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Ken in Regina

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Posts posted by Ken in Regina

  1. If you send it to Garmin for repair make sure you have a copy of anything that's stored on it, if you care about it. You probably won't get the same unit back. Garmin usually doesn't repair and return. They normally ship you a refurbished unit.

     

    ...ken...

  2. Do you know which WAAS sat you get your ephemeris data from? A number of us with Garmin iQues are having a problem with (Garmin's number) sat 51 since the change. We get resets and freeze-ups once the data is transferred and the GPS starts to use the data for corrections. I don't know if this is related or not.

     

    ...ken...

  3. What Red90 said. How the embedded waypoints are handled will depend on how they appear in the .GPX file you downloaded.

     

    Load the .GPX file into Mapsource, then look at the Tracks tab and the Waypoints tab. You should see the name of the track in the Tracks tab. You can view it on the map by using the right-click menu or double-clicking.

     

    You might, or might not, see the embedded waypoints in the Waypoints tab. If you do, you can check the Tracks checkbox and the Waypoints checkbox in the Transfer dialog so everything will transfer when you transfer to the GPS.

     

    Or, if you do not want those waypoints added to your GPS waypoints, make sure the Waypoints checkbox is unchecked in the Transfer dialog when you transfer the track to the GPS.

     

    ...ken...

  4. I am looking to get some maps for my60csx. I tried to load the ibycus maps but they didn't download.Any help?

    Which "download" didn't work?

     

    - Was it the download from the internet to your PC? What error did you get?

     

    - Was it the download from your PC to your 60CSx? How did you try to do it? Did you install the Ibycus maps into Mapsource and try to use Mapsource to transfer them to the GPS? If so, what error did you get?

     

    ...ken...

  5. Hi Jim,

     

    What you want to do makes a lot of sense. This fall I was planning on taking a trip to the Rockies to do a little mountain biking. This was my first time so I wanted to try some trails that are on old railroad beds because the grades are never more than 2.5%. I was able to download track files for some trails in the area I was going. I used them on Google Earth to view them for planning purposes and then used them on my Garmin eTrex Legend HCx mounted on my mountain bike to find the trailheads and follow the trails.

     

    Without knowing what brand and model GPS receiver you are using it's pretty much impossible to give you a straight yes/no answer and tell you how to do it, if it's possible.

     

    I have two different Garmin handhelds. It's possible to do what you want on both and it's different, but fairly easy, to do it on both. With one of them it's possible to also download tracks created by someone else and use them. With the other, you can get tracks off of it to share with someone else but can't get other tracks onto it, only tracks it has created.

     

    I have Garmin Mobile PC on my laptop and Mobile XT on a Palm T|X. It's possible on both, the same process on both, possible to load tracks created by others onto both, but the method is different than either of the two handhelds.

     

    ...ken...

  6. Hi Artifact,

     

    I went through this same exercise when trying to decide between the eTrex Legend HCx and Vista HCx. Same issue: only difference is the electronic compass and barometer. I bought the Legend (without them) because:

     

    - It's cheap to get a decent compass, which doesn't have all the well-documented hassles of the built-in electronic one. It was even easier for me because I already own a moderately decent one (that I almost never use).

     

    - I could care less what my elevation is to any degree of accuracy greater than a few hundred meters. Most times I don't care at all and, rarely, I'm simply curious, say, if I'm breathing a little harder as I walk. I simply don't do anything, even when I'm tramping or riding my mountain bike around the Rocky Mountains, that requires me to know what altitude I'm at. And If I want to know with reasonable accuracy I just look at the nearest contour on my topo map, which I always have loaded when I'm in the mountains. Out here on the Canadian Prairies, where I spend most of my time, altitude is not an issue at all. We don't have any to speak of. :laughing:

     

    Oh yeah, if I want to know what the weather might be, I check the Weather Network or Weather Canada's website for the general trend before I head off into the uncharted wilderness. I figure if they can't get it right more than the next few hours, with all their trained experts and computer systems, how am I going to do any better with my ignorance and a barometer? :laughing:

     

    For those who find these extras useful, I'm not trying to make an argument. I just want to let Artifact know that some of us don't. Not because they might not have any inherent Goodness, but just because we have no personal use for the information. What we do doesn't require it, and we, otherwise, have no, or miminal, interest in the information for its own sake. That it's okay to admit that he won't care at all about what they can tell him, if that's where he finds himself at the end of this discussion.

     

    As he mentioned in his first post, the money might well be better spent on some good maps ... including some topos if he might have an interest in his elevation from time to time ... and a cheap compass if he might occasionally get into a situation where one would be useful.

     

    ...ken...

  7. Hi Duane,

     

    I understand your frustration. I have ripped Garmin/Navteq about the problems with their Canadian data in City Navigator North America on a number of occasions, on their tech support phone line, email to both their Product Support and Tech Support and in at least three forums.

     

    If you read my ongoing evaluation of Metroguide Canada v5 you will see that I have similar frustrations, especially when it comes to road data.

     

    I'm afraid I can't be as sympathetic with POI data. I just have never arrived at the point where I have any confidence in POIs as a dependable enough source of information to rely on, especially for critical stuff like hospitals. My expectations are still that I'm going to need alternate sources of information and I plan/pack accordingly. Naturally I'll still check the GPS first, because it's right handy. But if it's not there it's not a really big deal for me because I don't expect so much from POIs yet.

     

    For whatever it's worth, IWK Health Center is in both Metroguide Canada v4 and v5 (but not in City Navigator North America 2009, as you noted). Unfortunately if you select the Category of "Hospitals" when searching in Mapsource, there is nothing listed in that category in the city of Halifax.

     

    Part of the problem with POIs (and addresses) is that the way the data is entered can make it difficult to search. And we usually increase the problem by putting in way too much information. For instance, if I enter "IWK Childrens Hospital" I get squat (because that's not the way it's entered in the POI database). But if I just put in "IWK" I get a big list of various departments for the "IWK Health Center" (the way it's actually entered in the database).

     

    The map data providers (Navteq, TeleAtlas and others) have a long way to go to get their stuff standardized and categorized in a way that the average person can find things that are actually in the database.

     

    Just a minor bit of information; Garmin has not changed data providers for Canada.

     

    - Navteq is still the supplier for the Canadian data in the City Navigator North America product.

     

    - DMTI Spatial, a Canadian company, is still the provider for the data in the Metroguide Canada product.

     

    That has not changed. Two different map products; two different map data providers. As Garmin mentioned, Navteq used to be hugely worse than DMTI in their Canadian data but they are steadily closing the gap. My ongoing review of Metroguide Canada v5 shows that DMTI is still way out in front in some respects but not so much in others.

     

    ...ken...

  8. Hi Duane,

     

    The problem is, at least partly, that your expectations for POIs is much too high. These map products are not the Yellow Pages nor are they CAA Tour Books. Some of the manufacturers brag about millions of POIs on their maps. That's true, but when you think about the size of North America, in terms of numbers of stores, gas stations, hospitals, and all the other things they have in there, 5 or 6 million POIs is peanuts. It doesn't make a dent in the possibilities.

     

    As you have noticed, there is also a difference between map products, even from the same vendor, eg. Canadian coverage between Metroguide Canada vs. City Navigator North America, both from Garmin.

     

    Like you, I have both. I load both (you can do that if you have space) so that I will get all of the POIs from both products for the areas I have selected.

     

    I just received my Metroguide Canada v5 yesterday. If you're interested in what I've found in the upgrade so far you can view my comments here. It's an ongoing review that just started yesterday, as I try to decide whether to keep it or not.

     

    At the end of the day, preplanning is best done, as Garmin suggests, with Google as well as things like a CAA Tour Guide. Once you get somewhere, if you want to be sure you don't miss something, the local Tourist Bureaus or Tourist Information booths along the way are your best source of local information. And the Yellow Pages, of course.

     

    ...ken...

  9. A couple of comments... First, on the voltage issue, there is a FAQ on Garmin's site that describes a problem with startup. Some new Lithium Ion batteries can provide as much as 1.6V. A pair of these batteries will cause the GPS to shut down immediately upon detecting the high voltage at startup. Garmin recommends running the batteries down a bit before using them. They say it won't hurt the GPS because it shuts down as soon as it detects the over-voltage condition, which is basically immediately.

     

    Second, Eveready advertises that their Energizer Lithium batteries will last up to 8 times as long as their top-rated alkaline cells. I bought a pair this fall and that was not my experience. I was replacing a pair of cheap Superstore no-name alkalines (40-pack for $13 Canadian) with the Energizer lithiums ($10 Canadian). The Energizer Lithium batteries gave me approximately double the use. I was not impressed.

     

    I have no idea how representative that experience was but I'm sure not going to use Lithiums again. I use rechargeables (NiMH) when I'm near my charger. When I'm on the road I just grab a 40-pack of Superstor no-names or a 48-pack of Costco's house brand (Kirkland) and I'm good for my GPS, my digital camera and my cell phone (using an external battery pack with 4 AA cells in it to recharge).

     

    For anyone who uses NiMH rechargeable batteries it's important to have a good charger. The cheap chargers that are often bundled with a set of batteries almost never fully charge the batteries and they do not have any way to exercise and analyze the batteries to either restore them or tell you when to get rid of them.

     

    ...ken...

  10. The problem is that the latest version of Mapsource is broken. You have some maps installed in Mapsource that the new version does not like and it will not run until you figure out which map product it doesn't like and delete it. I had two sets of free topo maps that I had installed from the internet and Mapsource 6.14.1 would not run until I deleted both of them. Until I did that, it kept giving me the error message you got and refused to go past it.

     

    It is not sufficient to delete the files. You have to get rid of the entries in the Registry because that's what Mapsource is complaining about. If you look for the string "NTDBData" you will get into the right spot in the Registry.

     

    Someone in here also posted that the thing Mapsource doesn't like about those entries is that one of the Registry keys is named "8" and needs to be named "1". That's something you can try to fix it rather than losing your maps.

     

    The other possibility is to run a utility that fixes the Mapsource entries in the Registry. It's called "Garmin_MapSource_FIX-02b.rar". I can't remember where I got it. It was in another discussion here. A Google search should find it for you if you can't find the relevant thread in here.

     

    Other problems with the latest Mapsource version is that it won't transfer any data to/from Mobile PC and it is extremely slow. I went back to 6.13.7. If you still have the update file around for that version, you will need to run it twice for it to "take".

     

    ...ken...

  11. I put my email address on the powerup screen so it must still works! I'll pick my baby up tomorrow.

    Great tip! My new Legend HCx now has it. I hope it never needs it, but no point in overlooking a way to get it back. Thanks a bunch and it's great that it worked for you.

     

    Happy hunting. (Caches, of course!)

     

    ...ken...

  12. I'm glad it was helpful, Mark. I'm also 61 but my younger brother infected me with the golf bug when I was a tender 44. :unsure: So I've got a bit more experience.

     

    If Santa brings you a new toy for Xmas you might want to tell Santa to look for one that you can manually add your own courses to or make corrections to if your local course changes. Or when you encounter particular obstacles you want a reading on that aren't in the canned courses they provide.

     

    I'm not familiar with the dedicated golf GPS units but I do know that some of them charge a subscription fee to be able to download courses or they charge a fixed fee per course to download.

     

    If they have all the courses you are interested in, and all the obstacles you may be interested in are included, being restricted to only the courses they provide isn't a big issue. But if any of your courses are not included in their database or if they haven't surveyed obstacles that concern you, you need the ability to do something yourself.

     

    At 61, and as a rookie, your distance won't likely be "average" so there may be some hazards that you will want to mark that the "average" golfer might not have any concern about.

     

    Just some thoughts.

     

    Oh, and another thought. If you want to mess around with waypoints without having to walk the course, you can also download Google Earth and use the satellite images to get a close approximation of the location of the greens. You need two things to do this. First, your GPS needs to allow you to manually enter the coordinates for a waypoint. Some allow this, some don't.

     

    If you are able to manually type in coordinates, the second thing you need is to look at Google Maps online, select the "Satellite" view and see if you can zoom tight enough to see details on your 9 hole course. If the satellite images are high enough resolution to see the greens, go ahead and download Google Earth (Google Maps online will not give you coordinates).

     

    In Google Earth you can go to your golf course, zoom to the first green, hover the cursor over the centre of the green and look down at the status bar at the bottom of the screen. You will see the coordinates of the location the cursor is hovering over. You can create a waypoint (EP01 for our Eagle Point course) and manually enter the coordinates from the status bar on the Google Earth screen. You could do that for the nine holes before you head out to "survey" it. When you go out to survey the nine hole course you can check to see how accurate the Google Earth entries are. If they're close enough that you don't have to change anything, you'll know that you can do the same thing for the Championship course rather than having to walk it.

     

    Some of the satellite images in Google Maps/Google Earth are calibrated quite accurately. Some, not so much. I've encountered places where the calibration of the satellite images was off by nearly a half mile. Even we amateurs need a little better accuracy than that. :ph34r:

     

    ...ken...

  13. Hi Mark,

     

    Part of the problem is that you are new to golf so you don't yet know what you want from the GPS.

     

    What you want is to use it as a "rangefinder". That requires you to understand a couple of things:

     

    1. The GPS always knows where you are so you never need to mark that location. So,...

     

    2. What you need is markers (waypoints/favorites/whatever) for the locations you need to know distances to.

     

    The simplest approach is to simply have markers (waypoints) at the green because, mostly, it's the green that you want to know the distance to, no matter where you might be coming at it from.

     

    I have a golf program in my Garmin iQue 3600, which is actually a Palm PDA with an integral GPS receiver. I can "survey" a golf course and save the locations of the Front, Middle and Back of each green. Plus it allows me to save the locations of three other items of interest (things like, say, a fairway bunker or water hazard that I can hit the ball into on the rare occasion that I happen to catch my drive absolutely pure).

     

    To use your Explorist, the simplest way to start would be to go out to your golf course late in the day, after the majority of the golfers are done. Early evening is the best time for this. Check with the pro shop staff for permission to just go out with your GPS and walk the course to record the locations you want. It's nearly impossible to do the "surveying" at the same time as you are trying to play a round of golf, especially if you have any consideration for your fellow golfers -- both in your own group but also all those other groups behind you.

     

    To keep the first effort simple, just go to the centre of each green and create a waypoint for it by whatever process your GPS uses. Before you start, figure out some sort of naming convention for your waypoints. It should be simple but recognizable and easy to find. So if your first golf course is named, say, Eagle Point you could start each waypoint name with EP. Then you can use the number of the hole that you are marking. So the middle of the first green would be called EP01 (yes, it's a good idea to always use two-digit numbers because of the way computers sort things). Second green at Eagle Point would be EP02, and so on, up to EP18.

     

    Now you have waypoints for the centre of all 18 greens at Eagle Point recorded in your GPS. No matter where you hit your ball, you can always get the distance to the green from wherever you are standing. (Remember, the GPS always knows where you are and it's able to figure out how far it is from where you are to any waypoint you have stored in it.)

     

    So, the next thing you need to do is figure out how to use that information. I have no experience with Magellans so I'll just describe how I would do it with one of my Garmins and perhaps someone else can tell you if, and how, you can do something similar on the Explorist.

     

    On most Garmin GPSs you can do a search that goes something like:

     

    - FIND

    - Waypoints

    - Near Current Location

     

    At that point I can just stop and leave that screen on display for the rest of my round. Without doing anything at all, my Garmin GPS will automatically list the nearest 15 or 20 waypoints. Some GPSs will list either the nearest 20 or the nearest up to 10 miles, whichever list is smaller.

     

    Anyway, if you can get a screen like that on your Magellan you're in business. As you move around the golf course and your location changes, the list on that screen will automatically update itself. You have all the greens on the golf course recorded so the list should be just the waypoint names for the greens because that's the waypoints that should be the nearest to you.

     

    If you have used a naming convention like I described above, you should see a list of those greens that are nearest to you at the top of the list. Back to our fictitious golf course, When you are standing on the first tee, Eagle Point #1 (EP01) might not be at the top of the list because another green might actually be closer to the first tee, depending on the golf course layout. But as you hit your ball closer and closer to the first green, EP01 should move to the top of the list.

     

    "How is this helpful?", you are probably asking by now.

     

    Well, if your Explorist is like my Garmin GPSs, that page listing the waypoints "Near Current Location" should also have the distance to each of the waypoints in the list.

     

    If the list is like my Garmin iQue 3600, there will be a column on the screen that lists the distance to each of the waypoints on the screen so I would have to do nothing but look at it to see the distance from where I'm standing to each of the waypoints listed.

     

    If the list is like my Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, I would have to move the pointer to highlight the waypoint I'm interested in (that would be EP01 as we play the first hole at Eagle Point) and the distance from where I am to the waypoint will be displayed in an information box at the bottom of the screen. That distance will be updated as I move closer to the green.

     

    If your GPS is like many, you won't be able to get a yardage readout. Instead, it will most likely display something like .03mi.

     

    "So, why do all this work if I can't mentally convert .03mi to yards?" Good question. Before you start your round, just switch the "UNITS" setting on your GPS to "METRIC". For really close waypoints you might get a reading in Meters. Meters are only 3 inches longer than a Yard, so it's plenty good enough for our (amateur) purposes on the golf course.

     

    If you don't get a distance displayed in Meters, that's okay because it will display, say, .30km. The beauty of metric is that it's all decimal, so .30km is 300 meters. That's close enough to 300 yards for you to figure out that you aren't going to get there in one shot so now you can think about the best place to lay up for your next shot. :rolleyes:

     

    I hope that helps get you started. Or persuades you to give it up before wasting any more time. :unsure: It's actually not very difficult to do, once you understand what you want and keep it simple to begin with. If you can get this working, it's easy to expand it so you can record the front and back of each green and other critical locations on the course. If you ever get it figured out how to do the simple stuff so it works for you, we can continue the discussion about how to expand on it.

     

    Hit 'em long and straight. :ph34r:

     

    ...ken...

  14. If you loved the old Vista, why not just get a new one? The HCx has newer GPS technology and all the things you liked about your old one. They are much more reasonably priced than some of the other toys that will likely be suggested (Colorado, Oregon, 60CSx)... probably one factor in selecting your old Vista?

     

    If you have reasons (wants/needs) not to just go get a new Vista, you could list the specifics so you could get some focused suggestions about alternatives.

     

    ...ken...

  15. I was totally geared up to get the Venture HC, but A) it wasn't available in my area and :laughing: in canada that unit was $150.00 more than the eTrex H. It's just plain crazy that there isn't an all in one device for hooking up serial GPSrs to USB ports!!! I guess it's because the more expensive units just use USB...

    When/where did you get yours? I just checked GPSCity.ca (web dealer based in Calgary) and their price today for the Venture HC is $159.95 Canadian. That's the same as I paid for it back in August. I think shipping was 12 bucks and got here in two days.

     

    ...ken...

  16. Ah, sounds like the perfect person to answer some questions I have. Hope you have time to help out.

    I'll give it a go. <_<

     

    1. Other than the amount of map that the unit can hold, is there any other differences with regards to mapping?

    None that I saw, either on the unit or in the documentation. They display all the map detail the same as my Garmin iQue 3600, Garmin Mobile XT and Garmin Mobile PC, just a smaller screen. They both do complex routing with guidance, except they don't have voice directions, just beeps and text display on screen. They can route for on-road and off-road.

     

    2. Which map are you using? How much detail does it have?

    Make that maps, plural. Right now I have road maps on it. I have Metroguide Canada (the entire country) and City Navigator North America (all of Canada and a big swath of the north and west US). That takes about 1.5GB on the card.

     

    When I was out in the Rockies playing on my mountain bike in late September I had a similar amount of topo data on the card. A bunch of western Canada from both Topo Canada and Ibycus Canada.

     

    I also had a number of tracks for sections of the TransCanada Trail (a combined use biking and hiking trail that spans the country) in southern British Columbia. And I have about 200 (non-cache) waypoints loaded. Tracks and waypoints are stored in the internal memory so you could do this with either of the units.

     

    The topo maps, especially the Ibycus topos for Canada, have an excruciating amount of map detail on them. The road maps have a typical amount of street detail plus all the related address, zipcode and routing data and millions of POIs.

     

    If you want to see the sort of detail you can expect check out the map viewer on Garmin's web site. You can view any of their map products online. It's not really fast but you can check out the actual map data for any area of interest to see if it's what you need.

     

    Thanks in advance.

    Y'er welcome. o.gif

     

    ...ken...

  17. I bought a Venture HC, thinking to save a few dollars. I kept it for less than a day. When I discovered how little detail map data I could download into its internal memory I phoned the place I bought it, ordered a Legend HCx, got an RMA number for the Venture and shipped it back. Best decision I ever made.

     

    As was mentioned, the only difference I can see between them is the addition of the memory card on the Legend HCx, but that was all the difference I wanted. The Venture HC was perfect for me in every other way, but I couldn't live with so little detail map coverage.

     

    I have a 2GB memory card in the Legend and, as you might guess, it holds lots of detailed map data. <_<

     

    ...ken...

  18. ... Thinking out loud: Are there downloadable maps for the Garmin Venture that show street level detail?

    Thanks for your help. <_<

    The simple answer is yes.

     

    There are somewhat different detailed answers depending upon whether we're talking about a Venture, Venture HC, Legend or Legend HCx.

     

    The Venture and Venture HC don't have memory card slots so all you can use is the internal memory. That doesn't allow you to download very much coverage for detailed maps.

     

    The Legend HCx has a memory slot for a micro-SD card. I'm using a 2GB card in mine. As you might guess, I can get very large amounts of map data on it and still have room left over.

     

    I don't know if the original Legend has a card slot or not.

     

    When you ask about "downloadable" maps, do you mean maps you can download from the internet or are you asking if you can download to the handheld? ... Now that I think about it, the answer to both questions is yes.

     

    Obviously, there are lots of maps you can buy from Garmin for use on their handhelds. There are also maps that you can get for free from the internet. If you google "Ibycus" you will find find an excellent example.

     

    Q -- What sort of indication are you looking for that the eTrex has a position lock? When you turn it on, does it simply stay on the satellite screen, with the words "Acquiring Satellites", forever?

     

    Q -- When you say the unit "shuts down" after awhile, does it actually turn itself right off? That sounds like it needs fresh batteries.

     

    ...ken...

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