Didjerrydo
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Posts posted by Didjerrydo
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Patch is no worse than quad helix. They just perform differently and are better at different orientations.
I have worked in a large outdoor outfitter here in Western North Carolina as their "GPS Guy now for 22 years and have sold Garmin GPS units since the old 38's.
It has always been my experience that a helix or quadrifillar, would consistantly pick up better in difficult situations such as we have right here (heavy canopy in summer and the topography year around. I saw a marked improvement and somewhat of a leveling of the playing field when the SIRF Star 3 processors came out in the 60's three or four years ago, but I still find the helixs to be the overall winners.
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The one thing I'm seeing that I'm not too crazy about on Garmin's new OR is the fact that, I assume, it's using a patch antenna rather than a helix. I realize that with the new processors that perhaps this is not as big an issue as it once was, but if this is the case, looks like that's a step backwards in an otherwise cutting-edge new handheld GPS. Am I just reading this wrong somehow?
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For those of you that think I am mis-stating my case to my side of the story, I am not. This is what really happened. After reading and snooping more about this unit I now realize that this is a major malfunction of this unit. If I do keep the thing, I will never again be without a bag. Does anyone recommend a water proof case that has worked?
It sounds to me like you were a jerk to the CSR if you called them up and 'told them how angry you are'.
If you call up all angry, then they aren't going to help you.
If you call up nice and ask what they can do for you, you'll be helped.
Garmin's CS is incredibly good - they send my geobuddy 2 free rubber top replacements on his 3 year old etrex, and replaced my 60csx no questions asked when it had issues, and replaced my other geo buddy's 60csx no problem when he tore the top off of it while riding his motorcycle.
I have it on good authority (a high-level Garmin insider), that when the initial run of Colorados were released from the factory in Taiwan, they were all fitted with the wrong size o-rings surrounding the SD card slot on the unit's bottoms.
Garmin soon discovered this issue and replaced a huge number of them. This o-ring did not provide an adequate seal when the unit was slid into the back battery cover. You must have gotten one of these early units that slipped through!
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Has anyone else had problem with the Colorado's and splashing water on them? I have had mine two weeks and the wife spilled the melted ice from a fast food cup on the unit. It is now shot. I thought they would resist more than that. Now to top it off, Garmin is charging me to fix it and were rude about it besides. What's a good Lowrance unit to buy?? I have always had great luck with their customer service and will probably never own a Garmin again.
Check out this old post of mine. It says it all!:
http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...ater+resistance
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I haven't seen any issues with the OR clock, but I'm assuming that you are referring to the clock being off when the unit boots before it has satellite lock?
The timers/stopwatch on the OR don't run fast like the CO do.
GO$Rs
What my experience has been with 3 different Colorado 300's, is that if the unit had been off for a couple of days or so, is then turned back on where a sat signal was unavailable, the clock was either several minutes to several DAYS off the correct time! Sure, this problem fixes itself once the unit re-acquires, but if you're depending on the alarm function or the barometric pressure plotting (while unit is off), you're out of luck!
Surely this corrected in the Oregon.
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I'd loke to ask GOR$'r if he's noticed if the clock function actually functions correctly in the new Oregon. I never got it to keep accurate time in my Colorado. Surely this was fixed in the Oregon?
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As I have said many time on this forum, touch screens are the future. However, I'm certainly going to wait for version 2 of the Oregon. It clearly needs some additional work. For example, the overall unit could have a thinner profile since we don't need all that plastic. The screen can be made a bit bigger and get closer to the edge of the device like the iPod Touch or iPhone. Also, the processor could be faster so that moving maps won't be such a chore. Lastly, the helix antenna could be redesigned to fit in this unit. Perhaps horizontally instead of vertically?
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Does the OR actually have a clock that keeps the correct time..even if it's turned off?
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I see that now Garmin is introducing a new series of handhelds called the "Oregon's". These new units seem to have adandoned the famous "Rock & Roller" design in favor of a touch screen and hopefully many other fixes that were badly needed. I wonder if the Colorados have been written off as a poor design and a splash in the pan. It does seem like they are entirely too problematic.
What I wonder is, are these new unit's displays going to be as hard to see in anything but the best lighting like the Colorados, do they actually have a functional clock, and do they leak if exposed to the shallowest water.
Surely Garmin has learned a few lessons from their ill-fated Colorados and corrected them in these new Oregons?
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My Colorado 300 just will not work with Eveready Lithium Batteries for some reason. I realize these cells are a little "hotter" (voltage-wise) right out of the packaging, and I realize the 60 series had issues with them, but even if I wear a set down a little, my Colorado just don't like them! The display will start to do its thing but quickly fade out and die. I can turn right around and replace the lithiums with NiMH's and all is well for some reason.
This problem happens regardless of how the "Battery Type" setting is set correctly or not.
What's the Colorado got against lithium cells?
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Has anyone been able to use lithium batteries in their Colorado 300 after the update? Mine still can't use them. The screen just fades out a short time after turning the unit on, even if set to "LITHIUM" setting. What goes on here?
I'm wondering if the unit's clock has finally been fixed so it can actually maintain accurate time. That would be nice in a $500 device!
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I've been looking at a couple of these to try and figure out what they mean:
* Corrected behavior of proximity alarms in custom points of interest
So far I haven't figured this out. I still can't get a proximity alarm on a custom POI although the CO seems to recognize that a POI has a proximity alarm distance. I see "Alert Information: xx ft" under the POI now.
* Corrected potential issues that prevented user alarm from sounding
This seems to refer to the fact that the alarm clock didn't go off when tones were disabled. The alarm goes off regardless of the tones setting now. Not quite as good as an independent setting like the 60csx but an improvement.
GO$Rs
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Perhaps this last item means they've actually fixed the clock where it keeps the right time for a change!
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Has anyone here had any experience with the new Garmin Forerunner 405's? They're the first one Garmin has introduced that's actually wristwatch size and wearable as an everyday watch (except it needs re-charging every two weeks or so).
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I'll have to take a look, what I do know is that the time remaining to next turn/destination seem to be dead on.
I'm guessing these timers won't be affected because they are computed every second or so based on the speed data along your route and your distance remaining to dest/next.
I saw your post and since I'm in the office today I tried your stop watch test. I used my 60Cx and my 300. I see a similar advance amount of time on my 300. I ran both units together on the stop watch for roughly 20 mins and my 300 showed about 9-11 seconds more than my 60Cx during 3 test runs. It is pretty tough to start both at precisely the same instant but this is close for these crude tests. It sure shows the 300 is indicating more elapsed time. Hmmm, what's up with that?
Software timers like the stopwatch and total time are usually implemented based on some sort of hardware timer/counter. The hardware device receives a periodic clock from a crystal oscillator. The accuracy of the oscillator (usually expressed in ppm) determines how accurate the hardware device is and, hence, how accurate the software timers using it will be. It is normal to see inexpensive oscillators used in electronic devices with accuracy in the 100-200ppm range which would yield an error of about 10-20 seconds over a 24 hour period, worst case.
However we are seeing something that is almost an order of magnitude higher, nearly 500 seconds in a 24 hour period. Originally I thought maybe Garmin is really using a very poor oscillator, but now I'm wondering if maybe there is some sort of software bug or hardware issue because the error seems to beyond what would be caused by oscillator inaccuracy -- especially if multiple people start seeing nearly the same error in the same direction.
GO$Rs
I got it on a very good source that the time errors you are seeing here is a result of Garmin's ongoing effort to somehow correct the presistant clock problems with the Colorados. It seems as in tweaking them to keep the clock from totally quitting, they've somehow slightly over-corrected and as a result, the onboard clock now is gaining a little time as a result!
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I can't believe there's so little comments on the new Ver. 4.51 (beta) firmware update for the Garmin Colorado 300 that's just been released. I guess that says everything is working fine and/or no one is seeing any noticable improvements as a result of it?
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Hello
I have been watching the various forums and noticed a drop in comments about the Colorado series.
I am thinking of buying a Colorado but I feel it is missing some features like waypoint averaging for one.
Do people think Garmin is going to fix some of these issues are just waiting for the user community to loose interest in complaining and accept things as they are?
Thanks for listening and I look forward to some comments
I am still very aggrivated that my Colorado 300 STILL can't keep time! If it is turned off for a couple of days it totally drops the ball on timekeeping.
Garmin did a band-aid fix on this issue by simply making the units do an automatic "Autolocate" when the internal clock has failed, which at least gets you located, but doesn't really fix the problem at all. I can't believe that Garmin can't remedy this issue once and for all! This now tells me that this ongoing clock headache must really be hardware issue after all. That's not good.
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Be warned.
After opening the image, it takes you to a site partypoker that is hard to get rid of.
The only placed where water can get into the unit is trough battery ad SD slot.
The slots are protected while cover is on the unit.
The hole for the latch does not give hole into the unit itself.
You'd really have to see this area "in the flesh" to see exactly what I'm talking about here, but believe me, it looks like a pretty poorly done way of sealing this area.
That's odd that opening the image causes a problem on your computer. On mine, it simply opens full screen when clicked on, then closes completly when you close that window.
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No' I didn't open up my new Colorado 300' but after my ill-fated experience with water un-proofness sometime back, I did open up this dealer's dummy unit just to see how certain parts were "sealed"(.http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=184669&hl=IXP7)
I realize this is a dummy unit and it isn't sealed at all points of vulnerability as a real unit would be. What concerns me most is the area where the back latch engages to the body.
I had wondered if this opening commuted with the internal electronics. Apparently, there's some sort of gasket/O-ring that not present here, in this dummy, that goes into this open squarish hole that otherwise commutes directly into the units internal electronics. Even so, it would have to form a seal by pressing against the somewhat flimsy, thin metal sleeve into which the SD card fits. This looks like a rather jerry-rigged configuration to me. Maybe this is the problem with Colorado's leaking so easily?
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The biggest thing so far I have noticed is that you can geocache with the Triton paperless. It gives the hint, long description, short description, diff/terrian rating, name, etc. This alone is a huge improvement.
We brought 3 Tritons into our store because we were excited that they could utilize the National Geo TOPO software. We sold all three units- all three were returned by the very dissasitified customers! We returned all of them to the vendor- lesson learned. We had always only carried Garmin and in the future we'll stay that way!
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Well, if the clock doesn't run, you don't expect the date to advance either, do you?
It seems the Colorado now and then thinks the current time is corrupted, which causes it to go back to the last known time stored in the unit. Sometimes, that's more than one day back.
That's strange, I just read your post and just checked my 300. It's 7:15 AM Eastern time here in western North Carolina on March 2, 2008. My unit said 7:15 AM, but Feburary 29, 2008! That's wierd that the time would be right but the date would be off by 2 days!
I then re-booted it and let it acquire satellites upon which it got it's act together and gave the right time & date. Wonder if the leap year somehow threw it a curve?
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Got my Colorado yesterday. Loaded it up and am having some fun with it. I now have a 4GM SDHC card in. I was able to load all of CN NA on the card and still have about 2-3 GB left.
So two thoughts come to mind.
First... will the colorado work with an SD card larger than 4GB... like 8GB? I have seen one thread that kind of tortured the guy asking the question until he bought one and then refused to tell everyone else the answer.... I thought that was pretty good....
Second question.... with 2-3 GB left on a 4GB card... why would you need more. I am going on a big vacation this summer to NJ, NYC, London, and Norway. So I will probably load ALL of NA and ALL of Europe. I will have about 1-2 GB left. Then I can load 2000 caches in the specific areas I will be in. That will be <5MB.... right? What would I use the rest for.... more caches as waypoints and poi's???
The consumer in me wants more memory but I am not sure what that does for me.
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I was told by Garmin that 4 GB is the limit. Another issue is the number of "maps" (selections) made. There's a limit there also, (4000) that the Colorado can handle.
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I called and asked Garmin's handheld team if the new firmware update addressed the clock problem in the Colorado's and they claim it supposedly fixed it. I'm just wondering if it really did though. Has anyone updated yet still see a clock problem (losing time)?
Well, it's been several days now since the update and just as I thought it had fixed the Colorado's clock problem, yesterday I found my 300 dropped a couple of hours for no good reason. Apparently, there's more to this than a firmware issue. Maybe hardware related after all?
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I don't seem to really be getting any kind of great battery life from NiMH batteries in my Colorado 300 even after the latest firmware update.
I realize lithiums are a hard act to follow. I have been trying Duracell 2650 mAh ( about 4-5 hours) and a battery from Battery Station, Power2000 2900 mAh (better, at about 8-10 hours). Maybe this ia about all one should be expecting out of re-chargables. Using anything less than the 2650 mAh batteries is hardly worth fooling with though! I like the idea of rechargables, but to me personally, they've always been a dissapointment.
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Was this from a cold start, or after it had been on for 20 minutes?
Cold start
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You have a GPSr with a high sensitivity chip, trying it's darnedest to maintain a "lock" INSIDE, without a clear view of the satellites,WITH all kinds of reflected signals.........what do you expect??????
You'll get some of that "wandering" outside while stationary, but not to that degree.
Well, here's 30 minutes outside in a clear area: http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/282/outsidebm2.jpg
It's actually worse in some directions, plus I had to scale it out to 50' just to contain it.
Oregon's Touch Screen
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
This may have been discussed at some point and I missed it by not reading every word on the subject. Excuse me if I did. But I would like to know one simple issue- is the new Garmin Oregon's touch screen a hard durable material such as used in iPhones or a soft flexible plastic that's going to be easily scratched, especially by repeatedly handling its surface and dragging gritty fingers over it such as when panning a map screen?