Google Earth navigation to Garmin Zumo ?

[J.P]

I know there are a bunch of members here with the same Garmin Zumo that I've got but I want to get to start downloading routes I've created to my Garmin Zumo, which I know can be done, but I haven't used Google Earth much in the past and wondered if it was easy to do ??
thanks

[slob]

A bunch of my workmates are cycling nuts and use very basic Garmin units(Edge) on their mountain bikes, they use software called motionbased to view their routes on google earth http://www.motionbased.com/
Let me know if you wan't me to get more info from them.

[desmo]

I use a Zumo 400 & Google Earth.
I don't own a copy of garmin's Mapsource software, which is the the most simple way of transfering data to & from a Garmin GPS.

There are 2 other ways of doing it, both involve using Google Earth which is a fantastic program to use.

The first way is to open Google Earth, tap in your start location, then zoom in & place pin marker at this location, this location will now be shown in the menu in the left hand pane, repeat this process along the route you wish to take putting your pin markers about 100yds after every turn you wish to make
when you have done this, make sure all your turns are ticked in the left pane & click on directions, this will trace the route you have mapped out, then go to the bottom of the pane & right click on route, then save as & save the file as a KML file to notepad.

Then you will have to convert this file to a gpx file with a web based conversion program, once you have done this, you can then upload your gpx file into a program such as Easygps (available free on the net) which will show your plotted route & enable you to upload it to your Garmin unit.

To be honest, it's not worth the hassle, it is very time consuming & frustrating, the best way to do your own route in my view is to use Google Earth & plot your route using the place markers as described, but this time note down the north & west co-ordinates.
Then make sure that you are using the same format in Google Earth as you are on your sat nav & just manually enter in the co-ordinates you have noted down into your sat nav.
This way you can use a mixture of postcodes, place names & co-odinates to create a route of your choice.

Desmo