Garmin Navionics Vision + Issues

[jrfuda]

I purchased a Garmin Navionics Vision + SDCard (the new card now advertised to work with new generation Garmin charts). I was happy with my LakeVu G3 Ultra East maps, but wanted similar coverage for coastal areas - mostly mouths of rivers and the intracoastal. All devices I tried this on are EchoMap UHDs with the latest (19.10, I think) software.

I think Garmin's software is not quite ready yet. If I'm ever home during their phone support hours I may call them.. In the meantime I will probably email them an edited version of this post. Here's my story.

When I first received the card, I loaded it into my PC and opened Garmin Express as that always seemed the easiest way to register an SDCard-based map in the past. Express recognized them card but said it could not register the maps.

Next I loaded the card into my 93SVUHD. It recognized the card but said I had to sync with Active Captain to activate it. I did this and the card became visible in my account and I could download maps in Active Captain. Despite multiple syncs, resets, and wipes, I could never get the card to show as "active" in the 93SV UHD. It works fine and looks great in Active Captain.

Next, I put a blank card in my 73SVUHD, leaving the purchased card in my 93SVUHD (these are not networked at the moment because I'm doing this on my bench, they are networked when on my boat). By now I had close to 10GB of maps downloaded in Active Captain. It synced and showed the maps as active on the 73SVUHD. It took about 2 hours to sync 10GB of maps. Then it got stuck at validating at 99%. I let it sit like this for a couple of hours and then cycled the power. It went through validation again and completed after maybe 20 minutes. The device stated the maps were active, but they did not work properly. Even though I had pretty much synced all of North and South Carolina, only a couple of tiles worked and they were corrupted (so they really did not work). The attached photo shows what the corrupt map tile looked like. I tried syncing again and again, but a sync would not trigger, even if (in Active Captain) I downloaded more maps, deleted and re-downloaded maps, or downloaded maps from another package (like my Ultra maps).

I then pulled the original Navionics SDCard from the 93SV and placed in in the 73SV. After following the steps to connect to Active Captain the card showed as active (something that never happened in the 93SV) but the only maps I could see were the pre-installed LakeView maps, so I went back to starting with a blank card again.

Whenever I was not busy this weekend, I'd wipe everything and try it all again. On one of these tries it actually worked when I wiped everything (device and active captain) and only downloaded about 1GB of maps, however, after that when I tried to add more maps and resync, it would not work.

Later, I made two fresh 32GB SDCards and downloaded just my ultra maps in Express, which are about 26GB, leaving a little less than 6GB for me to download some Navionics maps via Active Captain. I downloaded just the coastal areas of NC and SC so my charts would use the Ultra maps for inland and the Navionics for coastal. The sync went as before, hanging at 99% validated. I ended up with the same exact corrupt map tile as the attachment again. All the inland ultra maps still worked, so I can use the charts as they are while Garmin figures this out.

I'm very disappointed that you can't do all the downloading in Express and it just work. At present, I cannot do anything with the Navionics card in express only in Active Captain. Even then, the SDCard would not work. I wonder if this is just the UHD devices or if the same happens in Ultra and GPSMAP.

Finally, I think Garmin knows there are issues because every day the expiration date of my subscription has increased by a day, and they are not going to let our subscriptions get shorter until they deliver a fully working product. Speaking of subscriptions - when I looked at the list of my subscriptions online, it appears the renewal fee will be $99 versus the full initial price.

[jrfuda]

Has anyone else installed the new Navionics Vision + ? I sent an email to Garmin with my concerns - still can't get on the phone during support hours due to work. Might have to bring one of the charts, a battery, and some blank SDCards to work and call Garmin during lunch - trouble shooting from my truck in the parking lot when I have them on the line.

[dallasdawg]

I didn't know it was available yet. When I look on Garmin's site, I see "Available to ship in 3-5 weeks" for SD Card and "Download Coming Soon" for download. You are the first person I have seen report that they have purchased it.

[Todd Driscoll]

I consulted with the appropriate folks about your issues.

When I first received the card, I loaded it into my PC and opened Garmin Express as that always seemed the easiest way to register an SDCard-based map in the past. Express recognized them card but said it could not register the maps. They are attempting to reproduce this issue.

Next I loaded the card into my 93SVUHD. It recognized the card but said I had to sync with Active Captain to activate it. I did this and the card became visible in my account and I could download maps in Active Captain. Despite multiple syncs, resets, and wipes, I could never get the card to show as "active" in the 93SV UHD. It works fine and looks great in Active Captain.
This is a bug. The card can be removed, while the device and powered on, then reinserted. This should resolve the ‘inactive’ error.

Next, I put a blank card in my 73SVUHD, leaving the purchased card in my 93SVUHD (these are not networked at the moment because I'm doing this on my bench, they are networked when on my boat). By now I had close to 10GB of maps downloaded in Active Captain. It synced and showed the maps as active on the 73SVUHD. It took about 2 hours to sync 10GB of maps. Then it got stuck at validating at 99%
10gb is a rather large download, not sure what caused the interrupt but a power cycle should finish the process.

I'm very disappointed that you can't do all the downloading in Express and it just work. At present, I cannot do anything with the Navionics card in express only in Active Captain. Even then, the SDCard would not work. I wonder if this is just the UHD devices or if the same happens in Ultra and GPSMAP.
We are were aware of some oddities with Express but have resolved since February 2nd. Everything ‘should’ be working as expected now.

Finally, I think Garmin knows there are issues because every day the expiration date of my subscription has increased by a day, and they are not going to let our subscriptions get shorter until they deliver a fully working product
This is currently a bug and will be resolved soon..

[jrfuda]

I consulted with the appropriate folks about your issues.

Thank you.

[jrfuda]

Todd,

Thank you again for your assistance. I've also received an email back from one of the techs (Gary) at Garmin, but I think I confused him a bit with my rambling explanation and need to follow-up again.

I've added two more pictures showing the issues I have with the card and Express since you stated the techs are trying to replicate my issue. One image shows that Express recognizes the card, the other shows it cannot register it. I did successfully register it thru Active Captain, but I'd still like to be able to perform full downloads in Express so I can have a card for each of my devices like I do with my other maps (sometimes I power down one of my devices when I'm on the water, and if it is the one hosting the maps I like to still have the maps available).

I downloaded the latest version of Express from Garmin and tried to install, but was told I already have the latest version. I suppose I could do a full uninstall and re-install to see if that fixes it.

Thank you again.

[Todd Driscoll]

When logged into Express and into your vessel, are you able to see the Vision+ listed under ‘Charts’?

[jrfuda]

Some further feedback after downloading the maps via Express this morning.

1. I was able to successfully download the Navionics Vison + maps via Express this morning, but the download was only 9GB versus 26GB for my Lakeview G3 Ultra East maps. More on that later.

2. The maps were not recognized by my Echomap (I used the 93SVUHD for the test) when I initially powered it up. They continued to not be recognized after several removals and reinsertions of the card while the unit was powered-up.

3. After an initial sync with Active Captain (I deleted all my AC maps to stop downloads since I only had a little time before work this morning) I still did not have updated maps on the 93SV.

4. After a reboot, still no maps. After a removal and reinsertion of the card while powered-up, the maps were recognized and active.

5. Now for why the download was only 9GB. It appears the Express download only installed the base maps. There is no satellite imagery, relief imagery, or sonar imagery. The other features of the card worked like lake dynamic lake level adjustment, fish eye 3d and mariner's eye 3d, so I could confirm that the maps were installed. The coastal portions of the maps seem to be incomplete with triangle warning signs everywhere, or does that mean something else (image attached).

6. When I have time I will try and initiate a sync of some imagery from Active Captain, however, I must state that this is not a very good implementation because AC is painfully slow compared to downloading what you need via Express. My assumption is that downloading base maps plus all imagery for a purchased region would exceed 32GB, which is why you can't download everything. It would be nice to be able to specify tiles to download in Express like we can in Active Captain. I'm probably only ever going to need charts for NC, SC, and southern VA and it would be great to be able to just download those areas in Express. Making devices able to use cards larger than 32GB would also help, but I understand that could be a hardware limitation and make for a mess of data to manage as well.

7. My last concern is the requirement to have the map card also be an active captain card for the maps to work. This is an issue in my and probably other folks usage scenarios where they might want to power down some of their devices while on the water. For example, if I have my maps installed in my bow device and networked to my console device, if I power off my bow device during a long run, then I lose my charts on the console device because you're only supposed to have one AC card on the network at a time. I'd prefer for each device to have its own map card so it does not have to rely on maps over the network. With the LakeView maps you do not have to have AC on the card for them to work.

[Todd Driscoll]

Appreciate the detailed feedback. I will forward this on to the appropriate folks.

[SamMule]

I am also having issues with my Navionics Vision + card. I cannot register the card via Navionics, the active captain app, or Garmin express. When I put the map card in my plotter, it tells me the subscription is inactive.

[jrfuda]

I am also having issues with my Navionics Vision + card. I cannot register the card via Navionics, the active captain app, or Garmin express. When I put the map card in my plotter, it tells me the subscription is inactive.

Garmin Express, in my experience, will not let you register the card like it did with the older Garmin cards.

I had to put the card in my plotter and connect via Active Captain. As Todd said, if the card does not recognize, remove it and reinsert it while the plotter is powered-up. Once you see it go through the loading maps screen, it may or may not list the new maps. After this, run a full sync with Active Captain. Do this without any maps downloaded in Active Captain to make it go faster. Once Active Captain syncs with the plotter with the card installed, you should get a notification on Active Captain that the maps are registered. After this you can begin syncing maps sections. A few days later the maps will become available in Express - at least that is how it worked for me.

My observation is that both the purchased card and eventual Express download only contain the base maps, no satellite, relief, or sonar imagery, so you will have to download that data via active captain via Active Captain which is very tedious. I think it even states this inthe comparison chart when you look at the maps on the Garmin website (there's an asterisk next to imagery and says it requires Active Captain). After several failures I finally got the maps for all of NC and SC synced from Active Captain to one of my plotters, it was an additional 7GB of data on top of the 9GB that was pre-installed on my card and took about 5 hours to transfer and sync (plus whatever time, maybe an hour, it took me to download the tiles in Active Captain). I kept having failures becuase, since I was using my phone, the transfer would get interrupted and not gracefully resume. Having a phone tied up foor that long is not practical. I ended up using an slightly older tablet I had to perform the sync since I could just leave it next to the plotter for hours on end without issue (I also use this tablet as a standalone secondary display on my boat for maps).

The end state is that you have awesome maps with a very clunky and tedious method to get them. I do not recall having these issues with other Garmin maps, and I own two other cards in addition to the maps that came with my plotters. I think, both with Todd's help and the dialog I've had with Gary, the Garmin tech assisting me, that these concerns are getting elevated. I personally would like to be able to specify download areas in Express and not use Active Captain at all except for syncing waypoints, active captain community data, and Quickdraw contours.

[SamMule]

Thanks, John. I'll try that again today.

[SamMule]

Still no dice. Even with AC synced to plotter and multiple attempts installing and removing the card with the unit on, my subscription status stays at "inactive".
When I pull up my charts on AC, the Navionics Vision + are not listed anywhere. Even with plotter sync.
I can "register maps" via active captain successfully, but the vision+ is not on the list before or after registration.
Do I need to make the vision+ card an AC card for it to work?
My unit is a 106, so I have just been using the other slot as my AC card.
KIMG0958.JPGKIMG0958.JPG

[jrfuda]

Sam - I had to make mine an AC card for it to work, which is one of my complaints becuase then if you have a card in each of your plotters on the network, you'll get the warning abot only being allowed to have on AC card on the network at a time.

Also, I think there is something up with their servers right now. When I tried to download another copy of the card using Express just now, it errors out. Worked fine last night. I want to use downloaded copies and keep the original SD card stashed away, which is what I did with my LakeView cards.

[SamMule]

Roger. I'll give that a shot when I get home.
It's like the plotter sees the maps just fine, but the AC app doesn't. And since they are unregistered, it is defaulting to the G3 maps on the unit.

[SamMule]

Same story...
I cannot get the vision + maps to show up on AC.
The unit still sees the card as inactive. Even with full sync. Tried booting both ways. Card in or out makes no difference. Putting card in after unit is on is the same.
Deleted all of my downloaded maps from AC on the phone and still no luck.
It just loads the G3 base maps...
My G3 ultra card still works fine.

[jrfuda]

Sam, your issues are worse than mine ever were. I was fortunately able to get AC to see the card in the plotter right away even though it took a few days for it to show active on both plotters, and almost a week and tons of do-overs to finally get to where I am now. I wish I could help you figure it out.

My second plotter is currently on hour 8 of a sync with AC and is only 37% complete for just NC and SC maps... this was a full AC sync versus the hybrid base map via Express and imagrey via AC like the last time since Express was not working this morning.

[SamMule]

That's not reassuring hahaha. Hopefully I will be able to get on the horn with Garmin CS Monday and get it ironed out. As with most things, it's probably something simple that I'm missing.

[SamMule]

Well, easy fix... Mostly. Turns out my active Captain app wasn't up to date. I have the Vision + maps and features now. Still says my subscription is inactive on the unit. Haven't got that figured out yet. But, it works!

[ranger521znem]

I couldn't get it to work also on my 93sv. I couldn't even pick it on the drop down list as it is not there. All other chart plotters are there but not GARMIN. so you cant get passed the first step in the activation process. Active captain PLEASE that didn't work either so I took it back I don't need that headache I want something plug and play no hanky panky. I tried 7 times and that was it see ya later on this crap. They are gonna have to clean that crap up. Im going with the g3 blue water and that's it.