tossedsalad

What is a Magellan file?

Crap, I thought there was a way to load the maps directly to the SD card. From the FAQ it looks like I have to do it through the serial port and then rename the maps, one at a time. It takes forever to load a map via serial. I guess I had better get started.

I have downloaded maps from Mapsend v3 to my Merigold before and I had the idea that the size is limited to 64 MB. But the SW is telling me the limit is 32 MB. Am I remembering wrong? Also, the search feature is broken and I can't find the thread that told you how to load the file directly to the SD card rather than going through the serial interface. I am about to leave on a trip and nothing is going right!

Even with that price I think it is about the same as the Costco price once you add in the case, the cig adapter and the 1 GB SD card. Where did you buy the 500?

I am an employee of Thales and we get a 40% discount on all GPS units and accessories. But even with that, I think the Costco bundle on the eXplorist 500 is better than what I can get from Magellan. The Costco price for the 500, MapSend Topo 3D USA, cig lighter adapter and cary case with a 1 GB SD card is $430. With a $50 rebate it is $380. The price at Magellan is $546.72 and with employee discount brings it to $328. But that does not include the 1 GB SD card! I am amazed that Costco gets such a good price that they can beat the employee discount!!! I don't know which way I should go. I guess I will just buy it from Costco since I can only buy one a year with my discount. This one will be a present and I would like to get myself one of the XL units when they are in full production (meaning they include all the bug fixes). Any comments?

Thanks, the web site is misleading about this. One page says it has the same resolution. The higher resolution clinches it for me.

I am comparing the 500 with the XL since I think the 500 is a closer match. For me the pricing is pretty much the same for all three units. I get a 40% discount and that puts all three within 30 bucks. Just in terms of the overall functionality, is the XL the same as the 500 and 600? It would appear that they use the same software, but above is mentioned that the XL is not up to speed with the software updates. Looking at what technical data I can find, the screen resolution seems to be the same in spite of the fact that the screen is 50% larger on the XL. I suppose that a larger screen is better, but there won't be any more info than on the smaller screen, it will just be bigger. Too bad I can't go to the store and see these. My local stores only stock a few units.

I checked out my local Costco and they are selling this bundle for $250 with a $50 rebate. I think it is listed at $299 with a $50 instant rebate at the register and a $50 mail in rebate. At $200 for the package with a 256 MB SD card, a carry case and the TOPO map software, I can't beat that with my 40% employee discount!

My Merigold is black and grey. I found that when I float tested it, it floated upright in the water. So I painted that end bright fluorescent pink. It has helped a lot finding it and has not rubbed off. In fact I think I'll paint my remote control, my car keys and the cat! (I actually did sit on my cat once. A black cat on black furniture is not a good idea!)

I found out that because I work for Thales, I can get a 40% discount on Magellan stuff. I have not shopped much for new equipment so I don't know if that is a good deal or if you can find that sort of discount at the bargain sites. I called about an Explorist 400 and the list price is $300 while I can get it for $180 plus $6 for UPS shipping. Not that I need a new GPS, but I was wondering if it is a good deal or just the typical "below retail" price the bargain places have.

Yes, you can get the entire GPSr front end in a single package the size of a quarter. I have pricing under $25 in large quantity or closer to $100 in small quantity. I have not seen anything for quite $20 though. These units are state of the art with power consumption around 100 mW and very good sensitivity. The interface is typically a serial port in NMEA format or with proprietary extensions. It is very easy to interface with any available embedded processor. I am sure there are lots of ways to solve this issue. I don't think there is an easy way to get Palm OS up and running on an open source project. I guess I had not given a lot of thought to an open source embedded GUI. Might be worth a search. With the current state of Flash storage, it may not require "compact" storage. One chip can store half a GB of data, or roughly a CD. Detachable storage grows continuously. I think it will be more important to identify a source of map data and to develop storage structures that allow efficient searching and display. My Merigold is very, very slow updating the display. Personally, I am not so interested in "auto" routing. I am happy having a good map display so *I* can figure it out. But certainly others will be very interested. Will this really buy me a map that I can download to my GPSr and display in a non-proprietary format? I have not done much with my Merigold except to use Map Send which is from Magellan. The electrical part is not so hard. I don't know if the mechanical is much of an issue. We are talking about surviving a 3 foot fall, not 20 feet. At least that is what I am looking for. The programming is a long term PITA to get it all right. But I do have a few tricks in my bag there. That is an interesting idea. But any handheld you can buy will not be very ruggedized or watertight. One of my big requirements is that I can hook it up to a larger car display. But that does give me ideas. I agree that there is *NO* point trying to design a "receiver". But that is only part of a GPSr handheld. Typically there is a separate processor for the display and database management. But you have some good points about using existing hardware. I am an embedded hardware engineer with a lot of grey hair to go with my experience. Good question. I'm not sure it is smart to jump into a full development without some initial work with existing hardware. One of the easier parts would be a receiver front end with antenna. Bluetooth would be very useful for the connection. But these exist, right?

Quite an old thread, but one I am interested in. I have been getting more and more dissatisfied with my Merigold user interface. Otherwise I think it is a great unit. I don't care for some of the ways I have to enter a GOTO or the extreme slowness of the map updates and I would love to be able to use it in the car with a larger display. At the same time I am an electrical engineer and am starting a project using a GPS module. These things are minute, about the size of a US Quarter. Add an antenna and an RS-232 chip and you can get NMEA outputs to any PC. Instead add the embedded CPU of your choice along with a GB flash chip, LCD and battery and you have a handheld GPSr for caching. To me the hard part is the software, especially the maps. I have no idea how to get access to a useful map database that can be used with a unit like this. Where is the GPSR-Project GeoFishe as this time?

I know some people like ammo boxes, but I have gotten to like Lock 'n Lock containers. They are seriously cheap and good. I can go to Target and buy a three box set of different sizes and pay only $6! Some places don't allow ammo boxes, but clear tupperwere is like Visa, good anywhere! I did find an interesting site for ordering ammo boxes. http://www.snappysupply.com/ They have 30 cal for $5.50 and 50 cal for $2 more. That's not all that cheap, but the good news is they seem to have a flat $8 shipping rate regardless of quantity. I put 20 boxes in my order and they still said it would be $8 for flat rate shipping. Not sure if this will go through the ordering process without change though. If someone wants a few of these, I think this is the best deal I have seen when you include shipping. Let us know if they really do have $8 flat rate shipping on ammo boxes.

I looked at Cliff's site. He seems to be working on a receiver that uses a 10 year old chip set and a PC. I am interested in using one of the very latest modules which are around $25 in quantity and $100 in small volumes. Combine one of these with one of the new ARM MCUs and an LCD keypad and you have a GPS receiver that will rock! My main reason for wanting an open-gps receiver is the frustration with the UI on my current GPS. Some things are clumsy to do and the map updates so sloooowly. I also want to have flexibility in displays. I want to use it as a handheld when I am in the field. But when I am in the car, I want to plug it into a larger display and have it operate like a car GPSr. None of this is expensive in hardware. But the software work would be large, especially integrating a geo-database... or even finding a database that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. I am researching GPS modules for work and they are so tiny and so easy on the batteries and work so well. Seems like we ought to be able to build something with them.

As far as I know there is still only one caching site. It is just missing virtuals now. But then it is not our site. It belongs to someone else. We just get to visit.

I dunno. I was going to be the one to ask in my city and sent an email. I am not sure what I expected since there is a fairly active crowd around here that is very proactive about following procedures if parks have any. But I realized that if I made the first contact and blew it, my name would be tossedMUDDsalad. So I never followed up on my initial contact and went ahead and placed my cache. Before I get the courage to go back and do the "right thing", I am going to get some of the more senior people around to back me up, or maybe do it instead of me. That reminds me, there is a new park in the county and I want to look it up on their web site.

Yeah, these are pretty water tight. They make them in slightly larger sizes too that are about the same price. I bought one of each of three different styles. One was a Leisure Pro Aqua and was only $3, IIRC. But I got the last one made! They broke the mold and there aren't any more. That one was in a tree crevice and was encased in slime at one point and was still dry on the inside. But a park cleanup crew trashed it, I believe. The others are around $6 plus shipping which is a bit steep, but in the real world, that is cheap compared to the time I put into caches. But I still like the Lock n Lock cases. They come in a wide range of sizes and you can get some sizes of them at Target and Walmarts everywhere! I got a three pack assortment for $6! The largest of those is sitting at the bottom of a trout stream waiting for me to retrieve it to see if it leaked.

You're right. My post was a tongue in cheek duplicating your tone of voice in previous posts. Now that you've walked a mile in my shoes maybe you would use a more civil tone in the future. But maybe not. There is always room for improvement on the site. I'd also suggest there may be some room for improvement in diplomatic ways of bringing up issues in the future. I have no idea what you are talking about. You use a subjective term like "tone" and I have no way to know what you mean. I feel my "tone" was proper at all times. If there was something you objected to you should explain what that is instead of lowering to the level of name calling. I don't know what mile you feel I have walked or what you are thinking because you haven't told me. Instead you make vague complaints about me not being diplomatic when my messages weren't even addressed to you. The only thing I can think is that you feel this thread is a direct channel to you and every post is directed to you personally. But I can't make that assumption because you have not told me this is correct or not. All I get is that you are playing games instead of communicating. Ok, play your games Jeremy. Up until now I had expected that once you got into a thread the nonsense would go away. Now I know better. I am pretty much done with this thread. When anyone here is actually interested in a *discussion* of the topic, send me a PM. Conversation in the forums is often a waste of time as it has been this time.

You always need to consider shipping costs. The $1.79 units are about $19 for five of them shipped to MD, 21701. What will five of these be shipped to 4 King Ave Frederick, MD 21701? I assume they don't nest to save on package size? That's one of the problems shipping ammo boxes, that and the weight which the decon kits don't have a problem with.

Now I am confused. First you say I "blunder", then you say I am whining and you sum it up by using a personal insult; but somewhere in the middle you thank me for bringing it up. That is one of the most schizoid posts I have seen here. If you think I am whining and an a**, why do you bother to reply to me at all? This is the sort of cr*p that I expect from the general population since this is, after all, the Internet. But I expect a bit more professionalism from a GC.com representative. I thought I presented my case with an even tone, used factual statements and tried to be as clear and as non-emotional as possible. The closest I came to calling anyone a name was to say that this sort of programming "is very much like something that a second rate designer (any sort of designer) would come up with". As I said, I did not mean that as a direct insult, I meant it as a comment on the "quality" of the workaround. I find your name calling to be very offensive. But then I guess there is no one to complain to is there? My entire point was merely that dropping the data from a form on an error is poor programming. But so many people got emotional about it, including you it would seem. Why can't people just discuss a thing like this without all the BS?

Um...yes, they do. When you log in, there's a check box that says to remember you. I haven't used my password to log in to the website from my home computer in over a year! Without going into specifics, the process that would be used to remember information in this scenario (losing the session after a 40 minute time out) would require a lot of work. If you enter bad data, the site DOES remember what you typed and fills everything back in for you, with information about what to correct. The problem only comes when someone has taken more than 40 minutes to type in the information, which I think would be a significant minority. To put that much effort into redesigning a specific page in a specific scenario that affects so few, when there's such a simple workaround and so many major issues they're trying to correct, would be a waste of their time, IMO. Why would it be so much work when it already does it for the error case? I can think of one very simple way to fix it. Instead of trashing the page and asking the user to log in again, just pop up a login page and let the user login without trashing the page. Once logged in they can then submit the page and it will go though. I see many sites do this so how hard can it be? When I am at work and I hear stuff like this I just want to say "give me the da** code and I will do it myself!" That is why I am writing my own debug code for the board I am building. That is also why I am likely to build my own GPS receiver early next year. I really like my Magellan Merigold, but it has some UI features that I get very tired of (not to mention the seriously slow redraw speed) and I know I can do better myself. So I will. :-P Too bad I can't fix the GC.com site.

If a USGS benchmark is on private property, is there any right to access it? I know of one that is in a private wooded area. But I am concerned about going there to GPS it. Why would USGS put a marker on private land? I am sure this has been private for a long, long time. I don't, however, know how old the marker is. It is in Frederick Co, MD. at a waterfall.

Are benchmarks only intended to include registered benchmarks? There are a series of mile markers along the Old National Pike in Maryland that I am using to base a cache series on. I have GPS data on a bunch of them. Does benchmarking including any of these mile markers? None that I have found include a USGS or similiar benchmark.

You can call it whining, I call it complaining about poor web design. Whatever, the problem remains and I will have to live with it. But I don't have to be silent about it. It is a poor design and calling my discussion of it whining does not change that. But I still don't think you understand what I am complaining about. The issue is not the timeout. The issue is the poor design that causes the data entry to be lost. That should be easy to fix. Many other web sites have fixed it. I am amazed at the sort of thing people will defend when they like the responsible party. GC.com is a great thing. But they do some things that are not so great. This is one of them. Isn't this thread about done??? I don't see anything new being posted.

What do you do with the other fields? My complaint is that this is a silly way to solve the issue of filling in a form. If you were asked to fill your gas tank every day before you left for work because there may be a problem with the roads so that you idle the tank away, wouldn't you think that you should fix the road problem rather than to have to fill the tank every day? I just think this is a poor way to address the issue of filling in a form. It is not user friendly and is very much like something that a second rate designer (any sort of designer) would come up with. I'm not trying to call anyone names, I am just telling you that I think this is a poor solution. So far everyone seems to think this is ok, but I can assure you that you would not tolerate something similar in most aspects of your life. People just seem to be willing to tolerate getting less from GC.com than they do the typical web site. What if your email program required you to write the email in a text editor and then copy it to the email? Isn't that a bit silly??? Is that so complicated? If I wanted to get into web design I am sure I could solve the issue myself as many others have already done. I just don't see why GC.com can't do it. I'm not even talking about the timeout. If they want to limit logins to 40 minutes, fine. But fix the form so that the data is not lost if you miss the time limit by a second. That's all, just fix the form; fix the form; fix the form!