Spanner is a free program provided by Garmin

Garmin

Garmin Ltd. , incorporated in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, is the parent company of a group of companies founded in 1989 by Gary Burrell and Min Kao , that develops consumer, aviation, and marine technologies for the Global Positioning System...

 for PCs running Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 2000 or XP. It ‘translates’ live positional data

Data

The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...

 from Garmin’s proprietary interface into NMEA 0183. Garmin’s proprietary interface data is only provided via USB whereas NMEA data is provided via serial port

Serial port

In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...

. Spanner overcomes this by creating a virtual serial port and thereby allowing a USB based Garmin GPS receiver ‘speak’ with programs that require NMEA data.

Spanner is offered as a tool for Garmin’s GPS 18 product, but it works with other Garmin GPS receivers including the GPS 20x, GPSMap 60cx, 76CS, Colorado series (software version 2.51(beta) or later is needed) and Oregon series.

However, it doesn’t work with all Garmin USB GPS receivers. Some receivers that reportedly don’t work with Spanner include: Etrex Venture Cx, Etrex Vista Cx/HCx and Forerunner 305. The latter is recognized but Spanner reports it as "not having the required capabilities".

External links

• Garmin’s Spanner download page
• GPSgate -a similar product, but it costs. However it does work with all Garmin USB GPS units.