Garmin 66i, USB, and Linux

When it just worked

Grab a cable, plug it into my linux machine and voila! It shows up as a mass storage device (/dev/sdi and /dev/sdj in my case). Linux mounts two filesystems:

/dev/sdi on /run/media/tom/GARMIN type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1004,gid=1004,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)
/dev/sdj1 on /run/media/tom/3263-3362 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uid=1004,gid=1004,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

This has lots of potential. I see my tracks as GPX files, which I was wondering how to extract from the device.

In Garmin/SQL/inr.db I see my contacts that I just synced. It also has my quick messages and such. This looks to be an sqlite3 database file.

When it doesn't just work

Main Menu --- Setup --- System

Here you can access the "Interface" setting. Sadly, Garmin seems to have done away with the simple and convenient mass storage device in one of their firmware upgrades. I have tried a variety of things, including MTP and none seem to work.

I tried pluggin the unit into a different USB port on my machine and after failing to get it to work as an MTP device, it somehow switched to acting like a mass storage device. Now /dev/sdd is the garmin filesystm and /dev/sde1 is the flash card I installed.

I mount /dev/sdd on /mnt and do this:

cd /mnt/Garmin
cd Activities
-- here I see a bunch of files in "fit" format.
cp * /u1/Garmin
cd ../GPX
-- here I see waypoints as gpx files.

FIT to GPX

gpsbabel -i garmin_fit -f {filename}.fit -o csv -F {output filename}.csv
gpsbabel -i garmin_fit -f {filename}.fit -o gpx -F {output filename}.gpx