milos6058

Thanks so much for all your efforts. The detail is great! The only problem I found so far is that Lake Pend Oreille has these large blocks of pale green over a lot of its surface instead of the blue it's supposed to have. In fact one of these green blocks extends over my house about .25 miles from the lake. Maybe some mis-compiled polygons? I just noticed that the map looks fine in mapsource; it's just on my Colorado that the green blocks appear. Could I be doing something wrong? I've added the location of the edge of one of the blocks to help you narrow in on what I'm seeing. The coordinates are: N48 15.304 W116 32.627. Hold on, I've just discovered another thing: if I turn off the "land cover" feature under map setup the green blocks disappear and the lake looks as it should. Seems to be something to do with the Colorado's handling of land cover. Any idea why only portions of the lake are affected?

I'm sorry, it's version 2.7, not 3.7. Wishful thinking I guess. I've got 4 different maps on the SD card and two in internal memory. It seems almost random as to how it will power up. This morning all the profiles where correct except the recreation profile. It had CN09 selected when it wasn't when I powered down last night. It will be interesting to see if anyone else has this somewhat random problem. I would ask that Colorado owners be watching for this. If the map selection can change perhaps other configuration choices are changing as well?

I'm running version 3.7 on my Colorado 300. I thought it used to remember which maps I had selected for each profile. Now it doesn't remember between power up cycles. It does let you choose which maps for each profile but when you cycle power it seems to re-select all maps for all profiles. Does anyone else observe this or am I doing something wrong or is my memory gone?

You make it look so effortless. I know it must be a tremendous amount of work and I appreciate your didication. Thanks.

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I haven't seen this issue discussed before. While using my Colorado 300 with over 3G of maps on an 8G SD card, suddenly the unit can't see the SD card and the maps revert to the basemap. I tried power cycling 4 times and it just won't read it. When I got home I checked the SD card on the PC and it read fine. Putting it back in the Colorado it also worked fine. Seems there are some possibilies: 1. the chip is intermittant 2. The Colorado is intermittant 3. I was having the "drift" problem at the time; maybe the whole unit gets "lost". 4. The Colorado really can't realibly use an 8G SD card (they'll only garentee 4G) Anyone else have this happen?

That would be great! I can hardly wait.

I would sure second that! I moved here a month ago and really miss the great topo's of AZ. The Montana topo is great, but I'm about 20 miles from the border in Sandpoint.

Click the dropdown box at the top of the screen that says “City Navigator North America NT 2008” and see whether “City Navigator North America NT 2009” is one of the choices. If it is, select it and resend the maps to your unit. If it isn’t, the update didn’t work. Did the installer say that it successfully completed the installation? Did you go through an unlock procedure for the update? The unlock is free, but you have to do it. I tried it again and it got as far as asking for a registration code. The only 8 digit code I have is the coupon code that came with the version 2008 DVD and that didn't work. Was I supposed to get that from the "My Garmin" site where I downloaded it from? Of course My Garmin is down right now so I can't even check if it's there. Could they make this any more frustrating!!!!

I installed my newly purchased CN version 2008 and then downloaded the free upgrade to version 2009. The map is still called version 2008 in mapsource and on my Colorado. Is this correct or did it not really upgrade? Does anyone know how to confirm which version is running in mapsource?

Yes, my 300 did the same thing once. It's a real early serial number so I assumed it was related to that. My new one is in at REI so I'll be returning this one.

You've really done a great job pulling this toegether. Not having made any maps myself I'm really speaking from ignorance but why do you suppose Lake Pleasant, just north of Phoenix is still shown the size it was 15 years ago? A new dam was built and the lake is now 3 times the size it was. the spillway elevation is 1704 feet. Don't feel bad, Garmins topo 08, and CN08 still show the old elevation also. I guess someone hasn't updated the GIS in all these years?

Yea, I checked that out and you're right. I can put my soldering iron away for another day!!!

They really look great. I hate to be the first with some down side, but... 1. In Mapsource when you hover over a contour line the elevation readout is way off. My house reads 4200 feet when I live at 1350 feet. I checked a couple of other spots around Lake Pleasant and they're off as well. 2. Loop 101 through Phoenix starts off as a red interstate but changes to a black secondary road. Likewise some secondary roads change into dirt roads which they shouldn't (59th ave in Glendale as it goes up and over a pass in Thunderbird Park). Oh well, still a great and much appreciated start!!! thanks so much for putting in the work on this. Actually, now that I looked at your screen shots again, your map is reading in the 17,000 foot range while the Garmin map shows correctly around 5800 feet.

They really look great. I hate to be the first with some down side, but... 1. In Mapsource when you hover over a contour line the elevation readout is way off. My house reads 4200 feet when I live at 1350 feet. I checked a couple of other spots around Lake Pleasant and they're off as well. 2. Loop 101 through Phoenix starts off as a red interstate but changes to a black secondary road. Likewise some secondary roads change into dirt roads which they shouldn't (59th ave in Glendale as it goes up and over a pass in Thunderbird Park). Oh well, still a great and much appreciated start!!! thanks so much for putting in the work on this.

I should have been clearer. I used a standard USB cable with the normal sized male connector on one end (unmodified) and the male mini-B on the other end. I modified the mini-B end which is the end that goes into the Colorado. To use this cable in the car I have a cigerette lighter plug that has a USB female socket on the end. It converts the 12vdc to the 5vdc used by the USB.

Now that I'm a new Colorado owner, I started investigating what it will take to power my unit in the car. Being an engineer, I figured there must be a cheaper way then Garmin's auto cable. Turns out that the only difference between the cable that comes with the Garmin (called a mini- and the power cable is that pin 4 & 5 are shorted together on the power cable (sort of making it a Mini-A). So I took a standard Mini-B cable (not the one that came with the Colorado) and modified it into a Mini-A. Sure enough, it powers the unit in the GPS mode. Boy is the backlight bright!! To make the modification I used a razor knife to cut the molded plastic off the small connector. Underneath I found a two piece metal connetor that was easy to pry apart. Once apart the outer housing slipped off the end of the connector exposing the small plastic piece that had the five contacts molded in. Looking at the contacts laying upright and facing you, pins 4 & 5 are the right most pins. Simply solder a solder bridge across those two pins as far away from the ends as you can. You have to use a very small soldering iron so as to not melt the whole thing but with care you can do it. Simply put the outer piece back on over the end and with pliers, pinch the housings back together. Since mine had a small piece of copper foil wrapped around the back of the housing, I wrapped some back on. I'm not sure this is necessary, especially if you're only using it for power. After that, simply slip a piece of heat shrink tubing over the connector and heat with a lighter to shrink it. There you go, hope this saves you some bucksl