gallet
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Posts posted by gallet
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I came across something interesting while walking down my local rd, I pulled out my phone, (iPhone SE) and was horrified to see that I could not get a fix, even though I had excellent reception. It was a few kilometres out!, usually the phone is pretty accurate, but the one time when I really needed it, it did not work. I think all things being equal they are probably equally good but as mentioned further upthread, the hand held is bound to have a better antenna. This could have been just some sort of an anomaly but I wouldn't want to trust a phone if I didn't have to.
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Every single frikken Garmin hand held I've had from the early eTrex, late eTrex and now the Oregon has a chad, pop out on the rubber surround. This time is was on my Garmin Oregon. OK so I phoned Garmin Australia and they were sarcastic, rude and extremely unpleasant. I bought it off someone who only had it for a couple of months for a specific trip, it was spanking new and it's perfect for a motorbike. However after a couple of years the on/off button, which gets pressed a lot because (it is a multi function button), well not the button itself which is attached deep in the circuit board but the rubber surround that connects to it. So there's a hole in it now but worse I need a toothpick to turn it on.
OK so I called Garmin and they were really happy to tell me in not so many words to go and have sexual congress with myself. They said, if only I had bought it new for an extra $300 then they would replace it with a refurbished one for only another $140, but as I did not buy it new I they hope I have learned my lesson. They also said that they had never heard of this problem before. Yeah right, just like they never heard of the glue melting on the old model eTrex.
In fact it's so such a rare even that there's someone in the Netherlands who designed a new one and had it 3D printed in a rubber factory and it's worth his while to do that, that's how rare it is.
So I'm writing this post to say that the replacement, is frikken awesome, it's much better than the original. The original has a little bit of a groove around the inside of the rubber button, that makes it apparently a bit softer to press, because it's more flexible. However that is where it wears out and just pops out, almost like those hanging chads in the 2000 US elections. The new replacement one does not have that groove and it makes the button much *easier* to press, because the connection to the little micro switch deep in the body is a more positive connection so you can feel the tactile 'click' very easily instead of trying to press it multiple times.
I just glued it on with some glue that didn't stick well because it's the type of plastic that glue won't bond with, but it's been there for a couple of months just taped into position. I'm finally getting around to gluing it properly now that I see how good it is. I had to buy a special two part glue especially for this type of plastic.
So here's a shot of the part and the Oregon with the piece cut out that I'm going to replace. This guy has done a fantastic job, super accurate, including the locating pin. If Garmin made them like this in the first place then there wouldn't be this chad problem.
https://www.selleys.com.au/products/adhesives/minor-repairs/selleys-all-plastic-fix
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Greetings, after an unhappy morning on the phone to a belligerent Garmin Australia concerning the buttons on the Oregon and their propensity to fall off like a chad, I have discovered the part on eBay.
It appears that the entire front part including the rubber bumper is already available, which seems a better option than just cutting out a bit of the rubber and replacing it.
I've taken the back screws off with a T6 driver, but now it appears that there are two more screws that hold the circuit board in but I'm unable to tell what size or type they are they may be Torx or Pentalobe, as they are smaller and in quite firm I don't want to attempt to move them unless I"m certain of the correct size as it will be easy to strip.
Below are the two options, I don't really understand the point of just cutting the rubber out rather than replacing the front.
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@cyclingfreak64, as per the original post, I gave my etrex 20x to the gf who lost it, so I replaced that with the touch 25, as I have the oregon 600 already. I have subsequently discovered that the Touch 25 is a piece of garbage with unacceptably low resolution and confusing software. I use both units for motorcycle driving. Nuvis are no good because they do not have a transreflective screen and thus are not visible in bright sunlight.
I find the Oregon 600 to be an absolutely superb motorcycle gps. Crisp easy to read with excellent software, I do not use it in automotive mode as I find that confusing I prefer the normal birds eye view where I can see upcoming turns. I've put the Touch25 on ebay and I'll have a second Oregon 600 in a week or two. Plus I can make my own forced routes in basecamp. The montana is unnecessarily too large for me plus it has that edge around the screen.
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@Mineral2, I meant the etrex 20, or more likely 20x what I mean is that if the gf wants a small unit then the touch 25 is so rubbish that you're better off with the plain etrex with the joystick. However while trying to get the eTrex Touch 25 into a usable configuration I have thrown in the towel. It's on ebay I'm getting rid of this POS, and I have just this minute bought another Oregon 600 from Amazon with cheap delivery to Australia for a total cost of $305 Australian, or $219 USD which is a decent price. The gf will have to put up with a bigger unit.
Now you ask what is wrong with the Touch 25? Well for a start the resolution is woefully inadequate, lower than the original eTrex meaning for use as a driving gps it's not very readable. The screen is less responsive than the Oregon too. But the software, christ in a chicken basket, were these people on drugs when they wrote this software. I have put it back into classic mode because at least that is almost usable apart from the below standard resolution. However the non classic software would send anyone crazy. It's utter madness.
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On 15/12/2017 at 2:15 PM, Mineral2 said:
It is the same type of touch screen as the Oregon. The Dakota had the same resistive touch screen that the Oregon 300/400/450 units had. The eTrex Touch has the same capacitive touch screen as the Oregon 600/700 units. The resolution has also not changed within lines. The screen size and number of pixels is the same between the old oregons and the new ones, just as it is the same between the old Dakotas and the new eTrex Touch (essentially an updated Dakota).
If you are saying that the eTrex Touch 25 is the same touch screen as the Oregon 600 then you are plain wrong. End of.
Also I have just discovered that the eTrex 25 is utter garbage and now I will have to replace it with the eTrex touch 20. Unless I can get an oregon 600 at a reasonable price.
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On 01/12/2017 at 1:07 PM, Red90 said:
The Garmin specs are correct. You must be able to go to a store and see one in person.
As you can see, it is the exact same as a Dakota, https://buy.garmin.com/en-CA/CA/p/30926#specs They just took a Dakota and added a few newer items and renamed it. The case changed and the screen did not change. It is pretty old school.
Ah yes I see you are correct it is the exact same screen dimensions and therefore resolution as a discontinued model. So they put a discontinued screen turn it into a touch screen and call it the latest model. As I said, Pathetic. Especially when it should have been the same type of touch screen as the Oregon albeit small size.
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OK I just got delivery a couple of days ago. Yes it's true the specs at Garmin are correct. Putting the Oregon 600 and the eTrex 25 side by side the screen on the eTrex is readable but it is indeed lower than the original eTrex 20. That is a truly pathetic move from Garmin. It works and it's readable but they know it's crap. Why would they bother to increase the res on the original etrex 20 when they released the 20x, it was only the screen that was a bit higher res. So it's not something they aren't aware of. And this 25 touch is worse than the original eTrex. It's really annoying when companies like Garmin treat their customers like mugs. OK you can rightly say that I should have gone and checked it out first and you'd not be wrong but I'd still have bought it, unhappily. Why? because this is the size that is needed and it does work and the press button eTrex is difficult to operate on a motorbike and also the rubber buttons crack away from overuse (see my other thread on this)
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@Red90, ha I should have explained, I bought it but I don't have it yet, having it shipped to my US mailbox then I'll reship it to Australia with some other packages. I was just looking at the specs and I've only just noticed the low resolution. I'm not using it for caching, I'm using it as a gps for the gf's motorbike. I've been using the Oregon and I'm really pleased with how well it works. She prefers a smaller size. I guess in one sense it's sort of irrelevant because I already have it being delivered, but I won't get it for two weeks and I was just wondering. I'm just surprised that it works out to about 43px / cm, the etrex 20 was about 55px/cm and the 20x was 72px/cm, the oregon is about 62px/cm
If you divide the 400px depth on the Oregon's 6.3cm you get 63px
if you divide the 240px depth on the Touch 25's 5.5cm you get 43px which is quite a big difference!
Yeah you'd have thought it would be the same type of screen as the Oregon, I just thought that maybe that is in fact an error on the garmin spec page! I might write to garmin to check.
@Viajero Perdido not caching it's basically for on motorbike gps use. Need a transreflective screen for a bike.
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I used to have an etrex 20 which I lost so I bought an etrex 20x which has markedly improved screen res. Then I got a bargain Oregon which is a touch screen with good res but less than the etrex 20x. I gave the 20x to the gf who promptly lost it, so I have just purchased a refurbished 25 Touch because I can see the touch screen works really well on the Oregon.
However I expected the same screen res as the Oregon on the 25 Touch but I now discover that the res is even less than the eTrex 20 :¬(
I'm wondering if anyone using the Touch 25 can confirm that the screen res is OK and are not having problems with it. I'm pretty annoyed by this, I guess it gives Garmin the room to bring out a Touch 25x with the resolution that it should have had. Am I fretting unnecessarily?
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On 04/09/2017 at 0:46 AM, Atlas Cached said:
You mean mA, not mAh, right?
Yes, that is what I meant. Update I turned the display illumination off both when powered by batteries and when powered by usb. I then left it to charge all night when the batteries were already almost full so that it would stop charging quickly and I could see if the light stayed off when it finished. It did. So I thought that was good, should hardly use any power however when I checked after a night of charging it still drained my bike battery a significant amount. from 12.9 to 12.75, while not as bad as going down to 12.69, that is still enough of a voltage drop to flatten a 10Ah bike battery in a week. So that is something to be aware of.
I hope that someone finds the information in this thread useful in the future.
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3 hours ago, Team DEMP said:
You shouldn't need any brightness on unless you are using the device in the dark. In daylight, the screen is bright without any backlight.
Yeah, I just wanted to test how the Oregon would charge flat batteries connected to my motorbike while it was also under heaving load. Turns out to be pretty darn good. 2.5 hours charging and I've taken it out today and it's still on 4 bars. I'm now wondering how many mAh the Oregon draws from an outlet that can supply 2.1A
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19 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:
It seems clear to me that the 'Charging with power off' refers to when the GPS functions are powered off, but the charge indicator is still present.
Yeah, I'd reckon that's almost certain. I'll check anyway just for the sake of completeness. Ya never know. Sort of like the way that neutrinos violate parity. Parity that was such an established obvious concept that nobody bothered to check neutrinos until Yang and Lee conjectured that the neutrino did violate parity and lo and behold Madame Wu found it to be true, not that she shared the Nobel prize.
Anyhoo for the sake of completeness I submit my latest testing. Went out for a 2 1/2 hour ride on the motorbike today began with the Panasonic Pro eneloops flat and reading 1.15V, had them plugged into the bike usb socket with the maps updating and the screen on full brightness, when I got back the batteries were showing 4 bars and the voltage was 1.345 or 1.29V under load. So that's pretty good for just 2.5 hours. Considering it's supposed to be 16hrs to charge from power, maybe it's because they draw more than 500mAh which is what a computer supplies. The usb socket on my bike can supply up to 2.1A so I guess it's possible that the Oregon can draw 1A. I'd like to find out.
The one last thing I need to check now is to make sure the backlight is set to off when the Oregon is powered and then see if when the charging indicator stops blinking that it returns to off, or if it remains very dim as it does when it's charging. As it was I didn't do that when I charged it last time and although it was dim when it was blinking and charging, it returned to full brightness with the charge indicator not blinking! Which resulted in a considerable drain on the bike battery, from 12.9 to 12.69 which could flatten the batter in maybe 5 days. Which is suppose is about right because if it's drawing say 300mA for 10 hours then that's 3Ah and the bike battery is only 11Ah.
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10 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:
Not sure what you're disagreeing about?. Thanks for that link very useful, that is the sort of info I was hoping Garmin could supply. However I note in the link you provided that it says it will charge with the power off! I guess I'm going to have to double check that because they are not clear if they mean with the screen blank or the indicator blinking.
EDIT: I'm watching the voltage under load with the light on full, it just dropped down to one green bar with the batteries reading 1.23 and 1.24, going to see how low it goes when it hits the red bar, then I'll drive around with it with the light on full power and see how it charges. Will report back.
3 hours ago, Red90 said:12.69 is a fully charged, resting battery, so it had not drained at all. The GPs would never drain the bike battery.
12.7 would be for a flooded lead acid battery. A fully charge AGM can be anywhere from 12.7 to 13.1, 12.9 is pretty common these days.
To say that something that is drawing power will never drain a battery, doesn't make any sense.
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8 hours ago, Atlas Cached said:
When you turn it off completely, and no charging icon is visible on the screen, it is NOT charging.
OK thanks for that. Just to complete the report, when I checked the bike battery at first it was 13.1, after 20 secs with the headlights on it dropped to 12.9. Then with a further 20 seconds it remained at 12.9 so I'm confident this was the correct actual battery reading.
The batteries themselves indicated 1.475V and the bike battery had dropped to 12.69 which was a bit of a worry as it means if you forget to turn it off then it's going to drain your batteries in a few days. However the light had turned itself to a higher brightness. I plugged it back in and it was still charging an hour later! So it obviously has a very unsophisticated charging circuit.
I'm going to test it all day today with it plugged in to the usb outlet and the screen on full brightness and see what it's like at the end of the day.
At another time I will start with the batteries almost flat and take it out for a day ride with the screen on and see what the result is and report back here as a resource for others.
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OK thanks, it's been a struggle to get info from Garmin. I had some strange behaviour at first where after charging it would not turn on for a few minutes did this a couple of times but it's all back to normal now.
Got some Panasonic XX pro eneloops in now, but the battery indicator is a bit weird anyway. As you've pointed out there is not choice with the button down. Used it all day in my motorbike not plugged in with no screen illumination but it was redrawing most of the time. It started with 4 bars on the indicator, when the battery was at 1.45V, after an hour or so it went to 2 bars, bypassing 3 bars. Then it remained on 2 bars until it just cut out, it did not show one bar. I then plugged it into my bike 5W usb cable which is connected to the 12V battery with an inline fuse. By the time I got home it was back up to 1.3V.
I'm going to leave it on the bike all night to see if the battery charging blinking light will stop blinking. I checked the bike battery voltage after bleeding off the static charge and it was 12.9V which is right because it's a new AGM battery. I used a Fluke 101 and I'm confident that it's an accurate reading. I'm wanting to see if depletes the battery to a measurable amount.
What I find when plugging it in is that at first it boots up, I turned the backlight off and switch the unit off and then the blinking battery indicator came on, with a very low backlight. I'm going to leave it like that all night and see what the voltage is on the AAs.
What I'm not sure about is that if I turn the unit off a second time while the charging indicator is blinking then the screen shuts off, I'm not sure if that means the unit is off and not accepting a charge or if it's in a battery saving mode and still charging but not displaying. As it is I turn it back on and it booted up, so I suspect that it shut off completely but I'm still not sure if it would charge like that. As it was I will leave it overnight blinking and then maybe do another test to see if it charges when completely switched off later.
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OK inside the battery compartment of the oregon 600 maybe others as well, there is a small rubber button. It does not touch the batteries and I am wondering if this is a switch that it meant to work with the Garmin rechargeable battery pack, which looks like two normal batteries strapped together.
The specs for the battery pack seem to suggest that it is only for the GPS MAP 64 series and the Oregon 700 series. However I'm pretty sure this is for the Oregon 600 as well. I was wondering if anyone has a MAP 64 who can have a look inside the battery compartment and tell me if it also has the little rubber button in it.
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I've used eTrex units for some time starting with the b/w Vista and eventually the HCx, I had a colorado for a while but the battery life was woeful and it was a bit of a bear. Since then I've had a later model eTrex 20 and the eTrex 20x.
I managed to get hold of an almost new Oregon 600 for a throw away price and I have to say this is the one I would recommend. You should be able to get a new 600 for every little and the only difference I can see with the newer 700 models is some weird garmin connectivity stuff and a camera.
What it has over the 64 is first of all a much higher resolution screen but it still has excellent battery life, and of course it a touchscreen and that makes all the difference. I was nervous about a touchscreen device at first but I needn't have been. Also a big bonus for me is the micro customisation with the menus and shortcuts, it's a dream come true for me because I used it on my motorbike (with CN maps) and I used to use eTrex for that but it's constant button pressing and the software is not very good for driving.
On the Oregon though I can get a good size map and I can hide or show data fields with an on screen arrow, and further I can even touch the on screen guidance to get shown a live list of the whole route. Previously this all required switching back and forth between screens.
The resolution is even sharper than the Montana which seems way to large.
For about $280 USD new you'll never regret getting this.
And it's reassuringly tough I can't believe they went at it with a hammer.
They seem to go pretty cheap s/h too, this looks like it might be a bit of a bargain, 4hrs left. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garmin-Oregon-600-Handheld-/112537566545
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Hi Guys, thanks for the thoughtful replies. Ended up springing for a new 20x because it was on special for AUD$211 (168 USD) and we needed another one for our bikes after I just discovered that the in car GPS are useless in the sunshine.
I think the bit of rubber and silastic is going to work because the switch is fine. I opened it up today after I discovered that my pentalobe screwdrivers for my mac will fit the etrex. Looks like a spare front might be too difficult because the circuit board appears to be glued to the front and I don't really want to force it.
However, I spill some coffee beans on the counter and while collecting them I found one that fit perfectly, in fact it fit so well that it would not fall out and has a nice dome shape as well. I might get the bean out and put a bit of filler on the inside so it doesn't crumble away, then just a thin bit of rubber glued on should do the trick, or maybe even some silastic directly onto the coffee bean?
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Yeah it gradually cracked around the edges then it hung on for a while like a chad from a Florida election ticket, before finally giving up the ghost! I'm in Australia so spare parts or repairs are probably going to be tough here, I thought perhaps this was a common problem and someone would have some answers.
Wow, your Back button has certainly taken a beating.
I've seen numerous eBay auctions for eTrex parts. They are being sold from Russia, so the shipping takes a while. But you might be able to find something there. For example: new back case Searching for 'etrex part' or 'etrex repair' will bring up results. I have never purchased from the Russian sellers.
Last summer, I needed a replacement battery cover for my 20. I ended up purchasing one from gpscity.com - so you might want to try them.
Good luck!
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My eTrex 20 is out of warranty and I was wondering if anyone knows if the outside bands are self repairable. One of the waterproof coverings has worn out.
thx
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I have a Bad Elf Pro+ (wireless) which I use along with an iPad when offroading to get the big picture. The GPS signal can be used by most apps. I prefer Galileo, and it allows you to download and keep lots of maps. However, it doesn't offer turn by turn navigation, just location on the map. I use my handheld Oregon to find the caches once I get close.
OK, thanks. Can you confirm that you get the badelf location signal on the Apple maps app, when your ipad is offline?
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Hi,
I'm trying to work out whether I'm better off with a lightning connected gps receiver or a bluetooth receiver like the Glo, that's my first query, apart from the obvious convenience of being wireless is there any other benefit to the Glo.
My second query relates to maps and I'd appreciate it if someone had some first hand experience on this. I know that the iPod will erase its cached map data with the map app is closed but before going out if I load in the area I want by scrolling around while I'm connected to wifi, so that the maps are cached, if I were to then connect a wired or wireless gps like the two above, will the maps still read the gps data, from these gps units. And if they do read the map data will it give turn by turn directions at least to however much map data is loaded in.
Thanks.
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All I wanted to know was, is this charger going to cause any damage to the etrex?
I appreciate the sentiment behind all the other advice.
Phone vs GPS
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
@cerberus1, never thought about toggling the wifi, but shouldn't that be separate from the gps. I mean the maps work when there is no wifi signal.