September 18, 2022

Using the Garmin GPS 66i with the Tempe

This is wonderful and I wish I had done it sooner.

To set this up, do the following: 

go to Main Menu
select Setup
scroll down, find and select Sensors
select Tempe Sensor
select "on"
The unit will search for a new sensor (i.e. wait for the Tempe to send data) then it will display a 5 digit number, presumably unique for your sensor. Select it, and you are in business.

These pages are relevant:

There is/was a bug with the Tempe and 24 hour data (about 10 years ago), but this has been fixed and you are unlikely to receive one of the old units.

Displaying the data

The 66i can be configured to display the temperature in many places. Here is what I did. I decided to display the 3 values from the Tempe on the "Trip Computer" screen. This requires booting 3 values out of the way to do so. Two of the fields are also on the "Compass" screen, namely ETA at Dest and Time to Next (or was it Distance to Next). The other field was my current speed (I am more interested in my moving average).

Once you decide on which 3 fields to boot (i.e. replace with temperature data), you select the trip computer, then click the menu button. The process is easy, if somewhat tedious. You select "Change data fields" and then work out how to put the current temp, and the min/max for the 24 hours on the screen. I did some rearranging to suit myself and now I have temperature information on my trip computer all of the time.

Results

If the GPS is on and the Tempe is in range, you don't have to do a thing. The data just gets displayed. Wonderful!
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's home page / tom@mmto.org