Miles to KM with Garmin?

skellum said:

OK - a bit of a GPS Novice question here - I am sure I read a post recently about a problem that could or had arisen converting Miles to KM.

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Dale said:

Skellum,

Your assumption is correct, the GPS will automatically make the necessary adjustments.

When you create a route, the GPS is not terribly interested in what unit of measure you use, it is simply plotting a route between points for you. Those points remain the same wether you use miles or km.

Dale

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st13phil said:

Just a guess, but are you thinking of the posts discussing custom POI's (e.g. speedcams) and the fact that POILoader requires that all the data presented to it be in one unified set of dimensions, i.e. either all in metric or all in statute?

Although I haven't tried it i see no reason why changing the units the GPSR is using would have any effect on routes that you had created in MapSource and then downloaded to the GPSR. I could be wrong, of course, in which case someone else will be along shortly to correct me

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PanEuropean said:

Great responses from both Dale and Phil - each of you are 'right on the money'.

Not much I can add except to perhaps elaborate a bit on Phil's comment, which I will do in a minute...

Skellum, as Dale pointed out, if you are just concerned about changing units of measurement for routing purposes, don't worry about a thing. You can switch the GPSR between kilometers, miles, chains, furlongs, whatever, and everything will automatically change over with no further action required on your part. It's super-easy, just the same as switching a thermometer from F to C.

But... if you have any Custom POI's (more commonly known as a 'speed camera database') loaded, you need to be aware that the units will NOT be converted if you switch units of measurement on the GPSR. This is because the Custom POI file format - the way that the database is written before it gets uploaded into the GPSR - does not allow for specification of what units of measure are used in the Custom POI file.

In other words - the custom POI file will contain a whole bunch of locations with speeds associated with each location, and when you upload the file to the GPSR, you have to tell it what unit of measurement the numbers represent - either km/h or MPH. Just about all the custom POI files that are distributed commercially (meaning, the huge speed camera databases that you buy for $10 a year or so) use km/h for cameras on the continent, and MPH for cameras in Great Britain, and both locations are stored in the same file. This means that when you upload the file, you have to choose MPH or km/h to identify the units of measurement used in the speed camera datafile.

I know this sounds a bit confusing, but it's the best I can do to explain it. The subject has been discussed before (perhaps more lucidly) in earlier posts here on the forum.

Michael

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