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Colorado location errors


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Also, the problem is always fixed by turning the unit off and on. Pretty hard to blame hardware.

 

Except the hardware is also turned off and on.... so undergoes a bit of reset itself. :unsure:

 

But I agree that the evidence seems to point to firmware given what we know about the Vista HCx.

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I mentioned it earlier but has anyone see this while in automotive mode using the city nav maps?

 

I have not seen the drift problem while driving on roads and I have seen it regularly while hiking off-road.

 

Perhaps others on this Forum who know more than I do on this topic can comment on your question. However, I believe the GPSr knows when it is on a road and uses data points in its map database which show the center line of roads. Thus, the display will always show you on a road.

 

Don

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I mentioned it earlier but has anyone see this while in automotive mode using the city nav maps?

 

I have not seen the drift problem while driving on roads and I have seen it regularly while hiking off-road.

 

Perhaps others on this Forum who know more than I do on this topic can comment on your question. However, I believe the GPSr knows when it is on a road and uses data points in its map database which show the center line of roads. Thus, the display will always show you on a road.

 

Don

 

I didn't think garmin used snap to road on any of their gps devices like the tomtom.

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I didn't think garmin used snap to road on any of their gps devices like the tomtom.

Yes, the Colorado (and Garmin mapping units in general) have 'Lock On Road' as an option. On the CO, go to Setup/Map/Lock On Road, choices are On/Off. I keep mine Off.

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Yesterday I finally saw the drift, not on my colorado 300 but on my friends when we were out caching. The location we were at was very difficult at establishing a sat lock it took a good 15 - 20 minutes. I did not find this weird because we had a 60CSx in the group and took about the same time to get a good lock.

 

My friend put in the first cache to start to go to which was about 40 feet from where we were standing and his EPE said 26 feet. The distance showed 170 feet away while my colorado and 60Csx showed about 40. I had him turn on and turn off his unit and all of a sudden the numbers were back to normal and matched what ours said.

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I have have seen 3 (different?) drift issues in the last couple of weeks. I believe it started with the FW upgrade to 2.60:

 

1. Driving the car on a winding road: suddenly the track drifts slowly away from the road and then jumps back exactely to the road. This happened two times now.

2. Searching a cache approx. 30 m off for abot 20 min. GPS is changing position all the time, jumping back and force about 10-15 m each jump. Then a big jump to the cache location and the GPS sticks to this location within 2-3m. Even after I walked away a bit and came back, it was absolutely on!

3. We were walking about 100m in one direction, turned around and walked back the exact same way. Then we took another trail, which seemed to be not on the map. After a while we took a rest the suddenly we were back on the map track again... pretty confusing!

 

I have my Colorado since March and I use it a lot in the car, with my bike and for hiking/geocaching, and I belive this issue has not been there from the beginning.

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I have have seen 3 (different?) drift issues in the last couple of weeks. I believe it started with the FW upgrade to 2.60:

 

1. Driving the car on a winding road: suddenly the track drifts slowly away from the road and then jumps back exactely to the road. This happened two times now.

2. Searching a cache approx. 30 m off for abot 20 min. GPS is changing position all the time, jumping back and force about 10-15 m each jump. Then a big jump to the cache location and the GPS sticks to this location within 2-3m. Even after I walked away a bit and came back, it was absolutely on!

3. We were walking about 100m in one direction, turned around and walked back the exact same way. Then we took another trail, which seemed to be not on the map. After a while we took a rest the suddenly we were back on the map track again... pretty confusing!

 

I have my Colorado since March and I use it a lot in the car, with my bike and for hiking/geocaching, and I belive this issue has not been there from the beginning.

1) might be the same drift issue others are reporting, complicated a bit by routing with lock on road. If it really is the same issue, presumably "lock on road" was responsible for correcting the issue without having to power-cycle the unit. Or it might not be the same issue at all.

 

2) Not sure this is the same issue. This one really sounds like plain old high-sensitivity "wandering", although the distances are a little bit large. Also, unless Garmin actually FIXED something in 2.6, the drift issue never clears itself up without power-cycling the unit.

 

3) Not sure I understand this one. Failure of the return track to match the outbound track would be characteristic of the issue others see. Not sure what you mean by the reference to "another trail, which seemed to be not on the map", though. And 100m is rather short by comparison with the distances others report. But anything is possible. If this is the same problem others see, no one else has reported it as correcting itself without a power cycle.

 

If this IS the same issue, it has been there for a long time prior to the 2.6 unit firmware. There is some evidence that it was introduced with the 2.60 chipset firmware, which has been around for quite a while. Although it appears that some people see the issue repeatedly (frequently in the same location), it is rare on the average. So it's possible you've had the problem all along and simply never tickled it before.

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I've had position issues in woodland several times. A couple of days ago I had a positional error under different circumstances. I haven't yet tried to reproduce the circumstances, but it should theoretically be fairly easy to do so I am going to give it a try this week.

 

My normal routine when I finish work is to switch my Colorado on as I walk out the door of the office, put the GPS on my dashboard and drive home. Pretty much every time I start getting positional data as I reach the first roundabout, and by the time I drive onto the motorway the EPE is around 20-30ft. I mention this simply for timing purposes. The terrain is very slight gradients in the countryside, so nothing major to block the view of the sky once I'm out of the office.

 

On the day of the error I switched the Colorado on before I left the building and then got delayed. About 5 seconds after walking out of the door the Colorado beeped and said that it could not find acquire satellites. I selected the option to continue acquiring and then went on my way as usual.

 

When I reached the first roundabout, positional data started as usual. However, once on the motorway I noticed that the GPS was a fair way off to the north (I didn't have tracking switched on unfortunately) and the EPE was reading 70ft. Switching to the satellite page showed that it had acquired about 8 satellites (I was driving so I didn't look too closely) and it was in the process of acquiring 2 more. Signals were strong.

 

The EPE remained quite a way off until all satellites were acquired, at which point it was back down to the 20-30ft range.

 

In all cases the GPS has been off for several hours beforehand, so the ephemeris data will probably have expired. It seems that the only difference between the circumstances of the error and my "normal" results is the GPS having difficulty acquiring satellites beforehand. This seems to fit quite well with what happens in woodland, although it may just be coincidence.

 

I shall experiment further and see if I can get it to do it again under the same conditions. It's a bit easier to reproduce than "go walking in the woods for 45 minutes". :(

Edited by Crid
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1) might be the same drift issue others are reporting, complicated a bit by routing with lock on road. If it really is the same issue, presumably "lock on road" was responsible for correcting the issue without having to power-cycle the unit. Or it might not be the same issue at all.

 

2) Not sure this is the same issue. This one really sounds like plain old high-sensitivity "wandering", although the distances are a little bit large. Also, unless Garmin actually FIXED something in 2.6, the drift issue never clears itself up without power-cycling the unit.

 

3) Not sure I understand this one. Failure of the return track to match the outbound track would be characteristic of the issue others see. Not sure what you mean by the reference to "another trail, which seemed to be not on the map", though. And 100m is rather short by comparison with the distances others report. But anything is possible. If this is the same problem others see, no one else has reported it as correcting itself without a power cycle.

 

If this IS the same issue, it has been there for a long time prior to the 2.6 unit firmware. There is some evidence that it was introduced with the 2.60 chipset firmware, which has been around for quite a while. Although it appears that some people see the issue repeatedly (frequently in the same location), it is rare on the average. So it's possible you've had the problem all along and simply never tickled it before.

 

Thanks for your thoughts, here is a little bit more...

 

1. I always have "lock on roads" turned off, since I only have a non-routable topo map. So it wasn't this feature, that was "healing" the signal.

 

2. I will try to power cycle next time if I will see an effect like this again.

 

3. I have a screenshot for this one, but I don't know how to post it here without having webspace... The 100m of back and force are absolutely on the same track and also on the path painted on the map. Then we turned to the right leaving this path, onto a path that was surprisingly not on my map. During our little break, the triangle suddenly jumped onto a path painted on the map. The shape of the track looked exaktely like the path painted on the map, but it was shifted about 50m to the west from the time we turned around. You will understand, when you see the picture. It is not map accuracy, because the rest of the tracking was right on!

 

I might be wrong but I still have the feeling that the drift was not there forever. Could it be that the hardware is getting older and is running out of some internal calibrations and tweaks? Some bathtub curve effect maybe? Just a thought...

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1. I always have "lock on roads" turned off, since I only have a non-routable topo map. So it wasn't this feature, that was "healing" the signal.

 

2. I will try to power cycle next time if I will see an effect like this again.

 

3. I have a screenshot for this one, but I don't know how to post it here without having webspace... The 100m of back and force are absolutely on the same track and also on the path painted on the map. Then we turned to the right leaving this path, onto a path that was surprisingly not on my map. During our little break, the triangle suddenly jumped onto a path painted on the map. The shape of the track looked exaktely like the path painted on the map, but it was shifted about 50m to the west from the time we turned around. You will understand, when you see the picture. It is not map accuracy, because the rest of the tracking was right on!

 

I might be wrong but I still have the feeling that the drift was not there forever. Could it be that the hardware is getting older and is running out of some internal calibrations and tweaks? Some bathtub curve effect maybe? Just a thought...

I did a little more research. Apparently, some folks over on the wiki have reported spontaneous healing of the drift problem, but only after 10-20 minutes of clear reception. This contradicts some early posts in this thread which indicated that the problem would not disappear, even after a similar time interval with good reception. On the other hand, I do not recall seeing any posts which indicated that a power cycle failed to clear the problem. So, this might account for your recovery in (3), depending on reception conditions and the length of your rest stop.

 

There has been speculation that there is a hardware component to the problem. This is pure speculation, based mostly on the fact that some people have never seen the drift error -- while other people, running the same firmware, see the problem regularly. I suppose anything is possible, but it seems unlikely that any Colorado could have enough hours on it to see significant degradation in any hardware component. Unless, of course, something was truly marginal to begin with.

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My drift problem always returns to normal within 10 to 20 minutes, assuming, of course, I leave the receiver turned on.

 

I might note that the drift problem is most apparent when you are retracing your route. In that case, you see two traces, sometimes up to several hundred feet apart. Since you return on the same path, both of the traces can't be right. If you don't retrace your route, the drift problem may be less apparent, although still present to the same degree.

 

Drift under the second condition may only become obvious if you plot your tracklog on something like Google Earth where the orthophoto shows the actual route you took and you can see how far off your tracklog is.

 

I only mention these differences in how apparent the drift is, because I'm not sure about how most people use there GPSr's. Perhaps they have the drift problem, but just haven't noticed it.

 

Don

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Last week I experienced my record drift about 400 meters :-( I'm about to go to replace my Colorado unit but first I would like to ask how many of you have solved this drift problem by replacing the unit and how many have not?

 

In my country it's a bad custom to try to avoid responsibility for goods the company sold so I would like to know my chances to get a valid unit if I will go through the replacement 'procedure'.

Edited by abandoned
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works as designed

 

In light of the fact that Garmin does not acknowledge the existence of the problem - the service person I spoke with said he was unaware of any drift problem - returning a unit for "repair" might not bring positive results. From Garmin's perspective, "what's to repair?"

 

Don

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On the weekend I did a really long geocaching hike, which took more than 13 hours. During the day I watched the behaviour of the Colorado very carefully. I started with pretty empty eneloops, in the forest and it was raining. After half an hour I realized the track was drifting away from the path on the map. Then suddenly another jump about 100 meters. I turned the CO off and on again. The track was back on the path immediately and stayed there for the next 15 min. Then the drift started again and I decided to replace the eneloops by fresh ones. For the rest of the day I never saw the drift again and nearly all the trackpoints of the 44km round are right on the map! During the day I had to replace the eneloops again, but by that time I was on the open field, the clouds where gone and the sun was shining. So no drift, even with low battery.

 

Now I have a new theory, why I might not have seen the drift issue before 2.60. The must have changed something on the battery power level or so. Together with bad reception this is causing the drift. I remember my boyfriend always had issues with his GPSMAP72CS, when the batteries where low, too.

 

So today I looked up the changelog for the release and found:

 

"Improved behavior in low battery state"

 

Looks like it has not improved for my device. :blink:

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VISTA HCX USER

So the solution isn't that simple and i don't think they are going to fix it i believe that the mediatreck chipset is a piece of <snip>.....

I'm starting to think Garmin tried to squeak by with a mass purchase of Mediatecs that were probably

designed for the automotive GPSr market and sloughed 'em into the handhelds, seems to have bit 'em

in the <snip>.....! They will never admit it as long as they work better than the Magellans, remember

there's a third alternative if you've been waiting to see what's left after the dust settles. And they

(cough, cough, . . . DeLorme) have a good reputation for meaningful tech-support, and update/bug fixes.

 

Norm

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VISTA HCX USER

 

As i have reported at the vista hcx thread the inaccuracy problem occur 's even with the 2.50/2.30 version

vista hcx link

 

So the solution isn't that simple and i don't think they are going to fix it i believe that the mediatreck chipset is a piece of junk.....

 

Sorry, I was not accurate in my last post. When I was talking about 2.60, I was talking about the Colorado FW 2.60, not the GPS SW 2.60, which was on my device from the very beginning.

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Recently while walking in the woods I encountered the suddenly-increasing EPE part of this problem. I discovered that the Colorado appears to operate better when held vertically rather than horizontally (which seems a bit counter-intuitive, since the compass works when the unit is held horizontally). It's not exactly a solution to the problem, but when the EPE started climbing towards 40ft, it seemed (in this particular instance at least) that holding the Colorado up vertically for 20 seconds or so would cause the EPE to drop back to a more reasonable amount.

 

I don't know if it only affected the EPE or whether the improvement extended to the track itself (I was in a wood I haven't previously mapped, so I didn't have a reference track to compare to).

 

Just thought I'd mention it. I'm wondering how an external antenna would affect my results in woodland.

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I observed the "drift" on a hike this last weekend. It was mountainous and rugged terrain and would have proved challenging for a GPS. It was an overnighter and I noticed the drift on the way out.

 

My drift problem leads me to some conclusions about the mediatek chipset:

 

1) the chipset works fine in open, non-challenging terrain and/or when moving at driving speeds.

 

2) the drift and errors occurr when the unit is challenged such as when there is heavy tree cover or poor sattellite constellations AND/OR when there is slow movement such as average walking speeds.

 

Sadly enough, as others have eluded to, the errors may be indigenous to the chipset. What does this mean to me? It says to me that there is a chance Garmin may not be able to fix the problems with them. 60CSX uses SirfstarIII chips which operate differently and seem to work incredibly well, much better than the mediatek for hiking/walking/outdoor uses.

 

Verdict: I will try to avoid mediatek chips in the future. Unless they can get the algorythms worked out and settle this error down, my Colorado will always be suspect to me.

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I observed the "drift" on a hike this last weekend. It was mountainous and rugged terrain and would have proved challenging for a GPS. It was an overnighter and I noticed the drift on the way out.

 

My drift problem leads me to some conclusions about the mediatek chipset:

 

1) the chipset works fine in open, non-challenging terrain and/or when moving at driving speeds.

 

2) the drift and errors occurr when the unit is challenged such as when there is heavy tree cover or poor sattellite constellations AND/OR when there is slow movement such as average walking speeds.

 

Sadly enough, as others have eluded to, the errors may be indigenous to the chipset. What does this mean to me? It says to me that there is a chance Garmin may not be able to fix the problems with them. 60CSX uses SirfstarIII chips which operate differently and seem to work incredibly well, much better than the mediatek for hiking/walking/outdoor uses.

 

Verdict: I will try to avoid mediatek chips in the future. Unless they can get the algorythms worked out and settle this error down, my Colorado will always be suspect to me.

 

Remember that before chip set firmware 2.6 the Etrex line did not exhibit these drift problems.- So don't lose faith yet.

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Recently while walking in the woods I encountered the suddenly-increasing EPE part of this problem. I discovered that the Colorado appears to operate better when held vertically rather than horizontally

 

The conventional wisdom is that GPSRs with a quad helix antenna, like the Colorado, work better when held vertically, and that patch antennas work best when held horizontally. I never noticed a lot of difference on older units but it may very well play a role here.

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Recently while walking in the woods I encountered the suddenly-increasing EPE part of this problem. I discovered that the Colorado appears to operate better when held vertically rather than horizontally
The conventional wisdom is that GPSRs with a quad helix antenna, like the Colorado, work better when held vertically, and that patch antennas work best when held horizontally. I never noticed a lot of difference on older units but it may very well play a role here.
Except during waypoint averaging I'd hate to have to babysit the unit as to vertical or horizontal. I've just now learned that neither the CO or OR support WA. Amazing omission.
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Recently while walking in the woods I encountered the suddenly-increasing EPE part of this problem. I discovered that the Colorado appears to operate better when held vertically rather than horizontally
The conventional wisdom is that GPSRs with a quad helix antenna, like the Colorado, work better when held vertically, and that patch antennas work best when held horizontally. I never noticed a lot of difference on older units but it may very well play a role here.
Except during waypoint averaging I'd hate to have to babysit the unit as to vertical or horizontal. I've just now learned that neither the CO or OR support WA. Amazing omission.

 

Usually if I am waypoint averaging I actually lay my Etrex down on a flat surface to minimize movement. Not much baby sitting involved there, except making sure nobody swipes it.

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There seems to be a recurring conclusion that the drift problem occurs most frequently in environments were getting a good GPS signal is challenging.

 

I suspect that many folks are actively trying to experience the problem and as a result, report a false-positive. After all, if you're using your GPSr in a canyon with heavy tree cover, you're bound to run into some problems at some point. But this problem might not be the dreaded GPS drift that apparently makes the Colorado a completely unusable piece of trash device (I'm using a bit of sarcasm there), it could just be a result of degraded signal or multipath bias. If you are in challenging GPS conditions and see your GPS accuracy "drift" up to whatever feet then hold the CO up high, vertically, and the accuracy drops back down with your track looking alright on the map, I think you're seeing normal operation under the conditions.

 

Don't get me wrong, I know it's a real problem and I want to see it fixed, SOON, they've had enough time already. I've been tricked a couple of times but have only seen the real drift issue once, and it was a big one- probably around 1000 feet, had I noticed it while on the walk I probably would have taken the whole 15 seconds of my life to restart the unit. I've walked the same path and not been able to recreate.

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I called Garmin tech support today about this problem and SUPRISE, this was the first they've heard of it. That's what I was told.

 

I've completely lost faith in Garmin "tech" support. The "kid" didn't understand simple terms such as "EPE", or even "Satellite Lock". After 5 minutes or so on hold, he told me there have been no reports of positional drift. WTF?!

 

On a different issue He told me that I couldn't expect the unit to record barometric data when the power was off. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "How can you expect the unit to do something when it's turned off?" :D .

 

Calling Garmin is frustrating and utterly worthless. How can they call it tech support? There's nothing tech about it. They should call it the "customer chat line" because it is apparently just a place to call to make yourself feel better that you've "talked to Garmin". It's B.S. ! :D

 

Responding to rkelso: Why then would restarting the unit, challenging condition or not, fix the problem? A power cycle brings the EPE down from 120m to 20 ft. If this drift was attributable to poor sat reception then you should get the same error post power cycle as before the power cycle. Right? This problem is NOT a result of "normal operating conditions", it's a problem with the unit and it's operation, plain and simple.

I've never had drift on any other GPS unit I've used that manifests itself like this one. Characteristics of "normal" position errors are positional "jumping" and randomness. This ones different, this one is a persistant linear error, not random jumping or position bounce. It could be that when the unit is in "challenging" conditions, the calculation it uses to process weaker signals is flawed in some way. Either way Garmin needs to address it promptly or lose alot of long time customers such as myself. Unacceptable.

Edited by yogazoo
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There seems to be a recurring conclusion that the drift problem occurs most frequently in environments were getting a good GPS signal is challenging.

 

I suspect that many folks are actively trying to experience the problem and as a result, report a false-positive...

 

Not in my case. I have been using the Colorado pretty extensively in a variety of conditions. Pretty much every time I've experienced drift it's been while out in woodland under tree cover. The only times I've experienced it in the car (twice) has been when I have switched the unit on while in "difficult" conditions, and the EPE was much higher than expected even with open sky. But that's not the same as an EPE of a hundred feet or so with the track being 600ft+ off.

 

Sometimes I can walk in the woods for half an hour with no (detectable) problems. Other times (as the other day) it an start wandering after as little as 10 minutes under cover. Having done side-by-side tests with my 76CSx, I can confidently say that the 76CSx has outperformed the Colorado under tree coverage many times. It's a shame because I like the other things the Colorado has to offer (except the lack of waypoint averaging).

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yogazoo, maybe I didn't make myself clear enough or you didn't read my whole post, you're preaching to the choir here I'm not arguing with you. If you are having accuracy problems that are miraculously fixed by restarting the unit then yes, you have experienced the real problem with the unit, be it software or hardware it doesn't really matter, it is a problem. What I'm saying is that if you are in less than ideal conditions and your accuracy gets bad, but can be corrected by just taking your GPS out of your pocket and lifting it up to get a better signal within seconds, or moving to a spot with a better sky view, which fixes your accuracy without a reset, then you aren't experiencing the drift issue.

 

I've been on a walk where I come up against a hill and under some tree cover and my GPS accuracy jumps from the teens to the thirties and my track is being plotted 30 feet southwest of where it should be. As soon as I come out of the cover and move away from the hill, the GPS accuracy drops back down to the teens and my track comes back to where it should be. Sounds like the drift problem? I don't think it was, it fixed itself within seconds of coming out of the cover without being restarted, probably a result of multipath.

 

Drift problem aside, maybe the Colorado's chipset crosses the line of high sensitivity to a point where it is too sensitive for what you have to sacrifice? Older, presumably less sensitive units, seem to do better under tree canopy. Maybe the CO's receiver is too sensitive for it's own good and picks up multipath signals that others do not. If that's the case, I think I'd rather have a receiver that calculates a reliable signal under poor conditions than one that can impressively get a satellite lock when I'm inside my house on the couch...

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Sooooooo..............I have had my new colorado 300 for 5days and I read all five pages of this thread, because I had a few drift issues and wanted to learn more. But the thread just stopped??? Its like someone ripping out the last few pages of a mystery novel.! whats gives?.......did updating to 2.7 make drift go away,,,,,I dont think so. How have things been since 2.7??

Or do i just live with it and restart my colorado when i get close to a cache?

C"MON PEOPLE ,,, THROW ME A FREAKIN BONE HERE!, NEED THE INFO. :-)

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Well, I don't really thing there is any more to talk about. The "drift" issue is very rare, so it will take a while for someone to report if it happens or not with 2.70

My Colorado can pretty much be relied on to drift after I've walked in the woods continuously for 1/2 hour or so. I've upgraded to 2.7 and hope to go walking in the woods after work this evening (provided the weather holds). I shall report back once I have results, although to be honest I don't expect the problem to have disappeared (firstly because it's not a GPS firmware update - which many people think is the source of the problem, and secondly because if the firmware fixed the drift issue I'd expect Garmin to be shouting it from the rooftops)

Edited by Crid
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My Colorado can pretty much be relied on to drift after I've walked in the woods continuously for 1/2 hour or so. I've upgraded to 2.7 and hope to go walking in the woods after work this evening (provided the weather holds). I shall report back once I have results, although to be honest I don't expect the problem to have disappeared (firstly because it's not a GPS firmware update - which many people think is the source of the problem, and secondly because if the firmware fixed the drift issue I'd expect Garmin to be shouting it from the rooftops)

Ah, but that would imply that Garmin actually admitted the existence of the problem in the first place. If it never existed, we don't have to admit to fixing it...

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My Colorado can pretty much be relied on to drift after I've walked in the woods continuously for 1/2 hour or so. I've upgraded to 2.7 and hope to go walking in the woods after work this evening (provided the weather holds). I shall report back once I have results, although to be honest I don't expect the problem to have disappeared (firstly because it's not a GPS firmware update - which many people think is the source of the problem, and secondly because if the firmware fixed the drift issue I'd expect Garmin to be shouting it from the rooftops)

Ah, but that would imply that Garmin actually admitted the existence of the problem in the first place. If it never existed, we don't have to admit to fixing it...

 

They have admitted it, my unit is being replaced for it and several other users on the forums here have had them replaced.

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C"MON PEOPLE ,,, THROW ME A FREAKIN BONE HERE!, NEED THE INFO. :-)

 

There are actually several threads on the Forum dealing with the drift issue. In one of these other threads I put together a list: drift threads.

 

Most of these are not as active as well, perhaps because many of us have discussed the issue at length, provided documentation and contacted Garmin. I not sure what's left but to hope a future upgrade improves the problem. And this Forum is very active, so threads drop off the "front page" pretty quickly.

 

Don

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Has anyone using a Colorado with the new 2.7 software see the location error issue?

 

I've got a new Colorado running 2.7 that I've been putting through the same tests where I saw the location errors with my old unit but I've only made two test runs so far. The first was near perfect and the one this morning I saw a 50' error, but it seemed to recover pretty quickly on it own so it probably was just normal drift (the OR did not experience the same issue however).

 

GO$Rs

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(the OR did not experience the same issue however).
Isn't that to be expected?

 

Since the CO has a Microtek chip, whereas the OR has the STM Cartesio. Don't know if its the chip or the firmware or both, but the eTrex H series has the Microtek and many drift posts. I've never seen a drift on my STM equipped Nuvi.

 

Please correct me if my logic has errors.

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Yes, that is what I have seen and would have expected.

 

BTW, on my third test with my new Colorado running 2.7 I saw a nasty location error. Several hundred feet off for 15-20 minutes. Same satellites as my Oregon which wasn't perfect but did much better. I'll post some pictures later.

If you read this thread it would appear that Garmin, to this day, is still oblivious to the whole drift issue regarding their units using the Microtek chip/firmware. Pretty amazing. Edited by MtnHermit
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Garmin, to this day, is still oblivious to the whole drift issue regarding their units using the Microtek chip/firmware.

 

Normally, pointing out typos/spellos in a post is lame, but since this is the fourth time in the last three minutes that I've seen this one, I hope we can catch this before it becomes institutionalized.

 

Garmin uses a number of chipsets in their products and sometimes switch during production. One that they use is Mediatek (MTK), not Microtek.

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My results from yesterday are a bit inconclusive. I did a short woodland walk during my lunchbreak (about 20 minutes) and certainly got the old problem of EPE suddenly climbing and refusing to come back down. At the worst point it was 110ft after less than 10 minutes in the wood. I had the Colorado on for 15 minutes in the car while I drove to the start point, although it looks as though it hadn't acquired all satellites.

 

colorado-sat-1.jpg

 

On the walk back (along the same path, but obviously in the reverse direction) the EPE was better. I took a second screenshot at roughly the same point as the first screenshot for comparison.

 

colorado-sat-2.jpg

 

After work I went for a longer woodland walk in different woods (ones that have previously given me drift issues). Strangely, the Colorado behaved itself even though I was under tree cover for the best part of 45 minutes. EPE didn't go much above 30ft the whole time, and in places it was as low as 19ft (admittedly I was towards the edge of the wood at that stage).

 

One thing I did notice during the evening walk was that the Colorado seems to be doing some pretty hefty averaging. At one point I walked down a path and took a 90 degree left turn. The track on the map screen was lagging behind and then showed me cutting the corner, even though I didn't do that. I'd say at a guess that it was lagging about 15 seconds behind, presumably because it has to wait for future points before it can work out the average of the current point). I've noticed my 76CSx do this to a lesser extent when out caching - if I keep walking until I reach what the GPS says is the right spot, I will have overshot because of the averaging. I don't recall it being as noticeable though.

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High indicated EPE is NOT the problem discussed in this thread. When THIS problem happens, your location is shown incorrectly, but the EPE is still normal. When you power cycle the unit, your position is shown correctly and the displayed EPE should be the same before and after.

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High indicated EPE is NOT the problem discussed in this thread. When THIS problem happens, your location is shown incorrectly, but the EPE is still normal. When you power cycle the unit, your position is shown correctly and the displayed EPE should be the same before and after.

 

Sorry, but from the original post that kicked this topic off:

 

When I looked at the satellite page I was surprised to see the EPE in the 70-80' range.

 

High EPE is one of the symptoms of this problem. I've been following this topic for some time and have posted some of my experiences previously (one with over 600ft of drift with the EPE up in the 100ft mark). If the EPE showed normal, how would you know you were experiencing the problem at the time and know that you needed to cycle the power (unless the area has been mapped, I guess)?

Edited by Crid
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EPE does tend to jump up during these errors although the EPE doesn't come close to representing the "real" error. I've seen EPE as high as 100-110' with true error around 700'. These are the easy ones to detect, my complaint is the 200'-300' errors when EPE is in the 30's or 40's. I've learned that once EPE gets into the high 20's under heavy cover that something might up.

 

GO$Rs

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I have been thinking and looking at things related to my Colorado quite a bit recently. Being a "digital pack rat" I have kept almost every track log that each of my Garmin GPSr's have created. I bought my Colorado 300 back at the tail end of February and have it on and in my truck for almost every drive I make. For this reason, I now have about a couple hundred tracks that go from home to work and back. I looked at those in Mapsource the other night and they are all fairly tightly grouped on the map (all grouped to within 125-150 feet of each other). Now if my GPSr was going to "drift" I would have expected that I should see some record of that in these track logs, and I don't.

 

I have seen several cases where my Colorado has appeared to be of by 70 feet or more when geocaching, while at the same time my wife's GPSMap 60Cx was "dead on". My largest "drift" issues seem to have happened while traveling to Michigan, although I saw some pretty substantial issues (off by a little over a block) when I did my one caching trek into downtown Chicago. In my most recent experiences, when my wife would locate a cache I would go to GZ and check my Colorado to see it was reading 30-40 feet off, but when we would finish signing the log and doing any trades we were going to do, I would double check it again and would see that it was much closer to the correct values (often 2-10 feet). Now, I don't know if the Colorado just needs more time to "settle" or if I was experiencing one of those "self correcting drifts". I suspect it was settling, as we would be at the cache site for only a few minutes, 5-10 at the most.

 

When I am searching for an ammo can in the woods, the 30-50 feet isn't generally a big deal as those tend to be fairy easy to find. It's when I searching for a micro in a city park and I am that far off that I have my most frustration...

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I haven't spent a lot of time analyzing my auto tracks but my sense is that the issue happens when I'm in the woods. I'm not sure if this is because the cover tends to be heavier or it has something to do with slow speed movement (or both).

 

As an aside: out of 6 test runs with my new Colorado on 2.7 I've seen 3 drifts, one over 350', so for me the issue has not been addressed in the newest hardware or software. If anything it feels worse than my old unit.

 

GO$Rs

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