Didjerrydo
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Posts posted by Didjerrydo
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I am just wondering how many Colorado's out there have this issue. I personally have seen 3 here at the store (we got 3 in). I'd just like to get a survey of how extensive this problem is.
What happens, for those that haven't followed this thread, is, when the units are powered off, the clock function either completely stops, or just looses a large chunk of time. You'll notice this when you re-boot if you will immediately press the Power/Backlight Key again as soon as the unit opens the first screen. The current (hopefully) time should be displayed there. If it is not current time, this problem is occuring in your unit.
Obviously, this disrupts any and all time-based functions. If it has stopped for a long time, it is going to definitely interfere with the unit acquiring properly because it will be looking for the wrong satellites! This will also affect the alarm clock function because it depends on accurate timekeeping while the unit is switched off.
Hopefully, if this is widespread, Garmin will jump all over this issue immediatey land, if it is fixable by an update, address it with the necessary update right now. Otherwise, they're going to see tons of Colorado's being returned to them as defective.
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Did you ask him to explain how the unit then would support the alarm clock or the sampling of pressure data at regular time intervals, when it has been turned off? If the clock can't issue a time-based interrupt to turn it on and execute the requested function?
You're right. Any time-based function will be screwed up. Garmin needs to, and I feel very surely, after talking to this fellow, will, be addressed pronto. Hopefully, this is fixable via a firmware update which will come soon, and not a end up being a hardware issue.
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Sounds like you got a bad one too. Just for kicks let's see if they' got similar serial #'s, mine is: 169000131 and the other unit that had the same issue was: 169000130.
169000573
Add my 300 to the list. 169000152. The moment I turn it off, the clock stops. Next time I turn it on (5 mins or 5 hours) the time will be exactly what it was when I turned it off. Once it gets satellite fix, it gets the correct time.
Is there any point in calling Garmin's tech support? Or should I just exchange it at REI?
For you probably not. But I would be curious what Garmin has to say. Can they explain exactly what the problem is? Can they say that it affects only a certain number of units (ie. by serial number, or model number)? Are there any quick and easy check to determine if someone has the problem? If you find out I'll add it to the FAQ.
GO$Rs
I talked to the Garmin handheld support supervisor at lenght about this clock problem yesterday. As a dealer, I now have 2 units shipping back directly to him for examination. Believe you me, he's very interested in examining these units to try to figure what's happening here!
The only thing he stressed was to make sure your unit sets outside somewhere with clear view of the sky for at least 20 minutes in order to get a complete almanac established. I'd try this before I returned it to the dealer or Garmin.
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While playing with the gmapbmap.img on my Colorado 300 I made an accidental discovery. If you have TOPO2008 DVD installed on your computer go to C:\Garmin\TOPOUS2008 and find the file - Topo100BM_v400.img. Now copy and paste a copy to your desktop. Rename it gmapbmap.img.
Now, plug in your Colorado (mine is a 300) and save a copy of the gmapbmap.img on the garmin drive to backup the original basemap (always good to save the original DEM basemap).
Load the old Topo100BM that has been renamed gmapbmap.img to the GPS drive and reboot.
The new basemap only covers North America but it does have visible DEM information. For those trying to squeez more storage space out of your 300 this may be a solution (effectively freeing up 70MB from the original basemap which is 90MB) as the renamed topo100bm is only 20MB.
Anyway, the benefits may be limited but its fun to try. If anyone can think of more benefits to something like this please let us know.
It seems like you could add any .img file and rename it gmapbmap.img and have it act as a basemap. The cool thing about the hidden basemap in TOPO2008 is that it still has DEM information. Oh yeah, it isnt routable but if you have routing street software that doesn't matter.
Do you have any screen shots of what this looks like?
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I work in an outdoor store and have found this problem now with 2 Colorado 300's . If the unit isn't allowed to acquire signal and initialize, even for a couple of hours, its clock looses as much as 15 minutes time which prevents the unit from acquiring. Garmin acknowledges this issue and just says units with this problem need to be returned to them.
I don't know how widespread this problem is, but we here at this store found 2 out of 3 with it! Of course, this also screws up the alarm clock function as well. If you're depending on it to wake you up, you may oversleep!
Oh boy, I think my Colorado is defective then. I turned my GPS on for around 60 minutes earlier today, more than enough time to download the almanac and such. Then I turned it off and back on an hour or so later. Between the time I shut it off and turned it back on the unit had lost approximately 40 minutes.
Funny thing is, I never noticed this problem utill I updated to the latest firmware/software versions....
Sounds like you got a bad one too. Just for kicks let's see if they' got similar serial #'s, mine is: 169000131 and the other unit that had the same issue was: 169000130.
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My 300's internal clock has now apparently completely stopped @ 2:50 PM yesterday for some reason. It's going back to its maker today!
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How long do you have to have the unit turned on w/o GPS signal to see the time drift? It drift pretty rapidly if it gets off by 15 minutes in a matter of a day or 2?
GO$Rs
I'm seeing that much drift in less than one hour!
So if someone wanted to test their Colorado to see if it had this problem they could turn it on, put the GPS in demo mode, let it sit for an hour and see if the clock was off by a significant (5 minutes?) amount?
GO$Rs
Just turn the unit completely off for, say overnight, then turn it back on somewhere where it can't acquire satellite signal after boot up, push the light/clock/start button and see what time the clock display is showing. Is it correct?
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How long do you have to have the unit turned on w/o GPS signal to see the time drift? It drift pretty rapidly if it gets off by 15 minutes in a matter of a day or 2?
GO$Rs
I'm seeing that much drift in less than one hour!
So if someone wanted to test their Colorado to see if it had this problem they could turn it on, put the GPS in demo mode, let it sit for an hour and see if the clock was off by a significant (5 minutes?) amount?
GO$Rs
Just turn the unit completely off for, say overnight, then turn it back on wgere it can't acquire satellites and push the light/clock/start button and see what time the clock displaw is showing. Is it correct?
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How long do you have to have the unit turned on w/o GPS signal to see the time drift? It drift pretty rapidly if it gets off by 15 minutes in a matter of a day or 2?
GO$Rs
I'm seeing that much drift in less than one hour!
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Seems strange. It should not really be possible if you have a satellite fix. The GPS uses time signals to determine your location.
The time drift is occuring while the GPS unit is off. If you either boot it up where it can't get signal or quickly check the time prior to it locating on the next boot, this is where the time error is seem.
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I work in an outdoor store and have found this problem now with 2 Colorado 300's . If the unit isn't allowed to acquire signal and initialize, even for a couple of hours, its clock looses as much as 15 minutes time which prevents the unit from acquiring. Garmin acknowledges this issue and just says units with this problem need to be returned to them.
I don't know how widespread this problem is, but we here at this store found 2 out of 3 with it! Of course, this also screws up the alarm clock function as well. If you're depending on it to wake you up, you may oversleep!
Sorry, I'm a little confused. If you get a sec, would you mind stating that in a different way for me. If the unit isn't allowed to acquire signal and initialize...are you talking about the very first time you turn it on? Or are you talking about everytime you turn it on? Thanks for the help.
What I mean, is even after the unit has been initialized, or as far as that goes, even after it has sat outside for hours and recieved all necessary data and then turned off, I find that when turned back on, if you quickly check the time by pressing the "on" switch prior to the unit locating, the time displayed will have lost as huch as 15-20 minutes in less than an hour! This ain't good!
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I work in an outdoor store and have found this problem now with 2 Colorado 300's . If the unit isn't allowed to acquire signal and initialize, even for a couple of hours, its clock looses as much as 15 minutes time which prevents the unit from acquiring. Garmin acknowledges this issue and just says units with this problem need to be returned to them.
I don't know how widespread this problem is, but we here at this store found 2 out of 3 with it! Of course, this also screws up the alarm clock function as well. If you're depending on it to wake you up, you may oversleep!
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Normally this happens by itself, as most people will use their GPS more than 20 minutes at a time.
Well, I thought I had fixed the issue, but it's starting again. I also am noticing that when this occurs, the internal clock is way off (15 minutes slow). I'm afraid that this unit has some other more serious problems?
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20 minutes is a good estimate. Transmitting the entire almanac data block takes 12.5 minutes. It's split over 25 frames, each 30 seconds long. Each frame is split in five subframes. The first three subframes are specific for the transmitting satellite, as they contain clock correction and ephemeris data for that particular SV. The last two contain almanac data, which repeats every 12.5 minutes, as stated above.
If all almanac data is transmitted before the 12.5 minute cycle has ended, it starts over again. Hence 20 minutes is a good estimate of the time required to make reasonably sure that the reeiver has been able to listen to all frames once, and to most of them twice.
That's interesting, looks like GPS manufacturers would tell owners that they should let them lay somewhere undisturbed and do this data "soak up" to get them properly set up to acquire properly!
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After discovering that my new Colorado 300 was seemingly having trouble re-acquiring signal and re-locatoing even after a short (20 mile) trip while it had been turned off, I started talking to Garmin concerning this issue.
I was able to talk to a fellow who actually seemed to know his stuff on the Colorados and told me something very helpful and informative. After explaining the problem to him, he suggested that perhaps the unit had never actually established a thorough almanac to work with. What he suggested was to take the unit outdoors on an open area with an unobstructed view of the sky, and just let it boot up and lay there undisturbed for at least 20 minutes. He emphasized that 20 minutes is the magic number (of course longer is OK too), but that apparently a new unit this in needed to totally get its stuff in a row.
I had never realized this, nor have I ever seen this bit of information in any Garmin product manual in the past.
I have done this procedure and I do believe it has hopefully fixed the problem. You might want to give it a try if you, like myself, have been too busy playing with your new toy to ever let it completely "find itself"!
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There's a lot of mixed signals on this topic. Has anyone had any success with SDHC cards 8gig or larger?
I was told by Garmin's tech weenies that 4 GB was the upper limit. I think there's no such thing as a non-SDHC 4 GB (or larger) card.
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Is anyone else having problems getting their Colorado 300 to locate after moving it several miles while turned off, then turning it back on? I'm having this problem repeatedly. After a 15-20 mile trip, when it boots up to the satellite ststus page it just won't pick up satellites. Eventually, it will give an error message, such as when indoors, or you can go to>Options>Autolocate and it will finally locate. Garmin admits having this issue with the Colorado 400's but say they haven't seen it yet in the 300's.
Did you ask why it would be different between the 300 and 400t? I can't believe it would have anything to do with the 400t having more memory or preloaded maps (the only differences).
I'll make sure this is covered in the Issues List.
GO$Rs
It is the same update for both units. I really think that it has just begun to be discovered and the first instances happened to be with 400's.
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Is anyone else having problems getting their Colorado 300 to locate after moving it several miles while turned off, then turning it back on? I'm having this problem repeatedly. After a 15-20 mile trip, when it boots up to the satellite ststus page it just won't pick up satellites. Eventually, it will give an error message, such as when indoors, or you can go to>Options>Autolocate and it will finally locate. Garmin admits having this issue with the Colorado 400's but say they haven't seen it yet in the 300's.
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Every time I try to load portions of both City Navigator NT, then portions of TOPO 2008 onto the sane SD or SDHC cards for my Colorado 300, whether it's thru a card reader or the unit itself, I end up with either no maps loaded at all, or only one map set loaded (apparently one program bumps the other one out!).
Has anyone done this successfully.. what's the trick here and what am I doing wrong anyway?
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I wonder if it really makes much difference if you use one of the more expensive, higher speed SD cards with the Colorado's. I'm currently loading a huge block of topo maps (from TOPO 2008) on a Kingston 4 GB SD-HC (4) card that's already got the entire City Nav NT program loaded on it and it's taking about 6 hours! What I'm just hoping in that this won't erase all the City Nav NT maps. This has a tendency to play that way occasionally yet at other times both groups load side by side fine. Does anyone know the trick here to loadind two programs on a large card ? Does it matter whether you load thru the GPS or a card reader?
You need a special SDHC card reader to transfer data to and from an SDHC card. I'm guessing that the transfer rate is faster with an SDHC card reader than using the GPS.
But I would assume ,that since the GPS can read and use the new SD-HC cards, one can load mapping onto the card thru the GPS, right? Hopefully so, or I'm wasting 6 hours here loading the data to nowhere!
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Had this same issue with my 400 not locating satellites. After a couple of minutes it asked me if i wanted to autolocate or turn sats off. I did the autolocate and they came up right away. For the record, this was several miles from where I last had it on. -WW
I think Garmin has a problem here. I never had this with any earlier units I've owned. I just hope it's fixable via a software update and not something hardware related.
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I wonder if it really makes much difference if you use one of the more expensive, higher speed SD cards with the Colorado's. I'm currently loading a huge block of topo maps (from TOPO 2008) on a Kingston 4 GB SD-HC (4) card that's already got the entire City Nav NT program loaded on it and it's taking about 6 hours! What I'm just hoping in that this won't erase all the City Nav NT maps. This has a tendency to play that way occasionally yet at other times both groups load side by side fine. Does anyone know the trick here to loadind two programs on a large card ? Does it matter whether you load thru the GPS or a card reader?
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After using my Colorado in various lighting conditions, there is no question that the display is not as easy to see as the 60's, 76's, vistas, etc. That being said, I do believe that its a bit of a trade off. The Colorado does have a larger screen and higher resolution. In bright sunlight and with backlight on, IMHO, the Colorado is better givin the resolution and size. Anything in between though, such as a room moderately illuminated or a cloudy day, the older models take the cake.
One thing I would like to comment on is the poor implementation of colors / contrasts on the menus. Take the trip computer screen for example. The dark grey field headers are just plain tough to see. Even if you load a white background screen, still, the grey shading of the fields and the darker letters is just a lousy setup. It would be nice to be able to customize those settings to change those colors and contrasts for easier viewing/reading. If the screen visibility is a fatal issue for folks considering the Colorado, Garmin may be good to make at least the menus easier to see.
Yeah, I'm with you there. I'd like to see things like the ability to change the color of the track logs, satellite signal strenght bars on the satellite page as well as have the day/night changing color schemes!
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But would you think this is a software or hardware issue?
This Colorado Clock Thing Is a Real Pain!
in GPS technology and devices
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Because, it would be interesting to see how many defective Colorado's are out there and hoe widespread this issue is! What's wrong with that?