Colorado 300 and Tracking

[AndreasResch]

Hello!

 

Is there a way to have the Colorado 300 track a path without the screen on. I don't need to have the screen on all the time but didn't find a way to turn it off and still have the tracking on.

 

Maybe someone can give me a hint.

 

Thanks ... Andreas.

[+g-o-cashers]

I haven't seen any way to turn the screen off but assuming you are plugged into a computer via USB cable you are drawing power from the computer. Having the screen off might have a small difference on your computer's battery life but it won't help with the CO batteries.

 

After rereading your post, I guess it isn't clear to me if you were talking about tethered tracking or just tracking with the handheld. Either way, I don't think you can turn the screen off.

 

GO$Rs

Edited May 12, 2008 by g-o-cashers

[AndreasResch]

I haven't seen any way to turn the screen off but assuming you are plugged into a computer via USB cable you are drawing power from the computer. Having the screen off might have a small difference on your computer's battery life but it won't help with the CO batteries.

 

After rereading your post, I guess it isn't clear to me if you were talking about tethered tracking or just tracking with the handheld. Either way, I don't think you can turn the screen off.

 

GO$Rs

 

I'm talking about tracking in the field - not tethered to a PC. When you walk for hours and you know the way, there's no need to have the screen on, though you might want to track the path anyway. For me, that's a waste of battery life.

 

Thanks for the answer ... Andreas.

[+twolpert]

I'm talking about tracking in the field - not tethered to a PC. When you walk for hours and you know the way, there's no need to have the screen on, though you might want to track the path anyway. For me, that's a waste of battery life.

As far as I know, there is no way to turn the screen off. Screen-wise, there are two things you can do to minimize battery drain. One is to make sure that the backlight is dialed all the way down. The other is to make sure that you leave the unit set to display something other than the map. This is the because updating the map page requires a lot of CPU cycles, particularly when you are set for track up. A lot of people seem to use the "trip computer" page since it can be configured to show a lot of useful information.

 

Disabling the on-board compass also conserves the battery, as does disabling WAAS.

[AndreasResch]

I'm talking about tracking in the field - not tethered to a PC. When you walk for hours and you know the way, there's no need to have the screen on, though you might want to track the path anyway. For me, that's a waste of battery life.

As far as I know, there is no way to turn the screen off. Screen-wise, there are two things you can do to minimize battery drain. One is to make sure that the backlight is dialed all the way down. The other is to make sure that you leave the unit set to display something other than the map. This is the because updating the map page requires a lot of CPU cycles, particularly when you are set for track up. A lot of people seem to use the "trip computer" page since it can be configured to show a lot of useful information.

 

Disabling the on-board compass also conserves the battery, as does disabling WAAS.

 

Thanks a lot for the useful tips Tom. I'll take care of that.

 

Cheers, Andreas.

[toddm]

It's too bad the colorado does not have a battery saver mode the 76/60 series had, as far as I can tell all it did was reduce the satellite position refresh rate from 1second to something like 3-5 seconds. It was pretty difficult to use when navigating in a car but for hiking it added a couple hours to the units runtime.

 

As someone else said, turn waas off, turn the compass off (it's near useless anyway), and set the display screen to something that does not change (IE not a map or trip screen) so it has to minimal screen redrawing.

 

Another idea if you know your route, is you can turn the gps off, and then every so often turn it on and set a waypoint, instead of having the unit on the entire time running a track that you don't need. So you still have "bread crumbs" to outline your general route, but have conserved as much battery life as possible. However, this means stopping, turning the unit on, letting it get a good fix, and setting a waypoint, then continuing on, sort of annoying.

 

If that still does not get you enough runtime, get an etrex that runs 3 times as long as the colorado does on a set of batteries.