Garmin HomePort...

OK, so if I make a number of waypoints, are they automatically loaded on to the g2 chart card, or do I have to export them using a separate card?
 
I've yet to come across a piece of marine software that's well designed and easy to use.

Agreed Homeport is a bit unintuitive initially but it's worth sticking with. I use it on my Mac with a big monitor and it's surprisingly good for passage planning.
 
OK, so if I make a number of waypoints, are they automatically loaded on to the g2 chart card, or do I have to export them using a separate card?

Put them in a list, then right click (or CTRL click on a Mac) and send the list to the device. Device needs to be connected at the time and you don't need any seperate card.
 
Put them in a list, then right click (or CTRL click on a Mac) and send the list to the device. Device needs to be connected at the time and you don't need any seperate card.

What device? The chartplotter is on the boat; the HomePort is on a laptop at home.
 
My Garmin is a handheld so I save my waypoints / routes straight onto it's internal memory by connecting it directly to the Mac. If your plotter and laptop are in different places then I believe you need to use a separate card (not the G2 one) to transfer your data.
 
I recall reading somewhere with my Homeport software that the cartography SD-card should not be used to store any other information on as it may corrupt the mapping. It’s an expensive risk to take, for the sake of simply swapping cards.
Homeport is clunky, but does the job it was designed for once you get used to it, and it’s slowly improving with some of the regular updates.
 
Can you even use Navionics cards with HomePort??

No, not compatible. But putting anything on a navionics card can corrupt it, so I wanted to make it clear that while its fine with Garmin cards its not the case with Navionics.
 
I recall reading somewhere with my Homeport software that the cartography SD-card should not be used to store any other information on as it may corrupt the mapping. It’s an expensive risk to take, for the sake of simply swapping cards.
Homeport is clunky, but does the job it was designed for once you get used to it, and it’s slowly improving with some of the regular updates.

That is not true with Garmin cards. Provide a reference if you think differently.
 
That is not true with Garmin cards. Provide a reference if you think differently.

True or not I stupidly managed to delete the map data off my map card. We all have our moments so my advice is for the sake of a few quid, get another card and leave your £200 map card the hell alone :)
 
Anyone know if its possible to get Homeport to work with the maps copied to the hard drive on a PC?

Its a bit of a pain swapping cards over all the time, I only have one USB port on the Microsoft Surface so lose the external mouse to plug in the map without a usb hub.
 
You can used an emulator such as IMDISK to create a virtual drive from hard disk space. You need to copy over the Garmin data each time you reboot though so it is a bit long-winded.
 
You can copy your G2 card to another SD card. It won't work in your plotter as the security/anti-piracy sector won't get transferred, but your copy will be fine plugged into a card reader for Homeport. Homeport won't read map data from your hard drive without messing around with card emulators. It is worth copying you G2 card to your hard drive as a backup as, if like me, you accidentally delete the map data from your G2 card you can then copy the data back on. Fortunately the security sector of the G2 card does not get deleted very easily.
 

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