geokitebuggy

I had this chilling experience after loading the update. The 400T froze after the validation screen went to 100%. I needed to pop the batteries to get it shutdown. The restart went smoothly and the 2.95B loaded as it should. I was fearful that my 400T had become a brick. Now, off to find some caches

Are you sure you have the latest Mapsource version? Current is 6.15.4. I was using the prior version and had countless problems that went away after updating to 6.15.4 (released Feb. 24th. '09). What I don't like about the newer versions of Mapsource is that all the icons now look like they were designed for Romper Room School (way too big). I don't see why they don't include a setting to resize the icons. Maybe I'm missing something?

Why doesn't Garmin spend a few more bucks for the 3-axis compass chip? Good question. I've been using my 76CSx in a marine mount on my kayak with the unit tilted up 45 deg. so I can easily view the display. The 2-axis compass doesn't work in this attitude and it's frustrating not having the "track up" responding like it should. I've resorted to lowering the speed at which the compass determines the track direction to 1 mph, so most of the time I'm traveling fast enough for the GPS signals to determine the track direction. Sometimes this results in "loose bearings" issues, but I can live with them. I haven't taken my Oregon 400T on the kayak yet, but it will suffer the same issues.

I loaded 2.93B last night and went out for a few this morning. Everything seemed to work fine except for one cache where the unit suddenly told me I was off by about 200 ft. (I was under residential power lines). I shut it off, restarted, and things came back to "normal". Accuracy seems good - I can find caches without a problem. The WAAS locks up immediately once sat 48 is green (I'm on the left coast). If I put my hand over the unit, I lose WAAS but not all the sats. For some reason the receiver doesn't seem to be as sensitive to the WAAS signal??? I haven't experienced the shutdown issues mentioned elsewhere in this thread. I haven't looked at the tracks yet, but I'm pleased overall. 431 caches and counting with this Oregon 400T

Got it. Thanks!

Oregon 400t FW 2.60/2.55 I would like to change the geocaching dashboard display of found caches to my current total and increment from there. What I see now is the total I found using this unit in the past 1.5 months I've owned it. Is this possible? I recall seeing some discussion regarding early version firmware displaying incorrect data and a means of correcting it. I can't remember the location. Maybe it was referring to something else... Thanks!

On ebay you can find City Navigator NT microSD cards for around $70-80, some with free shipping. Pops right in and works like a champ. Be sure to check seller's ratings.

I have both Colorado 400t and Oregon 400t. I've found several hundred caches with the Colorado and am approaching my first hundred with the Oregon. Both have the latest firmware. I now carry the Colorado along as a backup. I've never had to return either unit because of problems. I use CityNavigator NT on both units to guide me near the cache. I find that the Oregon's ability to recalculate off road with just a couple of picks is about the most handy feature I use. I used to have to struggle with this in the Colorado. I rarely use the compass, preferring rather to zoom in deeply on the map and follow the purple line to the cache. I do leave the compass enabled in 'auto' mode on the Oregon so that the 'loose bearings' issue is not so annoying. On the Colo. I turned the compass off for the reasons that have already been mentioned above. One annoying behavior of the Colorado that I have not experienced frequently with the Oregon is that when standing still the Colo. would tell me I was 10 ft. from the cache in one direction and then suddenly tell me I was 20 ft. away in a different direction. I don't experience this behavior with the Oregon. When I stand still it doesn't jump around as much. I've taken them into the field side-by-side and they both took me to the same spot (within a few feet), so accuracy is not an issue for me. I like the Oregon's touch screen much better than the RnR on the Colo. Outdoor screen brightness on both units is adequate. The Oregon's matte finish screen surface diffuses some of the light and makes it appear just slightly dimmer, but it doesn't show the fingerprints as much. Now if Garmin could come up with a display that was as bright as my 76CSx! I have had no battery life issues with either unit. I use Powerex 2700 mAH NiMH cells from Thomas Distributing along with the MAHA MH-C9000 charger. Both units give me about 10 hours of continuous power-on hours. I haven't measured things with a stopwatch, but I perceive that the Oregon does slightly better in the power consumption area. I would like to see a soft key on the Oregon that would allow one to view the cache description while navigating to the cache - in both on-road and off-road modes. You can do this by backing out of the map screen and entering the geocache screens, but directly would be nice. Also, after marking a cache as found, the find nearest selection should show the name of the cache at the top of the screen so you can read the description first and decide if it is, indeed, the cache you want to head to. Hopefully these things will be addressed in future firmware. Since my experience has been with samples of n=1 for each unit, my comments/feelings are purely subjective. I would not discourage anyone from owning either unit, but my personal preference now lies with the Oregon.

Is there any difference (other than the RF choke) between the USB-A to mini USB cable that Garmin provides with the Oregon/Colorado and standard USB-A to mini USB cables that you can purchase elsewhere? A friend told me that he burned up his Oregon over time by using a standard cable. He said that the salesperson at REI told him to use the Garmin cable or else it would happen again. I know that the RF choke suppresses high frequency noise on the outer shield of the cable, but it doesn't "isolate" the GPSr from the PC. There is DC continuity between the connector shells at each end. I can see how the choke might possibly reduce data corruption but not low frequency ground loop currents. Is the 'x' pin in the mini connector wired differently? I have a nice cable with gold plated connector shells that fits the Oregon superbly but it doesn't have the choke. The Garmin supplied cable fits the unit quite tightly and I need to wrestle with it (figuratively) to remove it. Curious...

When navigating to a cache I get the "Arriving at XXXXXX" message. I don't see a way to set the alert radius or to disable this annoying feature. Is it buried somewhere deep inside? Thanks!

Hi, Has anyone purchased one of the new TOPO US 24K cartridges for their area? I'm wondering if the roads and streets are shown at the same level of detail as with CityNavigator NT N. America. Are the roads placed accurately on the 24K maps, or are they off like with the TOPO basemaps in the Colorado and Oregon? Since Garmin advertises these maps as having routable roads and trails, I'm wondering if they are suitable substitutes for CityNav in the regions they cover? Are you happy with the products? I'm most interested in the California/Nevada and Washington/Oregon sets. Thanks!

Followup... The CityNav N. America NT microSD card arrived today. I popped it in and the unit fired right up - maybe 3-5 seconds longer than without the extra maps. I disabled TOPO. Now my saved tracks are right on top of the roadways where they should have been with the TOPO mapset. Garmin should improve the quality of their TOPO basemap. So far I have not experienced any problems with this Oregon aside from what I've mentioned. I guess I'm fortunate to be getting into this at firmware 2.6.

I had my new Oregon on for about 8 hours yesterday with 2700 mAH Powerex NiMH batteries and with the Oregon's battery setting set on Alkaline. I show 3 bars on the meter and just tested the cells with a ZTS pulse load multi-battery tester from Thomas Distributing. The tester shows the cells still at 80% charge! The meter agrees pretty closely with the cell condition. I believe that Garmin has the battery measurement routines mislabeled. I'm really happy with the battery consumption on this new toy! I downloaded the track log to MapSource and overrlaid it onto CityNavigator NT maps and everything was "perfect" as far as I can tell - right down the middle of the lanes. Looks like the topo basemap is either inaccurate or misreferenced to the WGS84 datum. Could the definition for the datum in the receiver be incorrectly labeled as well? I was able to find caches without trouble and had it on side-by-side with my Colorado 400t as a comparison. Both took me to the same place with essentially the same accuracy. I don't believe that going from cache to cache has anything to do with what datum the unit is set to. I won't know more until the CityNav microSD card arrives soon. If the new maps line up correctly I can blame the built in Topo. If the new maps are also misreferenced, then the problem is with the datum definition. More to follow.

I received my new Oregon 400t Wednesday and firmware 2.2 was installed. The first thing I did was to register it online and in doing so upgraded the unit to 2.6/2.55. Since I just received it, I have not experienced the problems shared by many in the other threads. I have noticed the following: 1. When I am traveling down a street/highway the pointer shows me approx. 80 ft. SW of my actual position. It is like the map is created with a different datum. The unit datum is set to WGS84 and the spheroid is also WGS84. I placed the Oregon on the table next to my Colorado 400t and both gave me the same position within about 10ft. I also compared to a bluetooth mouse GPS that I use with MS S&T and the agreement was good. I haven't placed all my GPS devices on the table next to each other, but I have several more... I tried a master reset with no change. I went to the diagnostic screen, ran the map checksum, and it passed ok. I'm puzzled??????? 2. I changed the battery type to NiMH and installed a fresh set of Powerex 2700's. Within about 2 hours the battery meter started to sag. I let it get to 1 green bar before I removed the cells and replaced with a fresh set. My ZTS pulse load battery tester tells me that the cells I removed are still at 80% capacity. I reset the unit, telling it I was using alkaline cells, and now I get behavior that is more in line with what I expect. The NiMH cells have lower starting terminal voltage than alkalines, but the decrease under load is much less rapid than with alkalines. My suspicion is that the battery monitor selection is misnamed - or I have a defective battery monitor circuit, too. Anybody else see this one? Is there a thread that already covers these topics? Have any of you experienced similar behavior? I purchased a City NavigatorNT microSD card that should be here in a couple of days. I will install it and see if the offset problem is consistent. The the call goes out to Garmin. (I should have purchased it from REI, but for $100 less, no tax, and free shipping, the temptation was too good. It arrived in the original packaging with everything as it should be.) I am impressed overall with the new toy. I like the way you can go between profiles without interrupting navigation, change waypoint locations on the fly while navigating, and a whole lot more. The one thing I would ask is the ability to turn off the red push pin you get when you touch the screen accidentally. It's annoying when you don't want it and handy when you do. BTW, the touch screen works nicely with my Palm stylus - but not nicely enough that I am going to carry it around, too. Thanks for any insight to my problems. geokitebuggy

You don't need to abandon navigation to the waypoint. Back out of the map screen, tough "Geocaches", and select the multi you are after (should be pretty close to the top of the list). The next screen with the green GO button has the cache name at the top. You can touch that and read the description again. You can back out of it to the main menu, touch "Map" and you are still navigating to the original waypoint. You can even edit the position of that waypoint while you are navigating without having to stop and restart nav. Go to the waypoint manager while navigating, select the waypoint, change the location and hit the green check-mark, back out to the map and you are now navigating to a different spot, all on the fly. It's a bit convoluted, but once you do it a few times it is nice. Beats the Colorado hands down. I wish the cache list would include the icons so you could tell what's there without having to peek at the descriptions - trad, multi, ?, etc.

Oh, to be in the UK and I'm stuck in California... The map shows me in Canterbury, UK - 5348 miles away from home.

One minor annoyance: Garmin messed up the formatting of text in the "geocache_visits.txt" file by removing the cr-lf at the end of each line. Previously you could open this file and get a nice list that could be printed. Now you get a long run-on sentence. I imported the file into a spreadsheet using tab and comma delimiters and I get back to what was there before, but it's just the principle of things I'm bitc.... about. If it ain't broke, fix it 'till it is... I was disappointed to not see some new features (like waypoint averaging). Maybe next time? Will we have to wait another 3 months for the next release?

Same behavior here...

Well, the actual date is Monday 6-30 so I could collect those 2 vacation days for June. They pay you in $$ for them, so I decided a few months back to extend my retirement date by a single workday. It's worth about $800 for me - with about $0.69 being left after taxes . What's next is going to be a mix of geocaching and youth counseling to kids from the gang families in south Stockton. It will be more of a challenge than the job I've had for 28 years. I'll tell you more as we eat some muffins together tomorrow. George

You don't need to load the entire City Nav mapset unless you travel extensively. I just load CA, NV, OR, and WA maps which is the region where I spend 99% of my time. It only takes a small effort to make up a new map set if you are headed on a longer journey. I believe the smaller mapset loads more quickly, too.

76CSx has a wider display by 0.1" over 60CSx. Same height, pixel count and color depth. Not much to shout about. I started caching with the 76CSx last year. I bought a 400t in March and use it for most of my caching now but there are features from the 76CSx that I miss.

This sounds like an outstanding method to deal with the problem. Are you willing to share your handiwork? I haven't yet delved into GSAK macro creation. I'll be retired on July 1st. and then I'll have some time on my hands.

Yes, there is overlap. I try to minimize it by selecting the centroid of my queries in GSAK. I've seen behavior where an entire file is missed. So far I have not seen behavior where only a portion of the caches are missed. I typically do a download to the Colo. about once a week and have seen it work incorrectly more often than not. I've tried variations on the naming of the PQs created by GSAK. One thing to note: All of the PQs are created within a short timespan - 2-3 minutes typically. Maybe it is a date/timestamp issue. Also, I don't include any child waypoints at all. GSAK is set to export %code, %name (15 char. length) and 8 latest log entries, nothing more. I have done the renaming of the missed file, as mentioned in another post, and that file is then parsed and added to the list. I don't think the file inherits a later creation date, but maybe the renaming changes a last modified date that might make the difference. I have not tried to interrupt the boot process as one of the other posts indicates - sounds like it is worth a try. I guess you just hold down the power button during the boot process and the unit shuts off. Not quite as bad as pulling out the batteries. I wonder if there are open file handles left behind that the system needs to resolve on restart and that they may be related to this somehow. Saw a thread on how to unbrick a Colo. - guess I'll track it down first, just in case. Here's some trivia that may be a contributor to the problem... If you view the software version page under system setup you find at the top the firmware version and gps software version. Read down in the licensing fine print and you will find that the xml parser Garmin is using is open source and is quite old (like several years). With software changing as rapidly as it does, perhaps this old xml parsing software is to blame. Also note that it is free software - maybe I misread it? You don't always come away with a great deal when it is offered for free. Just my $0.02. George

The latest gps software is 2.60 that was released with firmware 2.4. Beta 2.51 didn't come with updated gps software. Hopefully the next release will be fully released and will contain both... Probably no news, but I thought worth the mention. I get frustrated by the "wandering around" that I see with my 400t. Zoom in to 20ft and observe the track that accumulates over time. I've seen spikes out at least 100 ft. It gets to be frustrating as well when near a cache where one second you are zero'd out and the next second you're 15 ft. away in an arbitrary direction. A second later you're 10 ft. away in a different direction. GRRRRR!

First, I apologize if this is a repeat topic. It's hard to keep up sometimes... Colorado 400t Beta 2.51 I use GSAK to create regional queries that I want to load into the unit. The gpx files contain anywhere from 10 to ~500 caches. The total of all caches in the files is less than 2000. Typically I create 6 files that cover regions in my area that I go to frequently. I have experienced the following problem: If I place all 6 files into the GPX directory branch and restart the unit there are times when some of the files don't load. Tonite it was 2 out of 6 that didn't load - nearest to me and nearest to work (50 miles away). It is obvious when I go to the not found list and the nearest cache is 19 miles away - instead of the one at 7 miles that I haven't found yet. I pan around the map and discover other regions that didn't get loaded. I have not tried to load them one-at-a-time, but this would become really time consuming with the number of restarts. Tonite I resorted to a single query with a 40 mile radius from home that included 1889 caches. It appears to have loaded OK. Anyone else having this problem? Workarounds? This is something I recalled from earlier firmware reports. Guess it still isn't fixed. Garmin should be aware but I think I'll send them an email as a reminder. Thanks for any and all help! George