CrazyViking

Just a courtesy flag that spare Lithium batteries may be a concern when flying commercial airlines. On a recent flight the requirements allowed Lithium batteries inside the GPS but only up to 50 grams of spare Lithium batteries. I had a 20pack of AA Alkaline with no problems.

The GPS I picked up was the Colorado. Since the display can have the brightness turned way down low it may be useable for night viewing of celestial maps? One potential application I was envisioning was to load a map with an image of constellations which could be offset to the users viewpoint based on the time/location/position of the viewer. If the tracking for the display was set properly it could automatically rotate to provide a stable sky reference image. Since it could be done entirely in software, it might make a low cost “personal planetarium” app. The map zoom capability with variable details has intriguing possibilities for naked eye/binocular and telescope viewing. I suppose the image would have to compress over 90 degrees view onto the screen when zoomed out so that anything that was viewable above the horizon could be seen on the display by user rotating 360 degrees. Panning/zooming could provide binocular field of view targeting. Thinking kinda like an upside down topo map. Sorry about the digression on interstellar distances. It is Global Positioning after-all, not Interstellar. It’s all just so exciting I got carried away…. The other ideas posted are great and will help justify the new toy to the Boss. Thanks kindly for the insights! --I am the King of the house...(But my wife is the Ace)---

While still learning how to use my first GPS for everyday activities (such as marking the parking location of the car at the Mall) as well as fun-time (going to try to locate some Markers and Hidden Mickeys next week); in my Net travels trying to tie the Google Earth maps/images to the GPS it occurred to me that the GPS should be useful for casual astronomy as evidenced by 1) Recent GPS based “handheld planetariums” and 2) Google Sky project associated with Google Earth. The question asked is if GPS related Astronomy issues is a worthy forum topic? Or would it fit as a subsection of a different forum? A search for the “Astronomy” keyword did not show up much recent chatter about this subject (I checked a couple different forums), so maybe they really aren’t related enough (But who would dare challenge Google Wisdom?). The GPS of course gives lat/long/time but I suspect it can be much more useful when out stargazing. Just for fun for any GPS wielding astronomy buffs, I wanted to make sure you were aware of an amazing event GRB Unaided-eye 7.5 Bln LY Visible March 19 2008 Some links for you to enjoy! http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080320_grb http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/21...e.htm?list99971 (Personally, I think the 7.5 billion light year distance is way off due to “tired light” or “carbon wisker” distortion effects ( see http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080301_graphite.htm ), nevertheless it was a noteworthy astronomical event!) Back on topic: How is a GPS useful for astronomy enthusiasts?

Thanks for the updated observations. It is nice to have someone experienced to comment on what is really going on! Am Img Bm? I assume this is a contraction for American Image Basemap? (or Bitmap?) Regardless,….I don’t see this as a map option. Options->Select Map I can select “US Inland Detail Map with Imagery” but I don’t see the other map you mention. In Setup->Marine->Marine Chart Map Setup-> I can change colors, symbols etc. but no provisions for this sub-map? Perhaps it was a 400c you were looking at? Or is the Am Img Bm part of the Topo map? (Another name for “West DEM Basemap”?)

Hoo-boy, too many answers to answer that one! First you need to determine what you want if for. Then you can check out the other posts about similar wants: e.g. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188306 Whatever route you take, have a Gr808 - CrazyViking

Looks like DeLorme is doing "Hybrid" maps and I think there is a way to upload custom maps into their units (but perhaps only sections from a DeLorme specific map database?). The Colorado should be even more capable than the PN-20. ...hopefully Garmin will get it done. http://forum.delorme.com/viewtopic.php?t=13849

Colorado 400i seems to have up to 3 sets of satellite images that are digitally scaled. The good news is that it appears the Colorado CAN do vector map overlays on top of bitmap aerial images. The bad news is that Garmin has not fully implemented the data. They appear to have a satellite image at 500 miles that they digitally zoom to about 80 miles, then another satellite image set at 50 miles that is zoomed to 5 miles, another photo partial image set at 3 miles that they can zoom down to 0.3 miles. The road information and shaded relief information also seems to only partially cover areas at 3 miles and closer, with major data gaps showing up. You can check out some pics here: ZoomPhotos: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188151 Kinda nifty, but I’m still waiting on drag-and-drop Google maps Whichever route you take, have a Gr808! –CrazyViking

Have you any wit or wisdom on how to import the images/map data from Google Earth or other? (i.e. Is the image viewer the best we can do at this time?) Or can you please point to any resources that are developing capabilities to augment the basemap images? (e.g. in the direction of GMapToGPX or Marengo and beyond?). We await your sage advice GO$Rs ! THANKS! Whichever route you take, have a Gr808! –CrazyViking

It is a little surprising how many different GPS units are available. As a fellow NooB I can assure you that there are as many opinions on which device is best as there are different GPSs. I checked into Bushnell/PSP/PPC/DeLorme/Garmin/Magellan etal and they all had nice strengths/limits. Following is a copied insert from a previous post I made a few weeks ago when investigating for my first GPS: “ 1) Garmin is the leader 2) DeLorme has the best maps 3) Magellan is good on paper, bad in practice 4) Every manufacturer wants continuing revenue from maps specific for their brand. Initially I was under the false hope that GPS devices would seamlessly accept Google Earth images or Google Maps downloads.” I wanted “drag and drop” map and route capability. (Still haven’t found that ) The point to be made (other than the obvious one that what is best for someone else is probably not best for your application) is that the maps are device specific. Since DeLorme seems to have the best maps perhaps a PN-20 is in your future. If you want weather radio overlays and hunting is a priority Bushnell has an interesting GPS. I already had a Pocket PC so for minimal cost, that was an option. For me the deciding factors were current and future capabilities. Since the Colorado (bleeding edge do-it-all capabilities) was made by Garmin (leader so 3rd party support seems plentiful e.g. some free public domain maps) I ended up with one of those. But they are a bit pricey for a B-day gift. You lucked out in finding this forum. The people on it were very helpful and the information available is extensive (overwhelmingly so). Bottom line: Just like picking out a new pet animal, it may be better to just get a Gift Certificate so you and your significant other can make the decision jointly. Alternatively if you have an REI nearby maybe get one there (they have a heck-of-a return policy). Whichever route you take, have a Gr808 – CrazyViking

“Encouraging the crazy person” issues aside, sincerely your comment was appreciated! The downside with the actual photos is the loss of contrast and the mangling of colors that occurs when restoring some of the contrast. The photos are really not very good. The “internal screen captures” actually do provide a realistic view of contrast/detail/and colors that viewing the screen gives a user, but they show what the display looks like in perfect viewing conditions (very bright sunshine from over your shoulder, viewing the screen with some “down angle” orientation. I agree “Real life” pictures do seem to add information to the mix though. Wished they were available when I was trying to decide which GPS to pick up (hence the original post). I’ve attached a couple more screen captures to illustrate the inconsistent map detailing. One shows another block of aerial imagery/no image boundary. Too bad detail imagery is not universally present (and selectable per user preference since water systems are more easily seen without the image layer). Whether it will work adequately in your particular location of interest is uncertain due to severe inexplicable data holes (e.g. Parkers Lake) and some areas of detail road data info without image (e.g. attached unpaved roads pic). Lake and river shape/routing seems pretty good though. The minority of lakes seem to have depth contours and I’ve noticed some waterfalls are not noted (most seem to be in the data). Aerial imagery, relief, and road data seem to be most inconsistent in coverage. Whichever route you take, have a Gr808! –CrazyViking

REALLY Pics zoomed 500mi to 20ft It occurred to me that g-o-cashers was right…I ran into a display image capture in my computer directory that I had accidentally snapped during my frenzied attempts to recover from the “Crash” described above. Thought someone might like to see what the crash actually looked like, so am posting now. Also, I note that on the images thread topic I have labeled the images 500mi to 8mi zoom. ZoomPhotos: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188151 Initial notes: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188049 If someone was interested in screenshots looking at the forum while in “outline” mode, they might never realize I actually uploaded the complete series of zooming down to 20 foot scale in sequential 10 image replies to my message. For that reason I am posting this updated info in an outer thread rather than under g-o-cashers kind response. I am also cross referencing this message (via DOUBLE POST) between the initial write-up and the screen shots so a viewer can jump to the other thread if they want <ediot: swapped the link labels>

REALLY Pics zoomed 500mi to 20ft It occurred to me that g-o-cashers was right…I ran into a display image capture in my computer directory that I had accidentally snapped during my frenzied attempts to recover from the “Crash” described above. Thought someone might like to see what the crash actually looked like, so am posting now. Also, I note that on the images thread topic I have labeled the images 500mi to 8mi zoom. ZoomPhotos: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188151 Initial notes: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188049 If someone was interested in screenshots looking at the forum while in “outline” mode, they might never realize I actually uploaded the complete series of zooming down to 20 foot scale in sequential 10 image replies to my message. For that reason I am posting this updated info in an outer thread rather than under g-o-cashers kind response. I am also cross referencing this message (via DOUBLE POST) between the initial write-up and the screen shots so a viewer can jump to the other thread if they want <ediot: swapped the link labels>

Thanks to You and g-o-cashers for the kind note on taking the pics. I’ve attached a couple from the Parkers Lake area where there was a significant data hole. I don’t believe the mapsets are the same. Per my initial thread at: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188049 The map file on the 400i gmapprom.img (1,652,992kb) is quite a bit larger than 1Gb. [ Incidentally, By The Way, I DO know the correct spelling for fopaw (faux pas) but I wasn’t thinking globally when typing my comments on the 400i. I have always considered it comical to incorrectly use faux pas and misspell the word erata (errata). Sick sense of humour (humor?) perhaps, so my appologize (apologies) in advance if I have offended anyone. J ] …must be a CrazyViking…

Colorado 400i Screenshots Apologies for poor quality screenshots! g-o-cashers posted a response message on the right way to take screen shots with the Colorado in my initial review notes, “No need to take photos. Just press and hold the right soft key when you get to a screen you want to save. The screens shots get saved in [drive]:\Garmin\scrn as .bmp files.” but I didn’t read it until I had uploaded all these files! Guess I better open the operators manual after all…. The display is much clearer than shown. The Colorado has a down-angle optimized view, I held it at about -60 degrees and took the picture at about +80 degrees from vertical. I then photo-shopped the skew out and did some hurried color curve/brightness/contrast adjustments (to brighten up the greens…but gave them a yellowish tint). The website photo sizing utility then added the image artifacts. Oh well…the images are hopefully better than nothing. WARNING The map set in the Colorado 400i is INCOMPLETE. These are pics from the pond that I wrote about in my initial review yesterday. Today I went to a lake 6 miles east and the lake showed up, but No Contour lines and Only Very Major Roads showed up on the map. There is a 4 lane road that runs right past the lake to a city park on the lake (Parkers Lake). (Look at the 3 mile zoom satellite image for the 001 waypoint flag). The GPS recorded my track just fine, but only the roads showing up on this 3 mile zoom map were shown on all closer-in zooms. There are dozens of roads that do not show up here that should have if the map set was as complete as near the Classen Lake area. The good news is that it appears the Colorado CAN do vector map overlays on top of bitmap aerial images. The bad news is that Garmin has not fully implemented the data. They appear to have a satellite image at 500 miles that they digitally zoom to about 80 miles, then another photo image set at 50 miles that is zoomed to 5 miles, another partial image set at 3 miles that they can zoom down to 0.3 miles. The road information and shaded relief information also seems to only partially cover areas at 3 miles and closer, with major data gaps showing up. Look at the 0.5 mile zoom map and you can see on the top quarter of the screen the edge of detailed satellite bitmap data. If I zoom in on nearby lakes above that area, some have depth contours, but they do not have shaded relief ground images (as shown on the 200 foot zoom image). It seems that a minority of the inland lakes actually have depth contours. This is okay for the guys with 50ft yachts, but for the backpacker like me looking for the right fishing spot, we are on our own most of the time. I panned around northern Minnesota and there are areas with detail information and others with detail roads but not detail aerial photos. I have no idea what percentage of national coverage is higher detail. On 3 occasions today the Colorado beeped at me with a low battery warning, but quickly recovered. The battery indicator was at 4 bars. I haven’t dropped it and they are alkaline batteries, so I suspect there is another firmware bug lurking inside. So far I stand behind my initial assessment: Inland lake data is Good, overall the Colorado 400i is exceptional. A- NOTE: The Groundspeak forum has 10 photo limit per post, so attached are the first 10 photos in the zooming in series....

Sure can. I took some photos today but there are about 2 dozen pics so I'll upload them and start a new thread (I was pretty rambling in my initial adventures above, tedious read). Look for them in about an hour. No need to take photos. Just press and hold the right soft key when you get to a screen you want to save. The screens shots get saved in [drive]:\Garmin\scrn as .bmp files. I think you ran across one yesterday... GO$Rs *()(*@%)*)& Well, there you have another NooB fopaw. I transferred the pictures (took forever plus 3 hours to upload) and you now have a post going up with INFERIOR SCREENSHOTS! Sincere apologies for my ignorance.

Sure can. I took some photos today but there are about 2 dozen pics so I'll upload them and start a new thread (I was pretty rambling in my initial adventures above, tedious read). Look for them in about an hour.

The “Garmin Colorado” drive is FAT32 1.85GB (1,989,275,648 bytes) with 1.58GB (1,697,361,920 bytes) used and 278MB (291,913,728 bytes) free. I also just installed a 4GB UltraII Sandisk SDHC card. “SD ULTRAII” drive FAT32 capacity 3.78GB (4,063,141,888 bytes) with 4.00KB (4,096 bytes) used, 3.78GB (4,063,137,792 bytes) free. By the way, the background images are 240x400 (not 200x400 in my previous post typo). æpa heróp

As of the writing, no I hadn’t hooked it up. But I did now to backup the files and this is what I found: The 400i turned on automatically when plugged into a USB port. (WinXPsp2). Note the Backlight was ON! (Nice…wish it always did that). I copied and pasted “Garmin”, “Wherigo” directories and the autorun.inf file to a backup directory on the laptop. The Windows Copying…requester box indicated it would take 48 minutes to do it all. The “Wherigo” directory has a “Wherigo Tutorial.gwc” file (836kb), and Wherigo.ver file (1kb), and a “Logs” directory with a zero length WherigoLog.log file in it. (Interestingly, the Date Modified on the Logs directory is 12/31/2014 6:00 PM….I guess Garmin is a bit ahead of their time ) The “Garmin” Directory had five subdirectories “GPX”, “Profiles”, “scrn”, “RemoteSW”, and “text” as well as five files: fs_image.ver (1kb), GarminDevice.xml (8kb), Garmintriangletm.ico (25kb), gmapprom.img (1,652,992kb), and gmapprom.sum (1kb). The “GPX” directory has one subdirectory “Current” with one file in it Current.gpx (92kb). The “Profiles” directory has 9 .jpg files (38kb to 84kb) 200x400 for background images, one “Profiles.ver” file (1kb), and 5 profile .gpf files (4kb) (Date Modified this morning ) The “scrn” directory has a single (282Kb) bitmap image file of the light tan background image but oddly enough also has the 3 mi zoom, DONE, N arrow and Blue triangle graphic on it. The “RemoteSW” directory has a single (254kb) GCD File The “txt” directory has sixteen .gtt files (144kb to 173kb) in various language labels. Well….the file backup still has 20 minutes to go and it is still working on gmapprom.img, so I’ll post this response. Let me know if you need any other file info. "Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau): Tell me Ed, do you think we will find intelligent life on other planets? Ed Walters (Tim Robbins): I am still not sure there is intelligent life on this planet." - From the movie IQ

Received my Garmin Colorado 400i S/N 18Y00xxxx on 3/13/08. This is my first GPS (and I have never opened the instruction manual), so bear with my newbie fopaws as I relate some of the initial findings. Fortunately, on the back of the unit there is a yellow sticker instructing to “Lift latch and slide rubber cover down to access batteries”. Thank You Garmin for the sticker…I had sent someone to get a small Phillips Screwdriver so that I could remove the two torx screws I thought were holding the battery compartment closed. You Do NOT remove any screws. Just release the latch and slide the back down. I Installed 2 new Energizer standard alkaline batteries (Initial open circuit voltage 1.784V/1.785V) and turned the device on which displayed a Garmin logo on screen. It took 19.45 seconds after turn-on for a zoomed out satellite image of North America to appear. The rolling wheel/menu interface is substantially intuitive, so I went to “Setup” and selected “System” and verified battery type was set to Alkaline. Display was dim. I then went to “Display” to see if I could brighten the backlight and it was set to “Backlight Timeout 15 Seconds” and “Backlight Limiting On”, but no way to make it brighter. Software was V2.40/GPS Software V2.60. Profile was set to “Marine”, so I changed it to “Recreational” for testing. I then selected “Calibration” and set the altimeter to 958 feet for my area. Note that if you manually enter your area altitude, there are five significant figures used (I suppose for lucky people living in the mountains), so I had to back up and enter 2 leading zeros in front of the 958 feet. That being done I went outside to calibrate the compass. The screen is set up for about 30 degrees “down angle” so viewing is best if it is held level to the ground in front of you about waist high. On-screen instructions were to slowly turn to right in two circles so I did that taking 45 seconds per turn…and failed. On-screen there is a “progress bar” display which extends a bit each 90 degrees of rotation and I had evidently turned too slowly. So I again set up to recalibrate and turned two full circles in 44 seconds total with Success!. Now that I had the unit calibrated I went back inside to experiment (There is still a foot of snow on the ground outside). I discovered that if you quickly press and release the “Power On” button, the screen which shows Date,Time,Battery Level, Signal Strength, and BACKLIGHT BRIGHTNESS comes up. My first and foremost recommendation to all who read this is to immediately after power up, click on the power button and rotate the scroll wheel clockwise. The backlight turns on to reveal a beautiful color display. I adjusted mine to 90% (10 percent per display bar). On the N. America map a blue triangle was displayed in the middle of the image. I thought it was just a reference pointer for the map to the screen, so was not surprised when it stayed in the middle of the screen as I zoomed in on the satellite map image. After I zoomed in to an apparent zoom scale of 3 miles the background image was a recognizable low resolution satellite image of my area overlaid with highways. “How fortuitous I live in the center of the continent I thought”. To my amazement as I zoomed in to 0.3 mile view the satellite image got fuzzier, but was still recognizeable. Topo lines had appeared on a few nearby lakes. Any closer than 0.2 mile zoom level caused the satellite image to disappear, being replaced by a generic light tan background but with additional minor side roads showing up. It was exciting to keep zooming once I realized the blue triangle represented ME as I zoomed in on the map right to my house. Impressive. I set “Waypoint 001” by pressing and holding the scrollwheel center button. I then zoomed out to the satellite image (3 mi setting) and panned over to a lake which had contour lines showing (This is really just a big pond, but in “the Land of 10,000 Lakes” the Realtors want to be able to advertise “lakefront property” and this way we have over 20K+ lakes here). To my surprise the contours were on 0.5 ft intervals. I checked some other deeper lakes and they were on 5 ft intervals so the contours are proportionate to the depth of the lake. I jumped in the car and drove to near the lake and then changed to “Automotive Profile”. A check on the “Trip Computer” screen gave all the salient info for the trip (but the trip computer display for the maximum speed read 1 mph lower than my car speedometer…I think my car was wrong). I drove back home and the trip displayed on the satellite image right down to showing the shape of the turn I made near the lake parking lot. It beeped at me at the nearest intersection to my house to let me know I was approaching Way point 001. Very impressive. A review of the altimeter screen plotted over distance showed the dip of a drainage creek I passed over on the way to the lake. Nice. However, the altitude reading when I got back was 88 feet higher than I had initially calibrated it for. The Colorado is set up for “Automatic Calibration” and I suspect it was just correcting itself from the satellites since barometric pressure was actually rising at the time. I put the unit back into “Recreational Profile” and noticed the path drawn on the map “scribbles” even though the GPS “knows” it is stationary (The “Stopped Time” on the trip computer is counting up, but my location on the map changes slightly.) One word to the wise: Changing the GPS Profile from “Automotive” to “Recreational” does change a lot of the menus but it does not change the type of Trip Computer display. I had to separately change that to “Recreational” mode. (Actually it is nice to be able to independently customize the menus, it was just a little unexpected to have a secondary Recreational/Recreational mode for the trip computer). Observation: The temperature readout on the recreational trip computer display is pretty useless since holding the unit in your hand dramatically changes the reading (mine read 90 degrees in a 73.4 degree room). Now it is time to test the unit setting up a trip to an area 200 miles North that I am familiar with… “Engines at 104 percent, Okay for throttle up”. I zoomed out the display to 120 mile scale and navigated to the area of interest near Lake Superior. No contour lines for Lake Superior (Perhaps they appear on the 400c ??). So I zoomed in near Tetagouche State Park and the park boundaries showed up in green on the light flat surface. Sadly no satellite images for that area! I panned toward the Baptism River and tried to zoom out and…poof the map display was GONE! Oh No! Everything for the map was just a bright neutral color. The menus and map zoom scale indicator worked. I was able to verify with the trip computer etc. things were working. I could try to navigate to my waypoint 001. I could do anything except see any map display….and it would not come back. I tried changing to different profiles, I thought maybe I had panned off the edge of map data so I backed out to 500 mile zoom and panned down and sideways a number of times. I created a path back to waypoint 001 and found it was 1807 miles away!. I tried and tried, and almost cried. I worried I had wiped out my map and had not made a backup copy yet. But I could not see any map. **Sigh** But then, “Duh Oh”, I turned the Colorado off and then back on. Hooray! The map was back and all was right in the world again. I’m sure my life was shortened by a few minutes, but otherwise nothing else was damaged. I went back to the area of the map where the “crash” occurred and panned/zoomed for half an hour with no difficulties. (I suspect it was just the display LCD hardware/display software configuration that got jazzed and stopped. I was just zooming and panning, no ESD zapping or cosmic rays as far as I could tell!). Observation: When I turned the device back on, the backlight had reset all the way back to zero!. Had to manually brighten it up again. Enough fun for one day. I turned the unit off for the night after 5.5 Hours being turned on with periodic use (I left it on during dinner etc). The battery meter indicated 2 or 3 of 4 bars remaining. Next day: Observation: When I turned the device back on (14 seconds to map), the backlight had reset all the way back to zero again. Had to manually brighten it up again. First thing everyone should do after powering up is briefly press the power button again and rotate the wheel clockwise to bring the backlight brightness up!. After you do this you can enjoy a very colorful high resolution display. First thing Garmin should do is store this setting in nonvolatile memory and restore it at power up. (The default should be 100% to set their “best foot forward”, rather than presenting the dark display for first impressions). After 2 hours use I noticed the “path” drawn around my Waypoint 001 had grown into a fuzzy ball of black lines with about 80 ft variation and a “spike” about 600 ft to the northwest. Reasoning that the “Spike” may have been due to a turn-on glitch I turned the Colorado off, then back on and sure enough another position “spike” was observed south about 120 ft. Observation: Turn off/turn on causes an inaccurate momentary position shift (presumably while acquiring multiple satellites during turn-on.). Twenty five minutes after cycling the power, the display suddenly dimmed to 50% brightness. The batteries were at 1.361V/1.344V with the backlight timed Off, 1.354V/1.342V with the backlight On 50%. (I know the display had been “limited” to 50% since it would no longer get brighter when trying to adjust above the 50% value, but it could be adjusted dimmer). That makes it just under 8 hours intermittent usage with 15 second backlight timeout to first indication of “di-lithium crystals melting” (ummm…not enough power..Scotty…Enterprise..does this date me?). Observation: The compass readout is affected in close proximity to a laptop. After leaving the unit turned on next to the laptop while I am writing this, the Colorado beeped and displayed a message that the batteries were too low to allow the backlight or beeping functions to work. The battery meter was a single red bar. Battery voltages were 1.321V/1.308V. Total run time on a new set of alkaline batteries to low warning 10Hr 40Min. (The unit was still operating, but I put in a fresh set of batteries because I’m not positive if my configuration changes are saved out to the nonvolatile memory.) Test over: Colorado 400i Summary Review: First thing everyone should do after powering up is briefly press the power button again and rotate the wheel clockwise to bring the backlight brightness up!. After you do this you can enjoy a very colorful high resolution display. The built-in map data varies in detail between areas. The contour lines are lake depth appropriate with the typical Minnesota lake on 5-10 ft intervals. One shallow pond near me has 0.5 ft intervals showing. (It also has shaded relief terrain showing around it!?). Satellite images -if present- are low resolution but useful from 3 mile to 0.3 mile zoom scale. From 0.2 miles down to 20 foot zoom scale no aerial photos were available in the base maps. All of the lakes I know about (and then some) appear as appropriately shaped blue graphics with the minority containing depth contour information. River route detail is extensive with all but the most temporary drainage ditches being shown. Islands in the Mississippi River were shown, but did not show up in most smaller rivers. River depth contours were not shown as far as I could find. Most major river falls were noted, rapids not indicated. Road details go to unpaved dirt roads. Based on recent construction in my area, the road and satellite images appear to have been digitized in the summer of 2006. Unfortunately the satellite detail below 5 mile zoom scaling is not complete. Starting at 3 mile zoom some blocks of counties revert to flat light tan background with lake/river/road graphics superimposed. This does make the roads/rivers easier to follow, but an aerial view option would be handy when hiking trails. (Guess this could be a great application for Google Earth pictures in the image viewer). The water features and roads are in impressively accurate detail. I was pleased with the water depth contour info, and pleasantly surprised at the great detail for landings and roads. Beware that some of the dirt roads shown are not actually passable having been abandoned 20 years ago, on private property, etc. Road mapping software may yet be in my future for more POI’s etal, but for now the Colorado base maps seem complete enough to get me to the fishing hole. I noted that I could not route to my actual destination in Automotive mode in some cases since there were “No roads near” the waypoint. (Probably a NooB problem). Observation: The “Accuracy” display changes with the number of satellites tracked. I observed from 7 up to 11 satellites registering and GPS accuracy indicated from 10ft up to 32ft. The seven satellites reading was taken inside the house (I have aluminum siding, so I am suitably impressed by this reception capability). Observation: When zooming in on some areas, there appears to be shaded relief information for the land (no topo lines though). On other areas only the flat colored background is shown. The amount of satellite image covered area diminishes at less than 3 mile zoom scaling. Summary Thoughts: Overall, the Colorado 400i far exceeded my expectations. Oddly, the inland lake data was only “Good”, but all the other bells and whistles make this device exceptional. What a super navigation aid! The areas covered by the satellite images at around 1 mile zoom is close to a flyover (though lower resolution) so I’d definitely recommend one for any float plane pilot. Battery life is respectable. Considering that I have flashlights with two AA cells that would not light up as long as I had the Colorado backlighted, it is more energy efficient than a paper map & light. (Be sure to have a couple spares tho…maybe take them out of your flashlight if you need to . Display is very clear and crisp in direct bright sunlight or with the backlight turned up. In overcast/indoor situations with no backlight the display is dim and difficult to read. Menuing is mostly intuitive with a half dozen quirks that need to be memorized (e.g. anyone remember how to call up the temperature? hint:recreation) It still has some bugs in the software (e.g. scary map disappearances). Most items worked as expected. Many more feature items available than expected. Profile menu management and setup is a great feature. Very handy seamlessly changing from “Automotive” to “Recreational” to “Marine” operating modes. I haven’t done more than scratch the surface on the capabilities of this baby. I’m sure it has tons of interesting bugs and features yet to be discovered . All-in-all it gets an A- grade. Recommended buy: YES

Thanks for the info rpminmn! I was unaware of the resources you pointed to. By way of your shortcuts I got into an interesting resource page at: http://www.topografix.com/gpx_resources.asp Looks like I have a weekend or two more research into figuring out how to do this properly. (Have given up hope on drag-and-drop map routes) The marengo-ltd.com link seems to approach the problem I’m trying to solve, however if I try to print out the hybrid map of a trip I create, only one quadrant of the graphics was printable directly to .PDF for me and the waypoints are not attached to the graphics for cutting/pasting into Photoshop. Looks like a hijacked screen shot is the simplest approach and then cropping to images for reference during the trip while using the GPS with the GPX xml scripts the site generates. Nice step forward though The GPS Utility program looks great also, I’ll give it a try ASAP. And “H*ly Mapmaking, Batman!”…nice edit adding the GMapToGPX link, that looks even better for street destinations (maybe not too good for hiking trails). I’ll be sure to try them tonight. Thanks Again! For sharing your Wisdom. Hope U have a Gr808 æpa heróp

aka NooB hopes/disappointments Initially I was under the false newbie hope that GPS devices would seamlessly accept Google Earth images or Google Maps downloads. I expected to be able to download a route map from a Google search to my next destination, or to transfer that excellent aerial image from Google which I have zoomed into my desired perspective for my next hiking trip. All the better if I could follow up a trip by plotting my hike with geotagged photos etc. Well…no cigar or brass ring so far. Google Earth Plus does have “Verified support for Magellan and Garmin devices only “ but “Does not support export of tracks or waypoints to a GPS”. I had tentatively decided to get a Colorado as my first GPS but then I ran across a couple articles from CES2008 discussing Google working with Magellan to integrate into a high-end automobile device (Magellan’s Maestro Elite 5340+GPRS). And this quote from naturalsearchblog.com: “John Hanke, Director of Google Maps & Earth is quoted, saying, “We’re pleased to be partnering with Magellan to provide users with detailed, relevant local information while on the road.” …But for now seems to be local search info only, not about preloading routes from home. Soooo…The question I have is who is going to provide the capability to download maps/tracks/routes/images from Google to handheld GPS first/best?? I suspect this could be a firmware change on a Colorado/Triton/PN-20/Onix400/PSP/PPC/ etal with vector and raster overlays. It could be 3rd party? It appears that all the manufacturers are extremely anxious to allow only their licensed content on their model GPS (e.g. Garmin not even allowing previous map owners to transfer map licenses to newer equipment). Am I S.O.L? Or should I just wait a few..years? (e.g. technology is always changing…I note the British pending launch of their geolocation system Beta satellite which after implementation could offer centimeter scale locating) Thanks in advance to those who respond!

Hours of research also narrowed my search down to the PN-20 or Colorado with the final decision very difficult due to varying strengths of the units. It appears DeLorme has better quality topo maps than Garmin, but I’m tentatively going to purchase the Colorado 400i when it comes out in a couple days…(so that I am assured of getting the most recent hardware/software in the series), with the assumption I will at least be able to screen capture Google Map/Image information into the Colorado image viewer…The deciding factor for me was the display size. Reviews have been mainly negative on Colorado display brightness and view-ability, but in one review I read that a user of the PN-20 found the display was too small to show enough area on topo maps to discern peak identities. (Ummm…not sure how that can be right since there is a built in compass to show direction to the peaks…but I’ve never used either GPS, so who knows?) Bottom line for me was: Many of the operational issues with the Colorado will probably be fixed with firmware updates from Garmin, but the display size on the DeLorme PN-20 probably won’t be changing soon. These comments are totally from unbiased newbie evaluation of web information uncovered in the previous week and are definitely 3rd party comments. Caveat Emptor.

During the course of my newbie research into a GPS I’ve tentatively determined the following: 1) Garmin is the leader 2) DeLorme has the best maps 3) Magellan is good on paper, bad in practice 4) Every manufacturer wants continuing revenue from maps specific for their brand. Initially I was under the false hope that GPS devices would seamlessly accept Google Earth images or Google Maps downloads. Silly me… (see item 4). I have no doubt this will come to pass via 3rd party (See Bushnell/PSP/PPC/DeLorme/Colorado/Triton etal capabilities), but why not now? Garmin is big enough to work with Google to allow the transfer of maps onto e.g. Colorado. They could follow the example of video games which made billions of $$$ one quarter at a time. I’d be more than happy to pay 2 bits for a route map from a Google search to my next destination, or to transfer that excellent aerial image from Google which I have zoomed into my desired perspective for my next hiking trip. If Gamin is “lurking in the forum” the question would be why not trump the market with the ability to seamlessly transfer Google info to the Colorado? (BTW I’m tentatively going to purchase the Colorado 400i when it comes out in a couple days…so that I am assured of getting the most recent hardware/software in the series, with the assumption I will at least be able to screen capture the Google Map/Image information into the Colorado image viewer… : > )