Tui Chub
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Posts posted by Tui Chub
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Thanks for the tests/comparisons. I have a couple of comments:
1) Obviously both units perform well within the probable error that Garmin describes for these units.
2) I wonder what effect different firmware/chipset configurations would have had on the results and, assuming that there is such a thing, that the pairs of units in these tests were using comparable configurations.
Obviously there is no way to run a simultaneous test on the same unit using different software configurations, but my sense is that, with the Vista HCx, the unit seems to perform more erratically with some configurations than with other. And, if the high sensitivity eTrex units use the same chip as that in the Dakota, presumably they both would be prone to similar potential for erratic performance associated with variable software configuration.
The Vista was running software version 3.00 and GPS SW version 2.80 while the Dakota was running software version 2.10 and GPS software version 3.40. My Vista was one of the early ones and had a Mediatek chip where I believe the Dakota has a SMT chip. Both units were set to Degrees Minutes Seconds, the same as on the NGS Datasheet and were using the WGS84 datum. The datasheet uses NAD83, I did not try to do any conversions between the two datums.
Though not at the same time, here is an earlier test that I did in 2007 with the Vista.
I've never seen the erratic behavior that some people have had with their eTrex HCX units, maybe I've been lucky.
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[RE: Polarized sunglasses - they make little difference in my opinion. The polarization adds some 'rainbow' effect to the screen. It's not that bad with my prescription Bolle sunglasses but I can't say it makes it better. The screen protector has made the biggest difference to me in all lighting conditions.
It depends on the viewing angle, this is what I see with my Dakota 20 and polarized sunglasses. I use my Dakota as a speedometer when fishing (trolling) out of my kayak, as such the Dakota is set down on the bottom of my kayak and about 2 ft in front of me. Without the polarized lenses all I see is a lot of glare coming off the screen. With the polarized lenses, I can clearly see the display. It's even better than my Vista HCX at the same spot. I agree, polarized lenses make little difference when holding the unit up in front of your face, but if you can't do that then it can make a big difference.
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Do you need a Garmin car cord? Can I use one for my phone?
Thanks
The generic one I use for my phone also works for my Dakota 20.
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I was surprised by the difference between the tracklog and resulting averaged waypoints between the Vista HCX and Dakota 20 and was wondering which one was displaying the more accurate results. I went to a known benchmark that I had used before (KR1744 from the NGS datasheet). This time I had three gps's, the third unit was an Edge 705 cycling gps (this one has a SIRFstar III chip). I entered the benchmark's coordinate into all the units and navigated to the benchmark. All the units displayed 0 feet when held over the benchmark (there was some obvious filtering going on here).
Units next to benchmark.
I then plotted the waypoints and tracklogs on Goggle Earth.
I set the units to collect trackpoints every second for a one hour period. In addition, I tested the waypoint averaging of the Dakota and Vista (the Edge dosen't have this function). Also both units had WAAS turned on (the Edge doesn't have WAAS). The averaged waypoint for the Dakota was only 3 inches off the benchmark. This is interesting since the Dakota only used 2 points for the averaging. Garmin evidently is using a new waypoint averaging algorithm with these new units.
The Vista used the old method and averaged every second. The Vista averaged waypoint was off by 6.3ft. Since I was lazy I visually estimated the average waypoint for the Dakota from the tracklog. That average was 1.5 ft off. For some reason the Edge did not produce a track log. I also took a non averaged waypoint at the end of the one hour period. The Dakota was off 2.9 ft and the Vista was off 8.6 ft, the Edge was off 19.8 ft. The distance from the trackpoint averages were 7.2 ft, similiar to the 7.4 ft I saw in the first test.
I looks to me that Garmin changed the way the newer units determine positions. The newer units appear to be more accurate than the older ones.
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Does this mean that both CN and Typo can reside on a 4gb microSD ram and be used by the Vista Hcx (2gb each)?
Yes and Maybe, you can only have one img file upto 4GB (latest firmware) in size with a max of 2025 map segments. You cannot have 2-2GB files (unless you want to keep remaining them). You can mix and match the CN and Topos until you reach one of the limits.
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[Also keep in mind that even if the maps do display properly, there is no routing information in the Topo 2008 map data, so you will not be able to use it for routing, just for displaying where you currently are.
Topo 2008, no routing data; 24k Topo, has routing data
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I was wondering how changing Map Datums and coordinate formats affects stored waypoints? I typically use UTM when I am using my GPSr with a paper topo map and I think the ones I use most often are NAD27. If I mark a waypoint when I am in UTM and NAD27, what would happen if I tried to go back to that point while I was in NAD83 and Lat./Lon
The gps should do an internal conversion between the Datums and projections.
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I did a battery rundown test between my Dakota 20 and eTrex Vista HCX. I had each receiver set to record a trackpoint every 15 secs. They were set next together. The batteries were MAHA Imedion 2100 MAH low discharge batteries. I bought the batteries at the same time. The batteries were charged up overnight. The Dakota died after 14 hrs 7 mins; the Vista HCX lasted 25 hrs 52 mins. I compared the trackpoints against each other. I trimmed the first half hour off to remove drift while the receivers were searching for satellites and then trimmed the Vista off so the two gps's covered the same time period. I then plotted them on Google Earth. The Dakota had an overall horzontal standard deviation of 4.7 ft while the Vista was 5.6 ft. The mean location between the two was off by 7.4 ft. They were both off from the actual location from Goggle Earth. The Dakota was off 18.4 ft and the Vista was off 11.6 ft. Now I do not know how accurate Google Earth is for my area. Red is the Dakota, Green is the Vista, the markers are the mean position for each track, the Actual is the location in my house as displayed on Google Earth.
Pete
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I know I should get my carcass in to an REI to see it for myself but for the benefit of myself and the community can someone post an in depth screen brightness analysis between the units? It's seriously the biggest factor in my decision to upgrade.
I've been waiting patiently for a decent comparison between the two whether or not it's possible I don't know. Anyone out there with a few different models want to take a stab at trying to get a few good pics in bright sun?
I've been doing a battery rundown comparision between the etrex vista hcx and dakota 20 and collecting trackpoints 15 secs at the same location for an accuracy comparison. The vista is still running, I'll post those after the vista dies. I'll try and take some pics later.
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I was out fishing in my kayak yesterday and using my Dakota 20 as my speedometer for maintaining my speed while trolling. The Dakota was very easy to read, it was even easier to read than my Vista HCX that I brought as a back up. At one time I removed my sunglasses (polarized) and noticed a lot of glare coming off the screen, put the glasses back on and glare gone.
Just a clarification, using polarized glasses does not instantly make the display better. It just works for certain angles where there is glare coming off the screen. The best viewing angle without glasses is still the best viewing angle with glasses.
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Finally, despite the difficulty with seeing the Dakota in my vehicle, I find I have no problems with it when handheld. It’s kind of like my hand instinctively turns it to where I don’t have glare, and the existing light makes the display quite readable. Outdoors, even in mixed lighting the display is actually quite good, it’s just that the sweet spot of an angle required to make it viewable isn’t very big, and changes with changes to the lighting angle. With the unit in my hand, dealing with the tilt adjustments necessary to allow me to see the display adequately isn’t an issue to me.
I've found using a pair of polarizing sunglasses reduces the glare by quite a bit.
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I was out fishing in my kayak yesterday and using my Dakota 20 as my speedometer for maintaining my speed while trolling. The Dakota was very easy to read, it was even easier to read than my Vista HCX that I brought as a back up. At one time I removed my sunglasses (polarized) and noticed a lot of glare coming off the screen, put the glasses back on and glare gone.
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It works fine with my old version of Garmin TOPO, I'll try it with the 24k maps soon.
I've got all the 24k TopoWest loaded into one file on my Dakota 20. They're a little over 4GB. You'll need an 8GB card because a 4GB card is actually too small to hold all the maps. I've also got Topo2008 maps of ID, MT, UT, WY, AZ, CO, and NM in a seperate file on the same card. Also CN2009, Inland Lakes and Bluecharts for the western states (CO and west). All these are in seperate files, off the top of my head I believe there's a total of around 3600 (maybe 3300) map segments and total size around 6 GB. I can turn on or off each set of maps and also set which maps are used for different profiles. I've been using an eTrex Vista HCX since they came out but I'm really liking the Dakota 20.
Pete
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I am just starting out in geocaching and have found each of these for around $70.00 (CDN) used. I was wondering which would be a better starting unit.
Thanks
Will you be using these under medium to heavy tree cover? If you do then as alohabra says the H units will work much better. It won't matter how much cheaper the the Cx units are they just won't work under moderate to heavy tree cover.
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I talked with Garmin support, and the microSD card must be formatted to FAT32 and everything works fine on the 3.0 firmware!
great
* Add support for maps greater than 2 GB.
on fat32 ????
if someone manage to put .img file greater than 2GB and have it working, please tell me on which file format because fat32 definitely can't be.
I have a 4 GB map image with multiple maps on an 8 GB Sandisk microsdhc card. The card is formated with FAT32.
Here's a quote from the FAT wiki on wikipedia.
"The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 1 byte (232−1 bytes). "
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Upgraded my Vista HCX to 3.00. I have close to 4 GB of maps loaded on a Sandisk 8GB microSDHC card. No problems so far. The maps are from the 24k Topo! West, CN NA 2009, Inland Lake 2008 and Blue Charts Americas 2008.
One note, a 4GB card is not large enough to hold 4 GB of Garmin maps.
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Who has a Windows mobile touchscreen phone with built in GPS? This is usually HTC or AT&T branded HTC phone such Tilt, 8925, TynII, Fuze, Touch Pro, etc.
There is a fix in the latest BackCountry Navigator software that is suppposed to make things more reliable for those devices. I unfortunately don't have any of those devices close by.
Are there some here who is willing to try that on their phone and see if it finds and uses the GPS just fine?
http://www.backcountrynavigator.com/
If you don't want to register there, I can email you a direct link.
Thanks
I have a Verizon Branded Touch Pro running Windows Mobile 6.1 with the GPS unlocked. It runs Garmin Mobile XT, HTC GPS Tools, Google Maps and Microsoft Live Search. I can give it a try but do not want to register.
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How slow will it go? Will it dispaly speeds between 1 and 2 mph? I would like to use it for trolling in my kayak.
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Here's a rundown test I did on a Vista HCX with Alkalines, NiMH and Lithium batteries. Scroll down to the second post.
http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p;#entry3061300
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Hi,
I succeeded to downgrade my Vista HCX to GPS firmware version 2.30 (factory default) as follows:
1. Download the file from: http://www.garmin.com/software/GPSChipsetT...onFile__230.rgn and save it somewhere;
2. Connect your Vista/Legend HCX to the PC with the USB cable;
2. Make a shortcut of WebUpdater on the desktop and drag&drop the file you saved onto the shortcut;
3. WebUpdater will launch and it will install the GPS firmware to version 2.30. Ignore the WebUpdater proposal to update to a newer version (2.60).
4. After GPS reboot you can check you have 2.30 GPS firmware version and please patient to gain a fix as ephemerids data will be lost.
This solved the inaccuracy problem for me but reverted to the odometer bug.
Cheers
Thanks for the solution I have now downgraded my Legend HCx as I prefer the odometer bug to the position error.
One thing I did notice was after downgrading that when walking slowly in open country the instantaneous speed report went down to 1.1 mph. This is with 2.5 software and 2.3 GPS software. Perhaps the odometer bug may not be as bad as originally.
Downgraded my Vista HCX back to v2.30. Then I went out fishing in my kayak. I use the vista as a speedometer. I like to troll between 1 and 2 mph. Well it turns out this is too slow for v2.3 to register consistently, v2.6 preformed much better in this regard but has other problems as previously stated. So it looks like I need both versions (2.3 for fishing and 2.6 for everything else). Is there a way to download the v2.6 gps firmware so I can make changes while not connected to the internet?
Thanks,
Pete
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I have a Geko 201 and a Vista HCX. You will lose signal under moderate to heavy canopy with the Geko, the Vista holds lock even under heavy tree cover. Get the etrex H.
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I've used both a 60cx and Vista HCX, one in each hand, under heavy tree cover. Both tracks were similar, try another Vista HCX.
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I tested my twenty-four CTA DB-24 (2400 mah) NiMH rechargable batteries and they ranged from 1200 to 1700 mah with most of them around 1500 mah. With that in mind, I retested the battery life of my Vista HCX with some brand new Powerex 2700 (2700 mah) batteries. I purchased four and they all test out to be around 2600 mah. In addition, I tested a pair of Energizer Lithiums and a pair of Duracell Ultras. The battery type was changed in the gps to the corresponding battery, Lithium for the Energizers, Alkaline for the Duracells and NiMH for the Powerex.
The results are:
Energizer Lithium – 46 hr 9 mins
Powerex 2700 (NiMH) – 32 hr 8 mins
Duracell Ultra (Alkaline) - 29 hr 1 min
The NiMHs beat the Alkalines by 3 hours. The Lithiums were way out ahead by another 14 hours.
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If you get the Garmin 60CSx and a Mapsource Map, i.e. Topo USA2008. You can use the Track Draw tool to map out your boundaries. You can then send them to the 60CSx as saved tracks. I have done something similar with Wilderness Boundaries.
Dakota 20 vs Vista HCX - Accuracy, Precision and Rundown
in GPS technology and devices
Posted · Edited by Tui Chub
Sorry, double post (don't know how to delete post).