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Using a Garmin Nuvi as a display?

rx7man

I was thinking... There's lots of old GPS systems available now for cheap.. even new ones are cheap.. to the point they're cheaper than buying the components to make a display.

 

I picked up a Nuvi 265W, it has bluetooth, and is powered with a Garmin branded STmicro chip, and a 2gb samsung memory chip as well

 

What I was really wondering is if there's any way to interface this with an arduino... Using the display to show graphs and/or text relating to the state of variables, inputs, and outputs on the Arduino... perhaps access the GPS data (not my primary goal), and perhaps even using bluetooth as a COM port to transfer data to a smartphone?  There's tons of possibilities, I'm wondering if it's ever been done?

 

My current Arduino platforms are the Mega 2560, Uno, and Leonardo

  • 0

    Hello Efrem,

     

    I think that this imply to hack in some way the GPS but the concept sounds very good. The first problem is from where do you want to access to the device from the Arduino. And for this decision it is needed to have some documentation on what it is possible to do or not to do with the available peripheral first and in second instance disassemble the system and check in detail the circuit to see if it is possible to understand how it works.

     

    Enrico

  • 0

    Here is a long shot (low probability of working) you could look into:

    - See if the GPS can play a slideshow from an SD card (I think my Garmin can),

    - use an Eyefi or SD/USB card to load new pictures into the SD card while it is plugged into the GPS

    - If you can delete old pictures and only have one image in the directory, maybe the GPS will display the latest update.

    I suspect this cannot be done on the fly, but maybe you can get updates without too many refresh steps.

  • 0

    Not sure exactly what it is you intend to get out of using the GPS as a HMI, but have you looked at the Itead studio Nextion range, this might be what you are looking for.

    They also have a libraray for the arduino.