Custom Symbols on the Garmin Oregon 450 and 550
Ever since the Colorado arrived two years ago without this feature, Custom Symbols has been on the The Most Wanted List for the newer State-named units, especially since the older 60csx had this capability. Today Garmin fixed that for some Oregon owners by announcing Custom Symbol support in their latest 450/550 beta. The Custom Symbols feature allows you to add completely new waypoint symbols to your GPS or override the default waypoint and geocache symbols assigned by Garmin. Based on Garmin’s instructions on the trail-tech blog I’ve been playing around with the new feature and here is what I’ve found you can do with Custom Symbols:
- Override a preinstalled waypoint symbol by creating a bitmap file named <symbol-type>.bmp in \Garmin\CustomSymbols\. The new symbol will replace the Garmin default symbol on the Change Symbol page, map page and waypoint lists — places where waypoint symbols are normally visible
- Add a new waypoint symbol by creating a bitmap file called <your-new-symbol-name>.bmp in \Garmin\CustomSymbols\. These symbols appear on two new pages called “Custom” under Change Symbol when editing a waypoint.
- Override a preinstalled geocache symbol by adding a symbol file called <geocache-type>.bmp in \Garmin\CustomSymbols\. You can only associate symbols based on Groundspeak’s “geocache type” field, other cache attributes such as size, state, etc. are not supported (but wouldn’ t THAT be cool).
A Custom Symbol file needs to meet certain basic requirements according to Garmin:
- 24-bit Windows-style bitmap format (Windows Paint supports this format)
- Saved in \Garmin\CustomSymbols\ in either internal memory or SD card, both seem to work simultaneously
- Bitmap can be no larger than 32 pixels in either width or height
- Limited to a total of 56 Custom Symbols per GPS (this happens to be the space available in the two new Custom pages under Change Symbol).
- Replacement waypoint symbols files need to have the same prefix as the <sym> element does for the waypoint in a GPX file (i.e. Summit.bmp)
- Transparent pixels can be created in the symbol by setting the pixel color to magenta (RGB = 255, 0, 255).
- Symbols will draw centered around a waypoint by default. To create an offset symbol include the offset in pixels from the upper-left corner in the filename (i.e. Summit.10×20.bmp)
- An enumerated symbol ID can be associated with a symbol by including the ID in the filename (i.e. Summit.1234.bmp). This will only be of interest to developers.
- Garmin provides a list of waypoint and geocache symbol names on their developer site.
Based on my limited testing, Custom Symbols seem to be working as expected except for the fact that BaseCamp does not support Custom Symbols — neither displaying them nor allowing you to select them. And as with many new features I kept thinking of improvements (some of which are already on the Oregon wiki feature request list) that would make this an even more powerful feature:
- Search and delete by symbol in the Waypoint Manager (please!)
- Enhanced custom symbols for geocaches. A way of overriding or augmenting symbols based on cache size, enabled status, contains travel bugs, solved mystery cache, difficulty, attributes, etc would be useful.
- The currently selected symbol for a waypoint should be highlighted when you select Change Symbol
- Pages under Change Symbol should wrap when you scroll to the end. With the addition of two Custom pages it takes even longer to get from one end to the other when scrolling back and forth.
- Recent Finds should display symbols like other lists.
I’ve added a page to the Oregon wiki for Custom Symbol FAQ’s .
Availability of this feature on the Dakota, Oregon x00 and Colorado is unclear at this time. The Dakota and Oregon x50 do have some special capabilities in this area, they share support for both 24×24 bitmap symbols and UserDataSync that is not available on the older units. Time will tell if these features are prerequisites in order to support Custom Symbols or not.
If you don’t like making your own symbols I’ve found two sites that have small symbol libraries here and here. If you find others please post and let us know!
Related posts:
- Garmin to Add Custom Symbols and Tracklog Improvements to Oregon x50
- Garmin Oregon Beta Adds Dashboards, Improves Track Nav
- Garmin Officially Releases Dashboards, Track Nav, Elevation Plot Improvements
- More Custom Map Updates and Garmin Dakota How To Videos
- Garmin Oregon/Dakota Beta Adds Geocache Filtering
March 11th, 2010 at 8:26 am
Less enthused at moment now I’ve seen that geocache override for nothing more than broad type is only supported, though it would be nice to have the proper virtual cache “ghost”
I’m sure its now easy to recreate the way I used to use custom icons in gsak on the 60, with film canisters for micros, flaming devil film canister for micros > 3 difficulty etc
using POI on the OR. But losing the geocache modes on the Oregon is another kettle of fish.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Here’s hoping this comes over to the x00 series too. You can find custom Geocaching Symbols for your unit at http://gsak.net/board/index.php?showtopic=7033. I’ve already added some 32×32px icons.
March 14th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Many thanks to Garmin for adding this feature. Adding the 15 custom icons that I currently use on my GPSMap76CSx onto my newer 550, went without a hitch. The only issue, is with Mapsource. It doesn’t recognize the Custom Icons when they are imported back into the program, after the waypoints are manually changed to Custom Icons on the 550. Mapsource substitutes a “black marker” for each Custom Icon. Also sending the file (with all the Custom Icons) to the 550 results in “blue flags” (once the Custom Icons are in place), rather than the Custom Icons being displayed. It would certainly make life easier if I could use the same set of files with both devices. This all works perfectly between Mapsource and my GPSMap76CSx.