This is a very important Technical Bulletin. The key point of this bulletin is to get consumers to back up their Navigational data.

Again this is a very important message that we need to get out to all of our users. Having them find out about this after they have lost all of their waypoints without having backed up their data creates a lot of bad will.

Summary to the message: �Tell Everyone To Back Up Their Data�.

David @ shut-up-and-fish



From the desk of....

Mark Gibson
Humminbird
Marketing Director

Technical Bulletin-Corrupt Navigation Data

Units Effected: All GPS Combo Units with Card Slots

We have seen issues where consumers obtain Navigation Data (Waypoints,Tracks and/or Routes) from various sources such as Lowrance or Garmin waypoints, GPS Babel, Google Earth, unknown origin from friends etc, and then load this data onto a SD card and download this data directly into their Humminbird unit.

Each GPS company has a unique format that is required for their data in order for it to work properly in their units. This is true with Humminbird as well. Humminbird uses .gpx file extensions. Loading unknown sources of navigation data into your Humminbird unit, without first properly converting
it through HumminirdPC to configure it into the correct format (.gpx), can lead to corrupt data which can cause the unit to lock up or malfunction. These types of malfunctions can make it impossible to retrieve waypoints from the unit; therefore, when this happens all existing navigation data on
the unit could be lost.

With this in mind the following guidelines should be followed:

1. Always maintain a backup copy of your navigational data such as waypoints, routes and tracks. This is very simple to do. You just need to insert a blank SD card into the unit, go under the Navigation tab and select Waypoints, Routes and Tracks and export a copy of your waypoints to the blank card. Navigational data can also be backed up by connecting your Humminbird unit to Humminbird PC. If you have any questions as to how to do this or any other questions about this bulletin you can also check out the FAQ section of our
website or contact our Consumer Service department

2. Never load any navigational data into your Humminbird product unless you have converted the data by running it through the Humminbird PC program. The Humminbird PC program is
available free of charge whenever you register your Humminbird
fishfinder. If you follow this step you should never encounter any problems as living by guideline #1 is always a good practice whether with your Humminbird unit or with your personal computer.

The latest versions of software provide you with a prompt, when you insert a SD card into the unit, asking if you want to download the navigation data from the SD card onto this unit. You can use this prompt as a reminder that you should only download data onto your Humminbird unit after you have run the data through the Humminbird PC program to ensure that it has been formatted properly.

3. Make sure you have a stable power source when downloading
navigational data into your Humminbird unit. If power is lost during the download process it can also result in corrupted data or unit failure. The only remedy for this is to return to our facility for service. This is not covered by warranty.

4. If you have already installed waypoints from an outside source and it has caused your unit to lock up there is a process you can follow to get your unit operating properly again. Unfortunately, if you haven�t backed up your waypoints outside of the unit you may not be able to recover your waypoints. Please contact our consumer services group or check out the FAQ�s on our website.

Thanks
Mark Gibson
Humminbird
Marketing Director

Thanks for sharing...a good reminder to peroidically save your waypoints and store the backup on your computer.

Lance Vick's Boatlanes and Tommy Martin's Gps Lake Maps contain boatlanes, creeks, and roadbeds detailed as Humminbird tracks.

After Humminbird introduced Waypoint Management System, these products could load into HumminbirdPC and save out of HumminbirdPC. But when loading onto my HB 1197 and 998 the waypoints would load, but not any track data. Both products were in GPX format.

Humminbird Support relayed to me that the track format changed with WMS. ???????

Only after receiving the products in their Lowrance USR format, and using HumminbirdPC to reformat to GPX were the tracks forceably corrected into a working format.

HumminbirdPC is not without issues verifying output, if the input is GPX data.
Also Boatlanes and GpsLakeMaps are now available in GPX that are compatiable with WMS.

So backup your data to your computer with HumminbirdPC.
Also interesting is I have not received any HB email and it seems to be hiding on the HB website.

bump