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GPS City Q&A » Automotive GPS » Is it possible to silence the speed limit alarm?

Automotive GPS (9 replies)

Item

Original Question

Is it possible to silence the speed limit alarm?

› Garmin Nuvi 3590LMT

Author

Reply

Charles Lawrence
Vidalia, GA

Original question asked on Jun 11, 2012, 8:39pm

Is it possible to silence the speed limit alarm short of muting all sounds?

Jordan
GPS City

Reply #1 on Jun 12, 2012, 10:56am

I just gave it a test in my area and the unit does not alarm when you go over the posted speed limit. The speedometer just turns red letting you know you are over the speed limit.

What you are hearing is most likely a external POI database containing speeds on some roads. Those will give an audible alarms. You can not adjust the volume of those alarms either. However you could delete them and use the Garmin speed limits that do not make a noise.

Charles Lawrence
Vidalia, GA

Reply #2 on Jun 12, 2012, 6:32pm

Jordan,

I find this explanation very hard to believe. It is true the speedometer turns red, but it also alarms, every 5 seconds or so, very annoying, especially if you are right on the edge of the limit. I can understand why Garmin may have considered this "feature" an engineered safeguard and not provided a way to turn it off for safety's sake.

In the first place, I can change the speed limit by touching the speed limit icon and raising the speed limit. This will silence the alarm until the unit travels into the next zone, where the limit will return to the posted limit and the alarm will return. In doing so, am I not modifying the Garmin speed limit as opposed to any POI speed limit? In the second place, this happens in remote rural areas where there are no POI's and where it would be very unlikely that the POI database would contain speeds on these remote rural roads.

If it is indeed true, you say you could delete the POI,s. How would you determine the offending POI, and then how would you delete it?

Jordan
GPS City

Reply #3 on Jun 13, 2012, 7:53am

I took the unit out for a test and it did not make a noise when going over the speed limit. That is based on the speeds Garmin has preloaded and the ones that I have set manually. I also went through all the settings in the unit and there is no options to enable or disable an alarm related to speed.

Are you using a third party map that may have a external POI DB that was installed? Are you using the cell phone link?

As per disabling external POI's loaded in the unit. Normally you will need to delete the culprit files from the internal memory. There will be a folder called GPX on the unit. Back up that folder and you can try deleting some of the files in it. I do not have the same info loaded as you so I am unsure of the name of the file you are looking for. You may want to contact Garmin for assistance. 1-800-800-1020 I think it is the speed camera's that are giving you the alarm.

hello3637
windsor on

Reply #4 on Jun 13, 2012, 9:59am

my 3590 only turn red over the speed i gave it i wish i could have sound when i go over the speed

Charles Lawrence
Vidalia, GA

Reply #5 on Jun 13, 2012, 3:53pm

Jordan,
Thank you for working with me on this issue. My 3590LMT is brand new out of the box, just received from you guys on last Friday. I am not using any third party maps or POI DB that I know of. I am not using the cell phone link. I have updated the map that shipped from 2012.30, if I remember right, to the latest 2013.10. The unit software version also updated to 6.50. I am not sure what the version was that shipped with the unit.

As I mentioned, this chime alarm comes on whenever I exceed the speed limit shown on the default dashboard while navigating, even on rural remote roads where I am sure there are no speed cameras. The speed indicator turns red. The chime lasts for a second or so and will continue to come on every 5 seconds or so. I can raise the speed limit and the alarm will go away until I travel into the next "zone" where the limit will fall back to the posted limit and the alarm chime will return.

The other user hello3637, seems to confirm what you say. Believe me, hello3637, you do not want this feature as is. With no way to acknowledge the alarm to silence it, this is a distracting nuisance.

Could this perhaps be something just introduced with the latest maps and software updates? I am goin

Charles Lawrence
Vidalia, GA

Reply #6 on Jun 13, 2012, 3:57pm

I am going to try to contact Garmin with the number you provided. I will post what I find out.

Previous post truncated short. There must be a character limit.

Charles Lawrence
Vidalia, GA

Reply #7 on Jun 13, 2012, 4:30pm

Jordan, I found this while I was waiting on perpetual hold with Garmin support. It answers my question.

support.garmin.com/support/searchSupport/case.faces?caseId={e46adad0-d3ab-11de-6566-000000000000}

In a nutshell, there IS an audible speed limit alarm which CAN be disabled. This feature is ONLY available if the unit is set up for European locale. Any locale outside Europe, including the US, will not have this feature. Somehow, I must have inadvertently set the unit to an English speaking European country when I first turned it on. I do remember it asking for a locale and I did experiment and scroll through the list and chose Germany, but all the text was in German, so I went back to the US, or so I thought. Anyway, I reset it to the US per the instructions above, and I will now test it out.

This is important information, hidden thought it may be. I thought you would like to know for future use.

Jordan
GPS City

Reply #8 on Jun 14, 2012, 8:07am

Thank you for passing that along. I went through our units and could not replicate the issue you were having. I am sure others will benefit from your experience.

Charles Lawrence
Vidalia, GA

Reply #9 on Jun 14, 2012, 10:15am

I think this is what happened. Users, be aware!

When I first received the unit and turned it on for the first time it asks for the country. For some reason, I went exploring and scrolled to Germany and chose it, a European country where the audible speed limit is enabled. Obviously all the text would now be in German. I thought I went back somehow and changed the country back to the US, but I must not have actually done this, but only changed the language to US, thereby changing all the German text back to English, but still in a European country. Therein lies the situation I was in, where I got audible speed limit alarms. If I had known how, as the above referenced article specifies, I could have turned the audible speed limit alarm off, and kept the other audible sounds active. Live and learn!

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