northernpenguin

I went one step further and unregistered my Oregon 700 and when I tried to reregister it hung on getting activation code. Something is very broken on the Groundspeak side I believe

Well, the email that went out to Premium Members today would indicate this thread was a success!

Garmin used to have waypoint sync with Basecamp Mobile but that was removed. Right now, Groundspeak would have to wait for an update to Garmin Connect (which Garmin controls, not Groundspeak) in order to send that data. The Garmin-to-Garmin waypoint sharing between GPSr units does not use Bluetooth or WiFi, it uses ANT which your iPhone doesn't support without an additional dongle. You can send waypoints to a Garmin GPSr via the iPhone-SD Card adapter and an SD card but the work involved in doing that makes it a niche when most people are going to load at home or just manually enter the coords on the GPSr. If you want to load geocaches on your Garmin, unfortunately Garmin's current marketing is that you will need to purchase an Oregon 700 series ... this doesn't use the Geocaching iPhone app at all, instead the Garmin Oregon connects directly to Geocaching.com via Garmin Connect. I have one of these and my field method for pushing geocaches is to use the phone to make a "list" and then use the Oregon's GC Live functionality to import that list.

I don't understand why you'd connect your garmin to provide the location for another app when your phone has a perfectly capable GPS chip inside. I doubt that the bluetooth connection draws any less power than the built-in GPS. Is it just for extra sensor data? Well I also wonder why Apple hasn't put a switch to ignore/disable Bluetooth devices for Location Services as well. Completely understand how GPS via BT got into iOS - back on the earlier iPhone models one would run a Bluetooth GPS (see BadELF) in lieu of running it on the iPhone as those devices were more accurate too. It's a little annoying that I have to kill Bluetooth on my iPhone if I'm driving/hiking with my Oregon 700 and I want to have GC Live sync or use Garmin Connect features at the same time. Killing GPS via Bluetooth also takes out my Apple Watch and uConnect in the Jeep. Note this bug also means that your photos get geotagged in the wrong place on the iPhone. Anyhow glad to see that Garmin has at least acknowledged the issue and we'll likely see a fix since this will cause a lot of backlash vs the GC Live downloads.

Question I have is, they broke Geocaching Live on the Oregon 7xx .... does it work on the Rino 7xx at the moment?

FWIW, after upgrading the Oregon 7xx to fw 2.60 and upgrading iOS to 9.3.4, I haven't noticed this issue again. No idea bout iOS 10 Beta though. I'm on Oregon 2.60 and this has persisted across the last couple iOS 10 betas for me. Still though, I know they'll correct this one soon enough and in the meantime, I know it's not the beta on the iPhone. 10 is almost GM at this point.

Sherminator18, I noticed this same issue today as well! With Bluetooth on and the Oregon 750t connected to my phone, my iPhone put my GPS location somewhere in Africa. After turning off Bluetooth, my actual location was correct on my phone again. This is a massive issue if you’re using any location-based apps on your phone at the same time your GPS is on (e.g., Strava). EDIT: FWIW, I submitted these two bugs and a couple of requests to Garmin support. I’m sure that was pointless, but whatevs. Thanks! Here I was blaming iOS 10 Beta for the location services weirdness (Brazil, then Spain, then North Pacific) and I was all set to send in a Radar to Apple about it. Never even occurred to me that the Oregon 700 was feeding back bad location information to the iPhone.

My Oregon 700 did a firmware update via the app last week and then I noticed the GC Live feature failed. Appears to me the firmware is out of sync with the Groundspeak Live APi. One side or the other will likely fix it soon enough. In the meantime, I discovered that the Oregon 700 supports GGZ so I loaded it that way in the meantime.

Also, the cell phone has the option of calling (ie for help) if you need to from an area with reception, or other notifications, logging caches etc. I use an eTrex for backcountry trips, mainly for the convenience of battery weight while recording a detailed track log. For navigation? Sure I use it but I also use a paper map, with a compass. I tend to use the GPS to identify a landmark and paddle/hike to it, ignoring the GPS along the way there except for periodic checks. Periodic checks is something I can grab an iPhone pop off airplane mode for a second to get a location fix then put back on airplane mode ... and I do that, with the iPad Mini that goes on all my trips because Jeff's Map is much easier to read on a 7.9" screen. Both my iPhone and my iPad live in Lifeproof cases when on an adventure. If some supernatural force came and demanded I give up all my devices except one - I would keep my iPhone 5s. Because really, it can tell me where I am, where I am going, where I've been, what's around me, check email, make phone calls, take photos, and if I get trapped on some mountainside somewhere I can read a book on it (Kindle App) or play Angry Birds while waiting for help to arrive. The battery thing sucks but I have a Goal Zero solar panel / battery combo that solves that handily. I love my eTrex, but it's somewhat limited in that it can tell me where I am, where I'm going, where I've been and what's around me. Which I can do with an app like GPS Motion X on my phone.

BUT remember the android app is always behind the "dedicated Gps" when I have no cell signal, need to view in bright sunlight, go fishing and need water-proof, or need my batteries to last more than a few hours. Yes you can bring a special water case or spare charger packs for your phone but it's an exercise in fumbling around and clumsiness. My Oregon is a carabiner clip to my pack strap and I'm off. BUT remember the android app doesn't need to have a computer download pocket queries to GSAK and then exported out to the GPS if you change your plans mid day. There are a million difference use cases. Downtown Toronto? Meh just use the smartphone (Muggles react less to people on phones in the city too). Middle of Temagami? Hope you have your Oregon/eTrex/62.

Yeah, I'm kinda curious how that became a spec to consider. Do I take the Trimble survey GPS out or nah my Apple Watch should be good enough. Isn't that how we end up like this: As for exporting GPX from an iPhone, let's see: Runkeeper, GPS Motion X, Everytrail, .....

If I recall correctly this was the major complaint on the Garmin Colorado and first Garmin Oregon series of GPS units too (not the 6x0 series). One reason I bought the eTrex 30 was for a "daylight readable screen" vs my Colorado 400t

This would be the main (only?) draw for me. Unlike many folks, I want to have FEWER toys, not more Interestingly, Apple Watch is listed as working with some older phones (5, 5c, 5s) so would NOT require a 6 or 6 Plus. No mention of working with any iPads though. But if I can use the Watch with the iPad mini I already have, that's one less gadget to buy. I like to expand capability while reducing the kit I am carrying. The iPhone 6 does not address that for me so I am not overly excited about it. I already wear a Pebble though, and use fitness devices so yup one package that does more than the three standalone devices combined (Fitbit, pebble, Garmin HRM) colour me interested for sure. Besides, Dick Tracy watch

It starts at $350, vs the Forerunner 15 which is $190 at GPSCity. The 24k Gold one will surely cost a lot more but I'm unlikely to invest in one of those. The extra $160 DOES provide me value in other aspects in that it also lets me do other things like respond to text messages and view weather information. I kind of like the idea of my smart watch displaying "EC: TORNADO WARNING - Caledon" when I'm a kilometre into my Caledon Trailway run. Also unlikely the Forerunner has features like being an Apple Remote, nor can it handle phone calls. There are different markets for different devices and if all I wanted was the running feature well, I'd already own a Forerunner. $350 isn't really all that bad pricing when you consider the Pebble Steel is $250.

(emphasis mine). Battery life and screen readability are directly related. But really, there are so many ways to solve this from shading the phone with your hat/hand to setting the backlight to "nuclear" and bringing an external battery. You should see the flaming hoops I jump through to play two hours of Ingress. Geocaching is nothing on the battery hit compared to a GPS lock, 3D animation and constant network access. I think the more important question is, who the hell is basing a smartphone purchase solely on how good it is for geocaching? Nobody. People are taking their phones geocaching but I am quite willing to bet the majority are buying the phone for other reasons (email, music player, Angry Birds). When I bought my iPhone I wasn't thinking "outdoor readable screen that can be dropped on a rock and stream". That wasn't my use case - I was thinking "able to connect to corporate email system, runs the apps I bought for my last phone, lets me rent movies for offline playback on business trip flights". As for the whole "accuracy thing" yes my HTC Vogue I was rocking in 2007 was crap compared to an eTrex Legend. My iPhone 4 was quite acceptable and my iPhone 5s/iPad Mini Retina are having no problems whatsoever matching or even exceeding my eTrex 30, Colorado 400 and the Garmin Montana, 62 and 64 GPS units my friends use. I still consider it a bonus that I can use my phone for geocaching, particularly as that lets me be lazy about GSAK loads because really, who wants to spend the first hour of the outing downloading Pocket Queries and waiting for the GPS to load up after you rebooted it twice for the stupid must-erase-the-old-GPX-file-before-loading-caches bug that seems to plague Garmins. For the days I want to use my iPhone, with the brightness set to "who cares", I have a $50 12,000 mAh, 5V/4A Anker battery pack. For the trips I use my eTrex I'm still carrying a solar charger for those two AA batteries.

"Apple Watch unites the capabilities of an all-day fitness tracker and a highly advanced sports watch in one device you can wear all the time. It can track a wider variety of activities because it’s able to collect more types of data. It uses an accelerometer to measure your total body movement. It has a custom sensor that can measure intensity by tracking your heart rate. And it uses the GPS and Wi‑Fi in your iPhone to track how far you’ve moved." - Dammit !!! . Well I'm still getting one. But I guess the iPhone is coming along for the running.

The iPhone 6, 6 Plus is don't take near water at all. Put it in a Lifeproof case if you want that. The Apple Watch is water resistant - washing hands, rain. Do not submerge. Not for swimming or showering. Note the watch has a microphone and speaker so that leads to holes in the case to support those functions. I am planning to get the watch on day one, I currently use a Pebble. Disappointed that the Apple Watch will be one day battery but that's to be expected with the technology package in there. I'll keep my Pebble for use on my canoe trips (wrist gets dunked occasionally, 7 day battery due to the e-ink display). I'm rather excited about the Apple Watch as it will collapse a few wearables into one for me - Fitbit + Pebble + Heart Rate monitor (for Runkeeper). If it has location services I may even be able to leave the phone at home when I go for a run yet still track the activity. That would be most exciting. If Groundspeak doesn't write a geocaching app for it..... well I will be bugging the heck out of them to grant me an APi key so I can. As for what Samsung or other Android manufacturers have .... I don't care. If I did, I would already have something like the Galaxy Gear II or the Motorola watch ... because they came out first and I'm not known for patiently waiting for cool new gadgets. BUT ... I have a media and app library that's going on 4 years now that I don't want to repurchase. I also have a Mac, and an Apple TV and such. I'm assuming at this point the Apple Watch will operate in that "halo" and give me an Apple Remote on my wrist for the Apple TV too ? All in all, living in 2014 is a dream, isn't it with all the cool tech that's coming out.

For iPhone / iPad: GPS Averaging by Looking4cache Perfect Mark by mellene.com (USA only at the moment, used to be international though)

More likely BaseCamp is trying to read maps from your unit to display on the Mac. If you have a bunch of third party maps on there it will do that. I tend to pull the MicroSD card out and put it in an SD Card adapter for loading Maps. Basecamp is a beast on Mac anyway, not my first choice for managing tracks and geocaches. You will want to remove the tracks from the device when you can as the eTrex can get a little stressed with a lot on it. I've had corrupted tracks occur when I do that for too long. Remember the speed of the device has more to do with battery life than it does with quality control. This is a unit that is meant for longetivity - as in people like me take it on a week long camping trip with four AA batteries instead of 16 AA batteries. That sort of thing matters on a 3.5 km portage over a mountain. There are times I would love to have the beautiful screen of the Oregon 650 but I love that I can navigate for three days on a single set of AA batteries (6-8 hours of paddling a day). This is physics - by putting a lower resolution display and slower CPU in there less energy is used overall and thus less energy needs to be provided. My Early 2014 MacBook Pro Retina i7/2.3 has no problems talking to the device. My Early 2011 MBP is also fine with it under Mac OS Yosemite. Technically, the eTrex is using USB 1.1 not 1.0 as well.

I have an eTrex 20 and find the clip is extremely tight when used with the Garmin bike mount. It's great that it won't fly off when riding down a trail, but it's a downright pain to remove from the mount to grab a cache off the trail. Because of that I normally use my 62s on the bike. These reports of extremely tight mounts are interesting. I really don't have that problem on my Colorado 400 or my eTrex 30, and I have about a half dozen mounts for bike, canoe, car, backpack tether, carabiner clip...... I would be looking for something to lubricate that a bit maybe zipper wax or graphite. Of course in my situation it could simply be I've worn the connection down switching it around all the time.

I have owned a Garmin eTrex Legend, Magellan eXplorist 600, Magellan eXplorist XL, Garmin Colorado 400t and *numerous* smart phone/PDA devices over the years. I bought my eTrex 30 a couple years ago when they were the hot new thing. My first impression when I picked it up was that I appreciated the rather solid build quality. It just felt "right" in my hand. I use my eTrex 30 with the dashboard mount, the bike mount and the backpack tether mount. Maybe I've worked something looser over two years but I've never had an issue with installing the device on or off the various clips. It may actually be a fault with the clip as opposed to the GPS. Me, I'd probably just toss some zipper wax on it to help glide things if it bothered me. I have used it in -50C winter conditions and +45C summer conditions. Rain, snow, baking heat. I've let it sit on my canoe thwart for 9 day canoe trips, with the sun beating down on it the entire time. I've used the carabiner clip from my Colorado with my eTrex and lazily connected it to a belt loop and let it bounce on my hip for 48km day hikes and 80km overnight hikes. My eTrex is still just as solid as the day I bought it. Based on my first eTrex I would expect the rubber seal around the USB port to have come off by now. With all I have put my little eTrex 30 through it should be broken by now. Aside from keeping the DEET off my GPS (learned about the foggy screen trick a couple GPS units ago) and not deliberately throwing it at rocks I'm not particularly kind to my GPS. I bought it for backcountry use, and I have used it on those 18 hour totally screwed up the plan who cares about anything particularly treating the electronics with kid gloves when I just want to collapse into camp sort of days. At the same time, I have friends with 62 series units where the button labels or the buttons themselves come off, or the antenna gets damaged over time. Good luck damaging the eTrex antenna without deliberate force. Well, ok one of the 62s was damaged when a group of red squirrels thought the antenna looked tasty at a Temagami camp site. Based on our group of cachers, which is split between the eTrex 30 and the 62/64 series the eTrex is a similar build quality, the choice of plastic had more to do with keeping the weight down so backcountry types like me would want to carry it. I'm very happy with my eTrex 30, years after I bought it. There is no GPS on the market right now I would want to trade it for.

Closest REI to Toronto is in Troy, Michigan. In fact that's the only one within any reasonable drive of here from what I can tell. The Troy REI is comparable to the Burlington MEC. In fact, the MEC is pretty much a photocopy of the Michigan REI store. SAIL is the store in the GTA to beat for outdoor product deals. GPSCity/GPS Central out of Calgary still beat out pretty much all the brick'n'mortar shops though there is a RadioWorld store in Toronto with deals comparable to GPS Central (it's almost as if the stores are related somehow /sarcasm).

Sadly I've seen plenty of spots where City Navigator is also inaccurate or missing a routing node and you get crazy routes where it wants you to travel 25km to go across the street. One advantage to OSM maps is, with a little know-how, it is possible to go and edit the map to remove an error. Particularly handy if the routing node problem is, say, on the street you live on.

Is this USA Cabelas or does that include, say, the new location in Barrie, Ontario, Canada.?

I didn't get the Etrex 30 for that very reason. However with hindsight I regret having bought the Etrex in the first place! There are better units out there at cheaper prices. I GOT the eTrex 30 and it had nothing to do with the electronic compass. It had to do with the wireless sharing and sensor access. For those of us that have friends and go caching with them, it's real handy to beam waypoints, geocaches and track logs back and forth. I also use a Tempē when I am in the wilderness to get an idea of temperature trends in the backcountry. Having a GPS that is capable of the Ant+ sensors yet still runs for 4 days of paddling is well worth the extra $100 to me.