aviation

Garmin GPS Device Pairing Limits

TLDR

If you get the following error from a Garmin GPS when trying to pair with a new device:

Already connected with the maximum number of devices

The issue is simply that there are too many devices already paired with the GPS. You just need to unpair one to make room for the new one.

Some Background

This was something that I ran into briefly when working with one of the club Citabrias with a Garmin Aera 660 GPS. In retrospect, it was pretty obvious what was happening, but at the time I was confused because:

1. The GPS wasn’t connected with any devices
2. There weren’t enough devices already paired to make me suspect that we had actually run into a limit

Some time later, I had a few minutes to troubleshoot, and quickly realized that it was in fact a paired device limit that I was running into (apologies to the random pilot whose device I unpaired). Since googling Already connected with the maximum number of devices had turned up literally zero results, I figured that maybe putting this out there could save a few minutes of someone else’s time.