Customizing Your Garmin Automotive GPS Device

As of this writing, there are two ways with which you can customize your Garmin GPS device:
- By changing the vehicle icon (the icon at the bottom center of the screen that represents your vehicle);
- By changing the voice that guides you as you travel down the road

The good thing about these customizations, is that they are relatively easy to do, and just involves downloading files, and then transferring them to specific folders on the device.

However, I haven't tried them out yet on my unit, but intend to do so as soon as I can. So feedbacks are welcome if you decide to try them out.

(Warning: Even though these customizations are, indeed, simple, modifying a gadget's software always involves a certain amount of risk, which can lead to cause the unit to malfunction. So proceed at your own risk.)

'Custom Vehicle Icon'
Downloading and use of the vehicle icons is FREE, and here are the available icons from the Garmin website. They range from Spongebob rowing a boat, to the "Black Pearl", to airplanes, etc.:
- http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/bund...lvehicles.html

Just to be sure, you might want to look at the right side of the page to see if these custom vehicle icons are compatible with your unit.

Installation is simple and straightforward. Below is the instruction page on how to install the custom icons:
- http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/howtoinstall/

'Custom Voices'
There are a couple of good sites that offer custom voices for Garmin units, but the good ones are paid, and expensive.

The Navtones website offers some free voices, but they are the not-so-well known voices. They also have Knight Rider's "Kitt" voice (way cool), and David Hasselhoff's voices, but they are not free, and costs USD 10 each:
- http://www.navtones.com/voices/garmin/

The Pigtones website has their own versions of iconic voices like Yoda (they call it "Pagoda"), for example, or Arnold Schwarzenegger ("Governator"), which are pretty good as they sound like the real thing, but expensive at USD 10 each:
- http://www.pigtones.com/

Garmin offers the cheapest voices so far, with their "Spongebob" voice at only USD 6. And they have cool voices like the chipmunk-like "Squirelly", or the horror sounding "Dr. Nightmare" that are for free:
- http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/voices/

Celebrity Voices offer voices of major celebrities, like Morgan Freeman, Hannibal Lecter, Alan Rickman (main villain in "Die Hard"), etc. at USD 10 per voice pack:
- http://www.celebrityvoices.co.uk/garmin_voices.htm

Installation is pretty simple, and straightforward. Here are the instructions from the Garmin website:
- http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/howt...ll/voices.html

'Personalized Voices'
A great alternative to having custom voices on your Garmin, is by using the Garmin Voice Studio. It allows you to record and use your own voices for the unit, and its pretty cool. You can have your wife or girlfriend direct your car, as in, "... Turn right at 300 meters, honey ...". Or you could have your kids do it, like " ... turn left at EDSA at 150 meters, dad ...".

The software is free for download and use, and will walk you thru the phrases that need to be recorded, and how to install to the device. Here is the link on where to download it:
- http://www.garmin.com/garmin/cms/cac...DBF32E2C7BA855

I tried the software out on my PC, and even though "Pilipino" is not one of the languages you can use, theoretically you CAN make a Voice pack entirely spoken in Filipino, since all the phrases, numbers and units of measurements can be recorded.

A suggestion, though: Instead of just directly translating some phrases, like, "... Follow the highlighted route ...", you could add a little humor by saying a witty equivalent, like, " ... dire-diretso lang, bossing ...", or, " ... ambagal naman, konting gas naman dyan ...", or something like that.

I don't know how the street names will be spoken, though. Perhaps they will not be used if this option is chosen, or the default language/voice will say the street names.

'Voice Video Samples'
In parting, here are some videos of celebrity voices as used on a Garmin device:

* Hannibal Lecter
- [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7Dd9j-WNc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd7Dd9j-WNc[/ame]

* Morgan Freeman
- [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHwJeWyrJcQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHwJeWyrJcQ[/ame]

* Back to the Future's Doc Brown
- [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEdrF8iYxk4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEdrF8iYxk4[/ame]

* Sean Connery
- [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ5wj60WzCQ&NR=1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ5wj60WzCQ&NR=1[/ame]