g-o-cashers

One problem I've found is having two active Chirps a few feet from each other. One will be detected, the other won't. Maybe eventually each Chirp gets polled in turn, but I haven't needed to test that yet. That is a known issue (feature?). The unit will lock onto one chirp and stay with it until it goes out of range even if there is second nearby.

Yes, from some recent tests posted here by about 10-15ma or a 10% decrease in battery life. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=262344&hl=

I just ran a couple of tests and I think its pretty much what dfx was saying (I did this on my 62s). 1) Goto Waypoint Averaging select "Create Waypoint". Takes a snapshot of your position which you never see as your first "saved location" and then starts displaying the "averaged location" for the first sample. 2) Hit Done. You see a "saved Location" which is the weighted average that factors in the sample count with the previous saved location and the most recent sample. Distance adjusted is the distance between the averaged location of the last sample and new saved location. 3). Goto Waypoint Averaging and select an existing waypoint You will see the sample count, saved location and the distance away based on the current instantaneous location. 4). Hit Start Averaged location for this sample starts to record 5) Goto 2) When I ran my test I took 6 samples at the same location and the distance adjusted got down to 1-2' (and the saved location didn't change because it was beyond the precision of the coord format I was using). When I moved 100' away on the 7th sample I saw the new averaged location (far off from the saved location) and when it was done averaging the 7th sample the distance adjusted was around 13' (expected because of the weighting) and the new saved location was moved about that far based on my rough calculation. As for the backtracks I usually see them if the averaged location is moving (either because I moved the unit or because variations in position calculated by the GPSr). The bigger question is why do I have to go to a special menu to do this -- why can't it be part of the "Mark Waypoint" function? GO$Rs

Garmin stores the number of samples taken for an averaged waypoint in the waypoint gpx file. Every time you take an new reading on that waypoint it uses the newest sample to adjust the coordinates based on the distance between the new sample and the location of the waypoint. The amount of the adjustment gets reduced proportional to the of samples already taken.

It should work so long as the chirp is not obstructed. Your range will probably vary from a few feet to 50' depending on how you attach it to yourself (the top of your hat would probably work best). You have a "free form" string that the chirp will transmit of up to 50 characters -- so as long as you can describe yourself in about 35% of a tweet you're all set

Actually you have to do two queries: one for all US states and one for everything else to get a world wide count. It's close to 100. Here are the pq's links, if you are a premium member you should be able to click and save if you want to keep them around for reference. You get all beacon caches, a few of which don't have a chirp component. US: http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/gcquery.a...75-af1c25c821af Outside US: http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/gcquery.a...a7-426fddee2fe1 Salsaguy is keeping a manual list as well: http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.a...0e-d6c93cd7ca44

Its a good theory, I'm not convinced that there is only one source of the hang. I've seen hangs at "loading profiles" on my 62 as well, this could be something entirely different but it does seem to happen after a new gpx file load.

I have heard directly from wahoo fitness that Groundspeak is interested in adding support for chirp to the iPhone app but that they are waiting to see how this whole opencaching.com thing plays out before they pull the trigger. http://itsnotaboutthenumbers.wordpress.com...geocaching-com/

huh. really? i don't think it should do that, and at least my oregon 450 doesn't. when i delete a GPX containing a waypoint and boot it up, the waypoint gets wiped from the internal memory as well. the same as it does for caches. The x00 and x50 are very different in this respect. Avernar is describing x00 behavior. FYI, I use the GSAK export macro and always convert child waypoints to POIs so I never have a gpx with mixed waypoints and geocaches and I've seen the hang. I have not seen the hang nearly as much since the progress bar has been introduced on the 62/x50.

I confirmed this problem on my 62, it seems like the 62 is treating the Data Field "Custom" setting as global. Its been sent off to Garmin...

That's correct, just talked to Chip and they are hoping to get 3rd party application support. People should add votes over here if they would like to encourage Groundspeak to add support to their iphone Geocaching application: http://feedback.geocaching.com/forums/7527...e-app?ref=title GO$Rs

If you have an iPhone and a Wahoo Fisica ANT fitness sensor key they have a beta ready for geocachers who want to try Garmin chirp... http://www.wahoofitness.com/forum/messages...picID=25#post85 GO$Rs

There were Oregon x50 and Dakota releases yesterday/today as well... http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/message...w/home/30108463 http://garmindakota.wikispaces.com/message...w/home/30050575 When I checked the x00 Oregon it didn't seem to have an update.

Garmin frequently has fixes for smaller items that don't always show up in the RN's.

That's not quite true. What Groundspeak said was this: My chirp cache does not currently have any other means of finding it (but that may change). GO$Rs

More details are here (this was written for the Oregon but it works the same on the 62/78): http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/Geocaching#toc11

The battery saver mode just blanks the screen. When the batter saver mode kicks in you just need to "tap" the power button to re-enable the screen. If you press and hold the power button for a few seconds it will shut off.

GPSGate does the same thing and it claims Win7 support but unfortunately it is $40. http://gpsgate.com/products/gpsgate_client

New chirp FAQ here: http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/chirp

Garmin tracks the date/time stamp of files upon loading (thus the reason it won't attempt to reload a file by just booting the unit again, their real goal seems to be to optimize boot time). If the file has a new time stamp (i.e. you've "touched" the file), the unit will try to reload it. Although I generally reload the same file again, its not a requirement based on Garmin's logic for deciding if a file needs to be reloaded or not, a new time stamp is all that's required. Since this issue seems to have as much to do with expunging the old file (to repeat, I've never seen it happen when there were no .gpx files on the unit to start with), just forcing a reload of the new file is all that's needed, and Garmin's logic forces this with a simple touch. For those that are unfamiliar, "touch" is a utility that has been around since the beginning on most unix systems, who's only purpose is to update the date/time stamp on a file (and to create a zero byte file if it doesn't already exist). When people refer to "touching" a file, they simply mean to force an update of the time stamp. What you describe is exactly how it is supposed to work. I'm saying that I've personally had cases on these devices (and read about others) where touching files or simply doing a battery pull and restarting wasn't enough to clear the corruption (ie. missing or incomplete caches). I had to delete the files (or remove the card if I was smart enough to have the files on SD card), reboot and then reinstall the files. I believe that there are corruption modes in the internal geocaching database which can only be cleared by rebooting the unit with no geocaches loaded.

On the Dakota, Oregon x50 and GPSMAP 62/78 you get a file loading progress "bar" during boot. I just checked my x00 and it doesn't seem to have made it to these devices unfortunately.

http://garmindakota.wikispaces.com/Product+Information#toc5 Dakota 10 does not support wireless ANT either - which means no fitness devices (HRM/cadence) or, more importantly, no support for chirp or wireless data transfer.

Hmm - I must be doing something wrong then. I tried to install spanner on my Windows 7 installation and it refused to install. I did get it to work with an XP machine (a supported configuration) and it worked fine. The mac software (macGPS Pro) works fine with the 60csx, but the 62st doesn't work - it shows up as a USB device but I can't write commands to it. It's not super tragic, but I would like to be able to use the new GPS unit as a data source. On a thread related note, a few days after the hard reset of the 62st, it has been well behaved and hasn't reset or acted oddly, which makes me happy. Version 2.70 Don't confuse "Spanner mode" on the GPS with the ability (or need) to run Spanner (the program) on your PC. Spanner mode simply tells the unit how to behave when connected via. It is the same as the Oregon and described in detail here: http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/Power#toc11 Spanner (the program) can be used on Windows XP to create a virtual serial interface which can be used by programs running on your computer to talk NMEA to your GPS. I don't believe it is supported in Win7 as you've already found out!

Ever since Garmin added the progress monitor I haven't seen this issue. It used to happen relatively frequently on my x00 and x50 (maybe one in five downloads). One thing that worked for some is to completely delete all geocaching gpx files in Garmin\GPX, reboot once, reconnect and download the new gpx file. I would recommend against the approach of just touching the file again to get it to reload (or simply pulling batteries and rebooting). In the even the unit hangs during a gpx load you should ALWAYS delete all gpx files, reboot once, and then reload. Repeat as necessary until you get a clean sequence. I've seen too many cases where people thought the unit was okay after a hung load and then got into the field with a partial or corrupted load of geocaches (myself included).

I've been wondering about that all day. We must have half a dozen threads asking this question for one model or another, and fully half of the people saying they have a problem are premium members. I was very surprised to see how many still use the "Send to GPS" feature. I use it all the time to download singleton caches - usually new caches where I'm going for a FTF where I don't want to deal with generating a PQ, GSAK, etc. Of course downloading the GPX file is a pretty easy workaround!