39_Steps

I hope not since I sold him the unit. I bought the unit second hand, so I can't guarantee it's not NIMh, but it looks exactly like the one on Delorme's website. How can you tell the difference? sanramonhunter- It must be a 3.7 volt Li-ion from what you have described. I presently have a seldom used battery of that type that won't even last 2 1/2 hours, so it sounds par for the course. If a used up li-ion battery is the only problem, it sounds like rockhoppernc got a good deal.

Sounds like rockhoppernc may have unknowingly bought one of those fake NiMH 2.4 vot CR-V3 batteries instead of a 3.7volt Li-ion battery. Is that possible rockhoppernc?

Eventually, but it could take 12-13 hours from a full discharge. 85% charge may be the highest you will ever see after 15 minutes of use. Try charging with all your available options to see which one works best for you.

Some of the CR-V3 chargers are just a little bit oversize, and need to have a paper shim placed between the bottom of the battery and the end of the "dock" opposite the contacts.

The PN-20/30/40 devices can searh for Geocaches by "Near Map Center", or by "Name Begins With", or by "Name Contains" which is a string search. However only 100 items may be dispayed in one search operation and the search engine cannot presently filter by name and location at the same time so as to present the 100 closest names beginning with, or containing, a defined string of characters.

TeamCowboyPapa- I'm in way over my head, but just wanted to point out what appears to be a bug in the link above. Suscrofa- When it comes to 'easy learning', I concur with your premise that students in the USA are disadvantaged by not having Metric units as the standard. On the other hand, The mental gymnastics those of us in the USA must go through to understand the system may be beneficial by forcing us to use a few more brain cells. As to the Vietnam mapping problems, was that due only to the use of the metric system, or to a combination of the metric system plus maps which were created using Paris, not Greenwich, as the global reference point?

In that case, you might take a look at your digitaldutch calculator. It doesn't seem to handle min and max elevations correctly in all cases without erroring out with those units the rocket scientists use.

Is a class 6 the fastest the PN-40 will use? Also you mentioned "enabling" maps? I'll byte (pun intended)... I just copied dowloaded maps (*.pm0 file) into the maps folder on the SD Card. What else do I have to do? (For reference did the same thing with the internal memory and the maps just showed up and I could change the layer order and disable map types at will) If you are going through the learning curve with the PN-40, be sure to transfer your cut imagery files to either internal memory, or to an SD card though Topo8 Handheld Export Tab Exchange. Copying only the *.pm0 file only gets half the job done. There are two file types per raster map required. Some say that Class 4 SD cards are adequate for the PN-40, but Class 6 SD cards are readily available and sometimes cheaper. Faster cards than Class 6 may be available, but may not be practical in this case unless the price is right. Frankly, you might want to be leery of any such cards that make such claims, and look for reviews. 32GB Class 6 cards will work OK in the PN-40. I have one. But the 32 GB capacity may let you load more total quantity of small files that the stated maximum of 256 addressable files. Exceeding 256 files may or may not give problems. If you want a 32GB card, go for it. No reason not to.

The Power Curve on the Powerex NiZn AAs seems to indicate that they could be used in a PN-30/40 that is not connected by cable to a computer or other 5v external power source. But IMHO it would be unwise to risk using the NiZn AA cells internally in a PN-30/40 because the voltage curve is so high that the PN devices might confuse them with Delorme supported Li-ion RCR-V3 rechargeables and try to recharge the NiZn cells, if connexted to external power. NiZn AA cells definitely can not be recommended for the Delorme PN devices at this point in time.

A 16GB Class 6 SDHC card is the sweet spot for the PN-40, both as to price and usability. The 16GB card will also serve as a test bed to see if the bundled 1GB or 2GB card SD card is really defective. It may just be a user inexperience problem with transferring and enabling map files.

If "back to Crutchfield" was not a one way trip, you may want to use fresh Alkaline AAs for initial bootup with your new PN-40. Then if everything is OK, note the version number of the firmware (Device setup>About this Device ..) If the version number is either version 2.5 or 2.6, you don't need to be in a hurry to upgrade the firmware. Just use it for a while. If the firmware is any other version, you should probably go to the Delorme Forum and ask for comments.

Removed

Lee- If you reinstall Topo8 and select the Canadian map data for installation this time, things will probably look better.

I started delving into PN-40 wpt projection and found a potential conflict right off the bat using the path I had taken. It probably had to do with the specialized way Geocache waypoints are handled, but frankly I have forgotten. That was a while back.

As an experieced PN-40 user who just bought a Nuvi 255W (the W stands for Wife) and wrung it out a little bit in the last few days, I would make the following comparison: The Nuvi text to speech models are designed to default to "Chatty Samantha" vocal directions for turning at the next intersection or two. The screen defaults to a bigger, cruder view of the next intersections as well as an artist's conception of the road ahead while driving. This is helpful, if unfulfilling to a PN-40 user. Other viewing options may be available by drilling down on the mash and scratch screen menus. With the proper menu selections the 255W will give a text listing of turn directions for a route. The PN-40 is designed as an multi-purpose button pushing GPS device, with dedicated road routing capabilities. The PN-40 gives the user more features, more easily used, than the typical car GPS, but does lack the text-to-speach audible directions, the larger screen, and the artistic license in the road display. The PN-40 does conveniently display a listing of all Directions as text, and does give audible beeps. Actual pixel by pixel screen resolution for detailed road display is about the same on the Nuvi 255w as on the Delorme PN-40. The geocaching usability of both types of devices has been covered multiple times elsewhere.

Delorme PN-40 has that feature. Don't they all? Edit: No, on second thought the PN devices don't do yardage. If they did, it would be easier to use them on a golf course. Sorry, as I did check the Hiking turn arrows before posting, but didn't notice that it had to be in yards.

Clarification: The PN-40 is not designed to recharge rechargeable NiMH AA cells. Some users have reported seeing such increases in the charge level indicators when the PN-40 is on external power, but this may be just a temporary voltage recovery that would be normal for the cells even if taken completely out of the device. There is no advantage to leaving the PN-40 plugged into external power with AA cells installed, except perhaps as a flashlight or hand warmer. There is an advantage in keeping the RCR-V3 Li-ion battery recharged, whether in the device or in and external charger. If the li-ion battery is fully depleted and an external charger is available, a quicker recharge is usually possible with the external charger.

I have an Magellan Explorist 200 around here somewhere. It was a gift a few years back. It does work, except for one of the buttons, but no way is it comparable to a modern unit with computer connectivity. Life is too short to mess with it for anything but a backup to get you back to civilization.

"Failure" to update immediately after the user stops walking sounds like a good thing, not a bad thing.

I had a cache like this and used the map page, the panning arrow, and the bearing info and distance fields at the top to mark a waypoint at the end point. Then used compass to get there! It's only accurate under .10 miles, though; if over .10 miles, I just mark a waypoint every .10; or go home and use google earth! The only available tool for Waypoint projection on the Delorme PN-xx devices was designed for measuring distances and areas. It is indeed not very precise above 0.10 miles, but does read to the nearest 0.01 miles (52.8ft). With a little bit of "guestimation at the destination" it might be possible to narrow that down to 35-40 feet or so, but you would probably not be able to do so paperless. Delorme Topo and Street Atlas software has a better and more precise bearing projection tool, so there should be no need for PN-xx geocachers with Windows OS computers to do their projections on Google.

Springfield road -Connecting road -Addr: (211-457) -Winnepeg, MB R2G Zoomed in there is as much detail as in the US (This is from the standalone PN-40 database on the device, which is a subset of the Topo8 derived database).

Although I live in the southwestern part of the USA, I currently have many of the Canadian vectorized Street Level maps loaded on my PN-40. Is there any particular street or coffee shop that youare interested in?

Maingray (and others) have critiqued the PN-30/40 device's road routing pluses and minuses pretty well, even down to specifying displeasure with road naming conventions of state highways. I do not presently own a modern Garmin gps for comparison, and only passed through North Carolina once in a single day, but would note on the plus side that the old yellow recycled etrex that my wife picked up for a few dollars seems quite light to carry and does not discharge the batteries when sitting on the shelf unused. Seems to me that the main pluses and minuses of the Delorme PN-xx devices are derived from the fact that they evolved as partners to very powerful computer based mapping software. However, the PN-xx devices do not have the massive processing power of modern computers to give the same performance or monitor display form factor as a large Windows computer using similar software. As to the misconception that Delorme PN devices do not interpolate exact street addresses from available vector block ranges, this is incorrect. They do interpolate correctly from available data, but typically assume that all blocks include building numbers from 1-100. In many cases, the street numnber range is narrowed down more exactly. Not infrequently the interpolation is made from an even larger range of vector ranges than a single block. If other brands of gps devices consistently do a better job in street address location, then they are to be commended.

Never Ready cases are a personal decision for either cameras or GPS units, but purchasing the Delorme power kit now will probably save you $50 in time and gasoline looking for a less satisfactory alternative later on.

The press release I read suggested that the life of the batteries in number of years, or perhaps total recharge cyles, is extended in the new run of Eneloops. However the claimed capacity has been downgraded from 2000mah to 1900mah. In practice this is not a change in capacity, as earlier Sanyo Eneloop fine print also suggested that 1900mah was the max that was "guaranteed'.