eaparks
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Posts posted by eaparks
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The Garmin Oregon wiki is a very good source of information and will give you a lot of "How To" information in the Knowledge Base section. http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/
As seldom sn mentioned earlier, lots of FREE maps to download from http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ including 24k topos that will work on Garmin units.
I was curious to see what the best current price of the Oregon 450 is that I could find, quickly and it looks to be $262.95 with No Tax and free shipping from GPS4Us. https://www.gps4us.com/GARMIN-Oregon-450--P1140.html
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I know in your opening post you said not interested in touchscreen, if the only reason you mentioned this is due to price, the Oregon 450 can be bought for $250 - $290 range. Generally, the touchscreens have now seperated out 2 groups of users, those that don't like them at all and those who love them.
I'm in the love them category: they are easier to teach new users, the Oregon has 1/4" larger and higher resolution screen, a 1/4" may not sound like much but it is very noticeable when using, especially when you start wanting to add data fields to your map screen. For hiking and camping you will probably find useful having a data field on your map screen page. The Orgeon will fit nicely in a shirt pocket and has reasonable battery life. If you are someone that will add data... waypoints, want to record and rename tracks, or enter new coordinates in the field the touch screens are a lot faster at being able to do these tasks. I enter a lot of new information everytime I go out so I would dread having to go back to the buttons on an Etrex, or 62, or 78 series Garmin.
Since you are looking at mulitple uses you will also find "Profiles" very useful in being able to set up a particular activity (hiking, camping, geocaching, etc) with it's own unique settings and activating all of those setting, including which maps you want displayed, just by activating that Profile. Several Garmin models will do Profiles.
My suggestion would be to try both; your short list of a button GPS along side an Oregon 450 with the larger touchscreen buttons and actually try entering a set of new coordinates, since this was one of your higher priorities of being able to do easily.
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Most everything in the Oregon wiki will apply to the Oregon 450. There is a lot of very good information here in all of the Knowledge Base:
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Take a look at http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/ you should find what your looking for.
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I use a black cordura cell phone case with elastic sides, made by McGuire-Nicholas. Case isn't much bigger than my Oregon GPS. Has a velcro flap over the top and metal belt clip on the back, plus a nylon loop on back for a belt to go through. Very secure setup if using on a belt and still small enough to go in a pocket. I like this setup for hunting, easy to take in and out of case and the added protection.
edit: and maintains satellite lock while in the case on my belt.
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I would definitely go with the Oregon 450 on Black Friday due to the price it is going to be available for - $250 at Cabelas and probably other vendors, too. I went from an Oregon 400 to the 450 and am glad I did.
Why is the 450 better than the 400?
The 450 screen is better in sunlight. See http://www.gpscity.c...ube=ORHi9V6h7Og
And a good comparison of the sizes...
Plus, I do a lot of custom symbols (waypoints and POIs) the 450 can use custom waypoint symbols, the 400 couldn't.
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Hi,
I'm currently shopping a GPSr for somebody else. She wants one that has touchscreen. The only two models I know that have the touchscreen feature are the Oregon and Dakota family. How do they compare to each other? I know that the Dakota's screen is a bit smaller (2,6 inches vs 3 inches). Is there anything else I should know?
I should mention that I already have an Oregon 300. Do the Dakotas have the same kind of features?
Thanks.
I would definitely go with the Oregon 450 on Black Friday due to the price it is going to be available for - $250 at Cabelas and probably other vendors, too. I went from an Oregon 400 to the 450 and am glad I did.
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Ted,
What you are wanting to do can be done rather easily, after you get the hang of it with the 1st one. I have put 4 on GPSFileDepot and list them as Kmz maps; they are trail maps and are fairly accurate. The accuracy depends on how accurate the paper map is plus how well you georeference it in Google Earth, if that is what you use. For my needs, usually on an ATV, I generally prefer good resolution at a zoom level of 800' out to about 0.2 mi. zoom level on the GPS. This is determined by how many .jpg files you break your paper map into when you scan it.
If you are expecting accuracy down around a zoom level of 100' or so you may be dissapointed but it all depends on how you want to use the map as to what degree of accuracy you'll be happy with. To me they are great for a lot of my needs when other maps are not available. Being able to take any .jpg image, georeference it, and then use it for navigating opens up a lot of possibilties.
You don't need any special software to do it. It can be done with MS Paint and Google Earth. There are other programs that can simplify the stitching, but it can be done manually without much trouble, once you've done it once. I find that when I am stitching .jpg files during the georeferencing process and the borders of different .jpg files overlapp it works best to give adjacent overlapping map tiles different draw order numbers. Such as 1 tile have a draw order of 0, the overlapping tile a draw order of 1, and repeat this process. If another tile overlaps both of the previous tiles give it a draw order of 2. The only reason I suggest this is because in some instances when the draw orders of the overlapping tiles are the same it can cause the map to lock up and not display on the GPS. As far as the map locking up on the GPS it is a hit and miss case by case and not always repeatable. Have never had a kmz map to lock up when overlapping .img files are given different draw orders as I mentioned. If you are doing a large area that would require many .jpg files to be stitched then you would not want to do them all manually due to the time involved.
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Thanks to Coggins and EAParks, I now have the icons. I will attempt to load them in the next few days and get my hunting map updated with the new icons.
I know this is an old topic but I just came across it and am trying to do the same thing. How do I get the hunting icons? I downloaded ximage from garmin. I just need to know where to find the hunting icons in Mapsource or how I can create them. Thanks for the help.
If you want to send me your email address in a PM. I'll send all of them to you in a .zip file.
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With pretty much all Custom Maps you download, you always need to have your GPS set to "Most" for the detail level. When the map author does not put at least most of the trails, if not all, in all possible map levels you end up with the problem you are seeing. Also, it can make it very hard to locate the map on your GPS if you are in a different part of the country from where the map is. If this is also a problem an easy remedy is to create a Waypoint for some point on the map so you can do a quick find for that waypoint, in order to locate the map on your GPS, instead of having to zoom and pan all over the GPS screen trying to find the map.
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When your GPS is connected via the USB in Spanner Mode you are always asked if you want to connect as a drive, saying no will allow you to operate your GPS as you normaly would when navigating but would be powered off of the USB cable.
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I would stay with the Gamin units because of the availabilty of online free maps that are created and shared by other Garmin users that you can easily install on Garmin units only. Take a look at http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ and look at all of the free maps available; currently 477.
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You can recreate the original profiles yourself just like adding a new profile. If the backgrounds (the .jpg files) are also gone then you would need to create/assign a background, but this doesn't keep you from creating the profile. The original Profiles are: Automotive, Recreational, Geocaching, Fitness, and Marine. You may prefer the custom backgrounds with the all white background and a custom colored boarder, available for free on the Oregon wiki site.
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Thanks to everyone. Myotis is right about the poiuploader, if the points can't be marked as found or even editied to become geocaches then it is not quite what we need. For today I tried gsak but when I try to upload additional waypoints it uploads everything and gave me duplicates of everything that was added on the device. And I can't figure out how to enter comments. So I entered my coordinates manually into the device for best results.
So my question about which device is now solved. And now I am wondering how best to interface waypoints which can be marked found and edited on the device. Downloaded when finished and additionnal points added without duplicating the old.
Another option: create Excel .csv file with coordinates; use GPSBabel and convert the file to a .gpx file. Mapsource will open a .gpx file and resave the file as a .gdb file in Mapsource. Select all waypoints at 1 time and change all waypoint symbols to a red flag. Transfer .gdb file, using Mapsource, to GPS as waypoints. When tree is found and cut change the red flag symbol for the waypoint to a blue or green flag on your GPS (or whatever symbol you choose). This would be a quick edit in the field and could be transferred back to Mapsource and printed for a record of the problem areas corrected.
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If ease of use for non-tech individuals and a big part of it's use will be for entering coordiates manually, then to me it would be no question but to use a GPS that has a touch screen.
After using a Garmin XL12, 12C; Extrexes: Vista C, Vista Cx, Vista HCx; 60CSx; Oregons 400c, 400t, and now an Oregon 450 the use of the touch screen is a lot quicker to learn and a whole lot easier to enter data manually in. The Oregon 450 is a very good choice and there have been 3 different occasions in the past year when you can catch it on sale for around $250; normally you can find it for around $349 online.
Street maps may be something that you want to consider before narrowing it down to a GPS because with all of Garmin's GPS their route-able street maps are locked and can only be used on 1 GPS. You can buy Garmin's route-able street maps (City Navigator) on a memory card instead of on a DVD and then you can swap the memory card from 1 GPS to another but then you can't utilize the program on your computer.
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I have 133,909 Custom POIs in mine and still adding, don't know what the actual limit is... never have seen a limit specified except for the size of the memory card. My custom poi file of 133,909 is just over 12 Mb,they don't take up much space on the card. I have a mix of .gpx and .csv files; .csv files use quite a bit less memory than the exact same file in .gpx format does.
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You already have the ideal GPS for what you are wanting to do. Using Excel like you are thinking is also the way to go for a work enviroment, since most everyone who uses a computer already knows something about Excel. All you need to do is train everyone and educate them on how much money they can save the company by making their lists in an Excel .csv file where you can readily downoad it to your GPS. You might as well get the credit for making a repetitive task much simpler thus saving the company money.
Here is an example of 1 line as the information needs to entered in an Excel .csv file. Column 1 and 2 must be the coordinates, Column 3 can be address, street, etc., Column 4 additiional information.
(Col. 1) -86.93670 (Col. 2) 34.78169 (Col. 3) AL. Cracker Barrell (Col.4) Athens- 1212 Kelli Dr. I-65 Exit #351,(256) 232-4141
The (Col. #) was just used to distinguish the columns from one another so the data wouldn't appear as 1 item.
POI Loader is a free download from Garmin and will take less than 2 minutes to transfer your Excel .csv file to your GPS even if the file has more than a 1,000 locations marked, that need attention.
edit: After you have downloaded the file to your GPS you can specify in the GPS at what zoom level for the waypoints (which are now technically called "Custom POIs") to appear on your GPS's screen. Use a unique recognizeable symbol for them and you can easily see all locations on your GPS for the particular area you are in. The only downside to using the Custom POIs method is that you can't make any changes to them on your GPS once loaded... all changes have to be made with a computer. But you could always carry a paper printout of the Excel file and mark them off as the tree was cut.
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My unit has just under 100 JNX files loaded on the microSD card and it takes over 3 minutes to boot up (16gb class 6). I don't really know what kinds of checks are takin place but it's really starting to tick me off. I hope Garmin can do something to speed things along a bit.
That sounds way to long. Don't know why Garmin couldn't write the software to look for just the new files to check since the last power cycle, since other things are stored in memory.
I feel sure you have already reported a detailed report of the problem to Garmin. I would be curious as to what their reply was?
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Im not sure if I found a bug but I cant see any of my archived tracklogs on the map.
Anyone else?
I am having a problem with my archived tracks, also. When I go to "View Map" for an archived track the map instantly zooms in to 20 ft. and shows the map in the middle of the ocean off of the East coast of Africa no matter where the track is actually located (some in MS and some in TN).
If I return the archived track back to "Make Favorite" then the tracks shows up properly.
edit: Reported problem to Garmin at OregonBeta@garmin.com Anyone else experiencing this should report this also so maybe Garmin will have it corrected in the next Beta update.
I received an email from Garmin about 1 hour after I reported the above problem to Garmin and here is their reply, "We have this fixed. This issue will no longer be present in the next software release. –Oregon Software Team".
Looks like Garmin is on top of things.
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Im not sure if I found a bug but I cant see any of my archived tracklogs on the map.
Anyone else?
I am having a problem with my archived tracks, also. When I go to "View Map" for an archived track the map instantly zooms in to 20 ft. and shows the map in the middle of the ocean off of the East coast of Africa no matter where the track is actually located (some in MS and some in TN).
If I return the archived track back to "Make Favorite" then the tracks shows up properly.
edit: Reported problem to Garmin at OregonBeta@garmin.com Anyone else experiencing this should report this also so maybe Garmin will have it corrected in the next Beta update.
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I was curious about screen resolution as compared to other Garmins and in case anyone else is interested in the comparisons I did, here is the information.
Montana: Screen Size 2" x 3.5"; Screen pixel size 480 x 272; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 18,651
Oregon: Screen Size 1.53" x 2.55"; Screen pixel size 240 x 400; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 24,615
Dakota: Screen Size 1.43" x 2.15"; Screen pixel size 160 x 240; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 12,508
62s: Screen Size 1.6" x 2.2"; Screen pixel size 160 x 240; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 10,909
Nuvi 500: Screen Size 2.8" x 2.1"; Screen pixel size 320 x 240; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 13,061
Nuvi 265W: Screen Size 3.81" x 2.25"; Screen pixel size 480 x 272; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 15,235
60CSx: Screen Size 1.5" x 2.2"; Screen pixel size 160 x 240; Pixels/Sq. in. (Pixel Density) 11,636
You would think Garmin would determine what pixel density is optimum for most all ease of viewing conditions and try to stay in the ballpark of those numbers. Plus it really has an affect with custom POI icons and custom waypoint symbols if you use the same pixel dimensions on a 60csx and Oregon. A symbol 24 x 24 pixels is not to large on the Oregon but on the 60CSx it covers up to much of the map, especially if you have several not to far apart.
edit: numbers were rounded in calculations
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Will be interesting to see how the screen's visibility is in the same lighting condition that is not favorable to the Oregons. Will have to be somewhat better due to the reduction in resolution, how much, yet to be determined.
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Wow! How is it that Garmin hasn't incorporated this into the base functionality of MapSource and Basecamp. Seems it would be pretty easy to add a step to the map uploading process that gives you the option to "Save As" where you can give the .img file a custom name rather than allowing it to default "gmapsupp.img".
Hmmm. Where have I seen a command like "Save As" before?? Sounds like a cutting edge kinda concept doesn't it?
Maybe at some point Garmin will do that, since they did it with POI Loader a couple of software updates ago.
Just making the GPS recognize any name.img file was a very big step in the right direction to keep from having to upload hours of maps for just a single update on 1 map. Between all of my custom maps at least 1 gets updated almost every week, so for me my update transfer time to the GPS went from hours to just a few minutes..
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Send 1 map at a time with Mapsource to whatever location you want. Using your PC change the map filename of "gmapsupp.img" (located in the Garmin folder of your 62s) to something like City Navigator.img and do the others 1 at a time changing the gmapsupp.img file name after each map transfer (Ibycus Topo.img and Alberta Trail.img).
Of course this is dependant upon having enough internal memory in your 62s.
Oregon 450 Share Wirelessly?
in GPS technology and devices
Posted
I think you can only send a single waypoint, or track, or route, or geocache at a time.