a SD card door, then I think you're up the creek.

But if it can take an SD card, it's pretty easy. First step - go to the Eagle or Lowrance website and find the software dopwnloads page and download and install the waypoint management software called GDM6. Its free. Small download, piece of cake to do.

Then Chris has it right - get a blank SD card, format it on your PC (if you don't have a built in card reader you can buy a USB version for less than $30.

Take out your map card, put the blank card in and go to the system setup menu, should be able to find an option about saving files or similar. Select "save files (if loading data to your unit from the card you'd select "load"), save your files onto the blank SD card.

When saving, you will see an option as to which version to save it as - select Vers 2 and you should then be able to take the SD card out, put into your PC, and open the saved file using GDM. See notes below about best way to do that.

As Chris said NEVER save anything onto your map card or very bad and expensive things happen to the map....

Chris

I've had the problem you mention re saving files onto the card and then not being able to get GDM to read them - the solution is to save the files as vers 2 as mentioned above - then it will work.

GDM works pretty good for a free bit of software - bit clunky and prone to crashing a bit.

I find that when you have an SD card with a waypoint file on it, the best thing is to copy that file to the data folder on your pc in GDM and open it from there. Opening the file on the card seems to cause GDM problems, at least on my PC it does!

Let us know how you go. Hope this helps.

ML

[Ozie_3]

cheers Moonlighter...that worked a treat.... who wouldve thought version 2 was better than version 3...thanks
just gotta work on making routes into trails without physically driving them...the 'making a border round them' option is deadly, grrrrrrrrr

Ross... never try to read the map card on a pc.... only use in the plotter.... navionics guys are paranoid about pirates i guess and recon unauthorised use will FUBaR the card big time....

cheers chris

[Tunzafun]

Thanks guys,:)

I will buy the card tomorrow and give it a whirl. You would have thought that a MAJOR boat shop on the North side (where I bought the unit) would have been able to tell me this instead of "I think you can buy the software from Lowrance but it is very expensive".>:(

I'll let you know how it goes.;)

[Tunzafun]

Hi Guys<

Got the card and managed to save some data from the unit to the card but when I call it up on the pc it has lost the lat/longs. Think I need to play with it a bit more but at least it is seeing it and I am sure once I do a bit of reading I will get it sorted. Thanks for your help.

Ross

[Ozie_3]

ross
youre using GDM6 to read it right ???
and you saved it as version 2....mine seems to default at v3 so i change it....NOW :)
u can play round and save the file as a different name....i use the date so i know which is the latest...

cheers chris

[Tunzafun]

Yes Chris,

GDM 6 and version 2. I'm just a quarmby when it comes to these things but I'll sit with the book and keep pluggin away. Doing the load instead of save as well.

I'll work on it again this weekend and let you know. At least it is saving to the card and the pc is seeing the files. Just didnt bring the lat longs across. I will try saving the files to the pc and opening from there instead of the card as per "I find that when you have an SD card with a waypoint file on it, the best thing is to copy that file to the data folder on your pc in GDM and open it from there. Opening the file on the card seems to cause GDM problems, at least on my PC it does!"

Watch this space :D

Ross