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HOWTO: working with custom waypoints

The Quest has a feature that allows you to use 64 custom waypoint symbols. This HOWTO explains in detail how to create your own set of waypoint symbols on the Quest. Creating the waypoints itself however is left to the user. =8-)

	First, we download and install Garmin xImage from the Garmin website. This is the program we use to extract images from and send images to our Quest. xImage requires a Mapsource installation, from where you can manage your Quest. This is also the time to connect your Quest to your PC and turn it on.
	After starting xImage, we see the welcome screen, where we click Next >.
	xImage searches for your Quest and should find it. If not, connect it to the PC and turn it on. Then click Find Device. Click Next > to go to the next screen.
	Since this is the first time we use xImage, we are going to get the (still unused) custom waypoints from our Quest. When we have them on our PC, we can alter them and send them back to use them. So we select Get images from the GPS and click Next >.
	xImage can get three kinds of images from the Quest: the current screen, the splash screen (which you see when turning your Quest on) and custom waypoint symbols. Since we want to download the custom waypoint symbols, we select Waypoint Symbol from the dropdown listbox. We also click Select All, since we want to transfer all custom waypoint symbols. After that, we click Next >.
	We can now browse to the directory we want to save the 64 custom waypoint symbol bitmaps in and click OK to select it.
	xImage will now download the bitmaps from the Quest and place them in the directory specified.
	xImage is done transferring the bitmaps.
	This is how a default custom waypoint looks like: a blue circle with a purple border.
	Now use your favorit photo editor to edit the bitmap, but make sure you leave the bitmap's 256 color palette intact and don't change the 16x16 bit dimensions. As an example we see a geocaching icon, for a found regular geocache. The purple border (color: Red=255, Green=0, Blue=255) is important, since that exact color will be transparant on the Quest and in Mapsource.
	After editing the custom waypoints, we start xImage again, now to select Send images to the GPS.
	We again select Waypoint Symbol and click Select All (or less symbols, if we edited not all 64 or want to transfer only a subset).
	We browse to the directory we saved the edited bitmaps.
	And xImage transfers the bitmaps to the Quest!
	We can now Finish xImage and start using our custom waypoint symbols!

Since the custom waypoint symbols are now transferred to our Quest, we can use them. Here is how to select a custom symbol for an existing waypoint .

	Here we have a normal waypoint, a Shell gas station near my home. Since we like to distinguish it from other brands, we created a custom waypoint symbol for it. We select the standard waypoint symbol and press
	Now move the cursor up...
	... and you will find all custom waypoint symbols you uploaded! In the example on the left you see all kinds of geocaching waypoint symbols, some maximum speed indicators (for use with speed traps) and the Shell company logo we want to use for our gas station. We select that waypoint symbol, by pressing
	Now we change the waypoint symbol from the standard gas station symbol to the custom waypoint symbol.
	On the Quest map screen it will look like on the left.
	In Mapsource it will look like this. Note: you need to transfer your waypoints from your Quest to Mapsource first, to see the custom waypoint symbols. Mapsource doesn't use (or know of) your saved xImage bitmaps. Note 2: until firmware 3.00 (at least) the interaction between Mapsource and the Quest is not 100%. If you download waypoints from the Quest, only the first couple of them will be correctly transferred and shown... copying your xImage bitmaps in the My Documents\My Garmin\Custom Waypoint Symbols directory and renaming them to the Mapsource standard (I know... using two naming standards for the same custom waypoints is... ehm... not nice) will work. Note 3: uploading waypoints with custom waypoint symbols doesn't work (up to firmware version 3.00), they revert to the standard black waypoint dot. In firmware version 3.30 this is changed. Now selecting a custom waypoint in Mapsource will transfer the custom waypoint index to the Quest and vice versa, note however that the custom waypoint symbol itself is still not transferred...

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