mrp

I'm not familiar with the deluo GPS receiever, but from context I'm assuming that it's one of those that hooks up to the laptop via USB and has no display of it's own. (Sometimes called a mouse GPS, because that's what it looks like) These aren't great for Geocaching, mostly because you have to haul the laptop around with you to get any readings, and laptops aren't great for hiking because they're 1) unwieldy 2) have short battery life and 3) aren't likely to survive being dropped too many times. Having said that, you can probably geocache with this setup, though I would invest the $50-$100 in a used eTrex or Mag 315. There are a number of good software packages out there for use with an NMEA GPS. OziExplorer, ExpertGPS and Fugawi will all allow you to plot your position over downloaded maps (or scanned maps that you can calibrate yourself (I'm not sure if Fugawi does this, but the other two do). You can download cache coordinates, and plot them on top of the dl'd or scanned map. Benchmarks can be problematic. There are several different ways to overlay a Lat/Long grid over the globe (called a datum). Most GPS recievers use WGS '84 (World Geodetic survery 1984.. I think) by default. Most Topographic maps and old surveys use NAD '27. If you use one in place of the other without converting, then you can get errors of a few hundred feet. The Benchmark coordinates have supposedly all be coverted from NAD27 to WGS84 on the geocaching site, but every time I've found one here in the SF Bay Area, the published coordinates were 100-150 ft. off, which is consistent with the coordinates not being converted. Use an urban microcache or virtual, the are usually much more reliable... though you can't really rely on any consumer grade GPS getting you closer than about 30 ft. From there on, you have to use a little inductive reasoning, or just root around a lot. Hope that helps, -- Pneumatic

quote:Originally posted by Neo_Geo:I'm actually PRETTY RIGHT! Nope.. you're wrong, you just think you're right. The Lock-on-road flag is available whether or not the maps you have loaded will support it. I have a legend with both US Topo and R&R, and though I can check the little box on my legend that says "lock-on-road".. it doesn't actually modify my position so that I'm on the displayed roads. However, when using the maps from CitySelect NA (I also have a V), the lock-on-road feature will actually cause my little position icon to jump to the nearest street (within about 200 ft. or so.) So.. while the option is present even for the basemap, it doesn't do anything unless the loaded maps support it, and that (seems) to be true only for MetroGuide, CitySelect and CityNavigator maps. I've learned never to question the wisdom of Anders. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he has secret access to Garmin internal documents and information. He's never wrong. -- Pneumatic

quote:Originally posted by The Wombles:I'd like to see this but it isn't on my History Channel. Are you in North America by any chance? See.. that's the difference. Your history channel has history programs (oops... programmes). Ours only has shows about military hardware and battles. -- Pneumatic

quote:Originally posted by Criminal:Did you see the price for it? $80+! They're nuts! Hmm.. I can't find an $80 dollar part, but I did find this $32 5.25" arm. -- Pneumatic

When you want to go "off-road", it's best to turn the "lock-on-road" feature off. To do this, on the map screen, press Menu->Setup Map and on the map setup screen, go down to the "Lock On Road" entry and set it to "OFF". You can turn it back on the same way, or the next time you calculate an on-road route (goto by fastest or shortest route), the lock-on-road feature will be re-enabled automatically. -- Pneumatic

Hawk-eye, I've was just looking at your Vista LED repair document, and was wondering about one of the pictures. The picture with the label "This shows the unit laid open", I can understand how most of the parts fit together, but I am comfused on one point. I see the wires going from the daughterboard up to the connector on the back of the unit, but I don't see any wires going to the battery connection posts between the two battery wells. Are they there, and just not visible or do the posts make some sort of direct mechanical connection with one of the circut boards? Thanks, -- Pneumatic

In general, in order to navigate to a specific point, you create a waypoint with the desired position, and then tell the unit to navigate to that point. I don't own an iFinder, but I downloaded the manual from this page, and according to that manual, the HOME and MOB (man overboard) waypoints are the only waypoints you can create in "Easy Mode". In order to create arbitrary waypoints you need to set it to "Advanced Mode" (page 39 of your manual, or 45 in the PDF file). On Page 51 (PDF: 57), it tells you how to navigate to a waypoint. It appears from page 60-61 (66-67), that the way to create a waypoint at an aribitrary position is the same as for Garmin and Magellan. You create a new waypoint (usually at your current position), and then edit the coordinates to match the ones you actually want. -- Pneumatic

Delorme StreetAtlas will do most of what you want. It will do auto-routing from address/point A to address/point B. It does voice prompting, automatic recalculation if you get off-route, and has very good accuracy (though never quite perfect.) I own SA 9 (2002? 2001?), and here's a few problems I have run into: The address search interface is quirky and difficult. Often the only way to find an address is to know the exact address with zip code. The ability to search for nearby business' by name and/or type is almost unusable, and interacting with the little icons on the map is difficult and non-intuitive. When the difference between the map's idea of where the road should be and the actuall location gets large, it can be REALLY annoying as it *constantly* tells you to get back on course. The interface for calculating detours is very cryptic. As of SA9, you had to use drawing tools to draw "exclusion areas", and then recalculate the route. The instructions for this are buried deep in the hints, and are not obvious. Whenever I need to do this, I need to pull over for 5-10 minutes and re-learn the procedure... not practical when you just want to get around a slow area or an unexpected section of road construction. It's usable if you know in advance a particular area you want to avoid. (but then, if you knew that.. you probably know the area well enough not to need the software.) Maybe some of these problems have been addressed/fixed. Someone with a more recent copy could give more info. -- Pneumatic

I was looking at purchasing the european maps for my V so my parents could take it with them to the UK next year. I accidentally looked at CityNavigator Europe rather than CitySelect Europe, and I got sticker shock. CityNavigator has a MSRP of $625 and the lowest I could find was $599, whereas CitySelect has an MSRP or $325 and I could find it for as little as ~$250. Looking at the garmin site the coverage maps appear identical, and using the map viewer, I couldn't see any differences in the coverage of a couple of major cities. So, why the factor of 2 difference in price? I know that the CN software is "intended for the StreetPilot series", whereas the CS is for the other autorouting units (including the V and the iQue), but in the specs for CS, it says it WILL work with the SP-III. So, does CN have better rural coverage? more POI? a more guilible target demographic? -- Pneumatic

quote:Originally posted by Team Shibby:If you pay close attention to the track log memory meter, you can save it when it is almost full and start a complete new one. This can be done up to ten times While true, this is misleading. When you "save" a track it reduces the number of trackpoints to the maximum allowed for a saved track, 200 I think. In order to do this , it trows away almost all the trackpoints except for those that represent major changes in direction. It also throws away all date/time information, so you can't reconstruct "speed" when you download those tracks. -- Pneumatic

One of the major differences between the III/III+ and the V is the faster processor in the V. I suspect that the slower processor means that "new" solutions to the equations (i.e. you've moved) take longer to converge, meaning that larger movements are necessary before movement is "noticed", and it will take longer for the correct answer to settle it (leading to the jumping arrow). You can probably mitigate this limitation by reducing the amount of other things that the processor needs to do. Use the trip computer or compass arrow rather than the map display. If you want to use the map display, then use it with "north up" rather than "track up" (rotating the images is computationally expensive.) WAAS is also computationally expensive, though if you CAN receive the satellites then the eventual answer may be better than with WAAS off. -- Pneumatic

The little quartz oscilators they use in these GPS units are pretty good, but tend to have tempurature dependencies because higher tempuratures cause the little chunks of quartz to phycially expand, which changes their vibrational modes. (At least that's my understanding.) The signal in this case is the signal from the oscilator(s), not from the satelites (though those oscilators are used in the reciever section of unit.) To combat this, GPS manufacturers use an internal table of correction values for each tempurature. This table is calibrated at the factory for each unit, and is constantly being refined while the unit is in use. However, it's possible for bad values to creep into that table, making is difficult to get lock, or making the position fixes less accurate. At that point, you have to dump the values in that table, and recalibrate the unit. I think that's what they did, but I don't really know. -- Pneumatic [This message was edited by Pneumatic on August 20, 2003 at 12:32 PM.]

What appletree said is correct, but given the new security rules (err.. "advisories") just released last week, you probably want to make sure you have fresh/fully charged batteries, so that you can turn the unit on and show that it's operational. -- Pneumatic [This message was edited by Pneumatic on August 10, 2003 at 10:47 AM.]

I'm not sure I understand your question, so I'll answer the question I THINK you intended to ask, and hope I get close. Rather than keeping both the current coordinates and the coordinates of waypoint you want to get to on the screen at the same time, you can choose to "goto" that waypoint, and it will display an arrow on the compass screen, and tell you the distance and direction from your current location to the selected waypoint (which is probably what you want to know anyway, isn't it?) Here's how you do that. From any screen, you can bring up a "find" menu by pressing the find button (bottom button on the left side of the unit). In the find menu, you can then use the click-stick to highlight the "waypoint" option, and press down on the stick to select it. From there select "by name", and use the stick with the little pop-up keyboard to spell out the beginning of the waypoint name, and then select "OK" when you can see it in the list. Then select the waypoint, and it will bring up the waypoint information page. From there you can use the stick to highlight various elements and buttons. Select the "goto" button (down at the bottom of the screen on the left), and you're on your way. While it's the active destination, you can still cycle through the screens, and it will remain your selected destination (until you tell it to "stop navigating", or select a new destination.) Once you've gotten there, you don't necessarily want to delete the waypoint. I keep mine for context and as reminders of where things are. If you just want to stop navigating to that point, from the compass or map screens, use the stick to select the options menu (next to the page menu at the top of the screen) and select "Stop Navigating" from that menu. If you want to actually delete the waypoint, then you can bring up the waypoint information page (a shortcut is just to hold the find button down for 3 or 4 seconds to bring up the waypoint that you're currently navigating to), and then use the options menu to select "delete". I hope this answers your question. -- Pneumatic (aka Mitch)

quote:Originally posted by Brainerd:You can store owner info on your GPS V. Save it as a Waypoint. Call the waypoint 001-OWNER, which will put it at the top of your waypoint list. Then add the phone # and reward information in the Notes Field for the waypoint. And, so if the unit is found by an honest person, who happens to know how to use a GPS V, find a waypoint, by name, and then knows how to access the waypoint notes field(*), you're all set. (*) I had mine for 2 months before I found that option. Really.. You're much better off just hacking the firmware. More noticable, harder to reverse, etc. -- Pneumatic

The rubber on mine actually ended up tearing, and I decided to do the repair myself. I used Black Max from LocTite (product#380). I'm not entirely happy with the results. Some parts are coming loose again, though the main repair (the tear) is holding well so far. Reading more on their website, I think product #404 or maybe #411 would be better. Be careful using these.. this stuff is industrial strength adhesive, and you really CAN glue a lot of parts of yourself to odd things if you're not careful. Read the materials safety data sheet on these. In general, if you get a small amount (a drop or two), you can run it under cold water to catalyze the adhesive and then it will only be bonded to one piece of skin, rather than bonding two pieces together. If you get a LOT on you (unlikely if, like me, you're using a 1 oz tube of the stuff), then the catalyzation will cause it to release enough heat to cause burns. -- Mitch

I like my legend, though I eventually decided to replace it. Here's a summary of my 2 years experience with it: Good: The form factor makes it really convienent. The battery life is very good. The screen looks really good, though too small for use while driving, other than in the big-numbers mode The lastest firmware adds lots of cool features, like the ability to store 10000 trackpoints. Bad: The little rubber gasket comes loose. Garmin will fix it a few times, but it keeps happening. I have had some luck using a special cyano-acrylate adhesive designed to bond rubber to plastic. There have been a lot of problems with flaky screens. Some claim that it can be fixed by using foam strips along the inside of the battery door, but it hasn't worked for me. There have been reports of problems with the click-stick boots. Under heavy tree cover, it really does have problems holding lock. However, I have heard that it's better at holding lock in a urban canyon environment. I don't have experience with that. All it all, it's probably a very good mid-range unit for geocaching. If you can justify the cost, I recommend the GPS V or the MeriGold. -- Mitch

Finally garmin has started using USB and standard removable media for map storage. I'm curious why they went with CF rather than SD, which seems to be the standard for most portable GPS units. (True, you can get more memory for the price in CF than with SD, and I guess for the Street Pilot they decided that size wasn't as critical as it would be with a handheld unit.) -- Mitch

I'd be surprised to find one actually. Making detailed city maps is an expensive process, and since the new Afganastan government doesn't have much, I doubt there are many.... and there's probably not much market to have it traslated into the mapsend format either. If you can get a good paper map you might be able to scan it and use it on a laptop in conjunction with a program like OziExplorer or ExpertGPS. (I have heard that Ozi is better at thing kind of thing, but I have used ExpertGPS and am reasonably happy with the results, though use of large scale maps is ineffective since it doesn't support any sort of projection). If you can't find a printed map, then you might be able to get some low-resolution satellite imagery. I've heard that there are a number of outlets for that, but don't actually know of any myself. For stuff you can load into the unit, there is a program for Garmin units called MapDekode, which is supposed to let you take vector data and create uploadable maps (Garmin doesnt' support this.) I don't know of an equivient program for Magellan, but that doesn't mean there isn't one out there. Short of that, use the old standby of using waypoints, routes and tracks to give the broad outlines of major thuroughfares, and use it in conjunction with whatever maps you can find (either electronic or dead-tree), use the two together. -- Mitch

I'm having a login issue with the forums. I'm using Apple's new Safari Browser, and in the forums I can't log in. On the main site, I can't log out. In the forums (fora?), when I click on the [login ] button it does nothing. I suspect this is a javascript issue. it works fine under I.E., but I.E. will no longer be supported on Mac OS. On the main site, when I click the logout button, I just cycles back to the opening page, and it says I'm still logged in. When I fetch the 'my cache page', it still comes up with my information. -- Mitch

When I first got my legend about 2 years ago, I would occasionally have this problem, but that was due to a bug in the firmware that was fixed shortly after I got it. Upcrading to firmware 2.11 (at the time) fixed it. Now we're up to something link 3.20. Try upgrading the firmware if you haven't already. Many older bugs will cause this problem. -- Mitch

I'm usually a Garmin man (and you might want to look at the eTrex Legend), but you might consider the Meridian Green or Meridian Gold. The gold can be had for about $260 from Amazon, and is pretty much like the sporttrak pro, but with the addition of an SD memory card slot for additional maps. Of course, a USB SD card reader ($20) and mapsend software (~$80) will push you over the $300 limit. If you're willing to bend your limit a little.. I just got a Garmin GPS V for $330 (after $75 rebate), and it comes with cables, software, and has a lot of capabilities that the SportTrak lacks. (though it also doesn't have a memory card slot, which is the core of it's 2 big limitations, limited memory and slow map uploads). -- Mitch

Try looking at CockpitGPS. It an online book (in PDF format) that is written by an airline pilot about using a GPS (either aviation or non-aviation models] in general aviation and boating settings. It talks about the various features of the units, and techniques used for different navigation styles (point-to-point vs. airway, etc). My dad is also a pilot, and is using a homemade system using a Garmin GPS15 OEM GPS sensor package, feeding information to a compaq iPaq running Anywhere Map and Mountain Scope. He also has a Garmin GPS 35 GPS (looks like a computer mouse) that he can hook up to the iPaq for use in planes other than his own. (He's an instructor, and therefore flys a lot of rented planes.) -- Mitch

GPS units specifically for the Pocket PC, like this one or this one, generally aren't very good for geocaching, since they can only be used wtih a PDA, and PDAs are expenisvie, and generally not up to being dropped in the forest while it's raining. Most good standalone GPS units can be interfaced with either a PDA or a laptop using a serial cable. (PDAs often require a null-modem adapter and laptops without "legacy" serial ports need a USB<->serial adaptor.) Once interfaced with a laptop or PDA, you can use a solution like Delorme StreetAtlas for the laptop or Teletype for the PPC PDA. The exceptions to that rule are: The Dell Axim has had lots of problems using serial port interfaces to peripherals. Also the new Garmin Geko 101 doesn't have a serial interface. -- Mitch

Here's an alpha version of the cumulative tracklog web application I've been working on. It still lacks some polish, and since it's hosted on my home box via DSL, it may be a little slow (database queries aren't optimized yet either.) Currently I have tracklogs from 4 people(including myself.) I don't have an automated submision system (yet.) You can view a simple version here or a slightly different (and slower) version here that uses color to show relative elevation changes. Basic navigation can be done through the coordinate entry pane on the top of the page, or using the direction buttons surrounding the image. Clicking anywhere in the image will recenter there. Some interesting coordinates to look at Lat: 40.875 Long: -124.05 Scale: 25 This shows a pretty clear picture of the streets in a little town called Arcata, CA. It's where I went to college. It also shows Hwy 299 heading out toward the very small town of Blue Lake, CA (where my dad grew up). Lat: 37.85 Long: -122.38 Scale: 100 This is the northern part of the San Francisco Bay Area. You can make out three different bridges from this one. The Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the Golden Gate (very hard to pick out.) Scroll around and zoom in, since this is the area I have the most detail for. (though if you zoom out far enough it will take a while to load, since there are lots of trackpoints to process in this area. Lat: 37.978 Long: -122.329 Scale: 10 This shows the tracklogs I made driving around the local mall not too far from my house... The color trackpoint browswer shows interesting elevation information. Lat: 30.29 Long: -98.43 Scale: 400 Southeastern Texas.. mostly in the San Antonio-Austin-Fort Worth corridor. Lat: 42.434 Long: -83.295 Scale: 4 This shows the tracklogs that GOT GPS donated to the project, outlining several blocks in downtown detroit (I think). Zoom out a ways from this one to get a sense of perspective.