How to get the Forerunner 305 to work under Ubuntu?

Alright. Somehow I got it to work by myself.. I am not sure how I did it, but if you are, like me, having trouble getting your Forerunner 305 to work on Ubuntu, I'll describe what I did here.

  • If you haven't already, install Pytrainer trough the Ubuntu Software Center.
  • You'll also need to install an extra library in order to communicate with the Forerunner so execute this command in the terminal, or search for the package in the USC: sudo apt-get install garmin-forerunner-tools
  • Now open up Pytrainer and open in the menu Tools > GPS Device Plugins
  • Select the "Garmin via garmintools" option and press "Preferences"
  • Enable the plugin by selecting the "Enable" option under Status.
  • Now connect your Forerunner to the PC with the USB cable and go to File > Import from Garmin GPS Device (via garmintools)
  • Notice that your device gives a beep and a progress bar will show. It might seem like the program crashed (Pytrainer turns grey) but after a few seconds it should come back to live, and your activities should show up in Pytrainer!

If you run into problems, make sure that there is an recorded activity that is not older than 30 days! Pytrainer will not import activities that are older than that. You can change this default value in the preferences.

I also saw somewhere on a site that it might fail to import your tracks when there is one with a special character in it's name. So make sure you won't name any tracks with special characters.

Took me a while to figure all this out since there is not a whole lot of information about it on the internet. I hope this is of use for some more people running into problems!

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12.10