When you have a Garmin PND connected to your tracker you can send messages between your vehicle and GpsGate Server by using our Chat plugin, and if you are using our Dispatch plugin you can also send the location of jobs to the driver.

In the following guide I will setup a secondary device, specifically a Garmin nüvi 1490 that will connect through a Teltonika FM4100. Then I will show you how to use the Chat and Dispatch plugins.

Hardware setup

To connect the Garmin to the tracker you need a Fleet Management Interface (FMI) cable, in our case this. Please note that the cable you need depends on Garmin model and which tracker you are using.
I connected the FMI cable to the PORT1/NMEA port on the Teltonika tracker. See your tracker’s manual for more details on how the hardware should be setup.

Image 1. Garmin nüvi 1490 home screen. Notice the “disconnected” icon in the top right corner. It will disappear once a connection to GpsGate Server has been established.

Image 2. The PORT1/NMEA port on the Teltonika tracker.

GpsGate Server configuration

Before using your Garmin PND in GpsGate Server you need to add both the tracker and the Garmin device to a user. But, before doing that you have to install drivers for the devices. Device drivers can be downloaded and installed from the Plugin page in SiteAdmin.

1. Login to SiteAdmin, go to Plugins.
2. Find Garmin in the plugin list and click Download.
3. Once the download is complete, click Install to install the device driver.

Repeat the procedure above to install the Teltonika driver. Now, to add the devices do the following:

1. In VehicleTracker, go to Admin -> Users.
2. Create a new or select an existing user.
3. Go to Devices.
4. First, add your tracker device.
5. Then add your secondary device. Select “Garmin PND” as the Device type. Leave IMEI and Phone number empty.

Image 3. Both a Teltonika FM4100 and a Garmin device has been added to my user.

If you then go back to VehicleTracker -> Map view and open the Terminal for the Garmin device, you should see data similar to Image 4 after a few moments.
If no data shows up, the tracker has not been able to connect to GpsGate Server. See the troubleshooting page for more help.
If data shows up, but everything is from the Server (i.e. Client is not responding), your Garmin device has not been properly connected to the tracker.

Image 4. Terminal data for the Garmin device.

Sending messages (Chat plugin)

First of all you need to download and enable the Chat plugin to send messages to the Garmin.

1. Login to SiteAdmin, go to Plugins.
2. Find Chat in the plugin list and click Download.
3. Once the download is complete, click Install.
4. After installation, go to the Manage application page for the VehicleTracker application that you setup your devices in. Enable the Chat plugin under Features -> Plugins.
5. Save the application and then login to VehicleTracker again.

Once you are back in VehicleTracker, right-click a vehicle in the vehicle list to initiate chat with the driver. Type a message and click Send. After a short moment the message should appear on your Garmin.
Likewise, messages sent from the Garmin should appear in the chat window after a short moment.

Canned responses

You can setup a group of responses that you expect from your driver. For example if you ask: “Can you take this job?”, you want the driver to answer “Yes” or “No”. Select a group of responses in the drop-down list below the chat message textbox.
To manage the response groups, click Edit to the right of the drop-down (you need the _ChatEditResponses privilege).

Note: You can use the Chat plugin with simple devices like cell phones too. The canned response feature is currently only supported by Garmin however.

Sending jobs (Dispatch plugin)

The Dispatch plugin is downloaded and enabled in the same way as the Chat plugin (see above).

First you need to create a job. Click Create new Job, fill in the form and save the job. Location can be picked by right-clicking the map or just by starting to type an address, the address will be autocompleted using the application’s geocoder.

After the job has been created, you need to assign it to a vehicle. Select the job in the job list if it has not been selected already, then click the Assign button for the vehicle/user/driver that you want to assign the job to. In our case, the “mattias” vehicle/user/driver.

Now you can send the job to the driver. You do it by right-clicking the job and selecting “Send job to driver”. After a short moment the location of the job should appear on the Garmin.

Image 6. Assign the selected job to a driver and then send it.

Supported devices

As I mentioned before, your tracker needs to support the Garmin FMI. The devices we currently support are Teltonika (FM4100 and FM4200) and Cypress (CTM-15X).
See the following page for a list of supported Garmin devices: http://www8.garmin.com/solutions/pnd/index.jsp

Screencast

Blog categories