Oregon Wherigo application falls down

[+harald.cz]

I have a problem with playing Wherigo on Garmin Oregon. The following issue appeared on two different Wherigo caches:

 

I was navigated to an invisible zone, there was an item to pick up. When I did so, a list of locations for navigation appeared, with "infinite" number of locations, all of them named "/" or "(". The the Wherigo application falls down and when restarted the saved game cannot be loaded.

 

I upgraded Oregon firmware to latest version (2.70) but the problem remains the same.

 

Any hints how to fix it? People with PDAs or Colorado go through the caches without issues. I haven't found anybody with Oregon who would try them.

 

Thanks for help.

[+harald.cz]

I realized I am not the only one who has such a problem. Many cachers with Garmin Oregon face the same issue.

 

On an advice from another geocacher i restarted the whole GPS every time the WIG application on Oregon falled. Then it was also possible toload the cartrige even the GPS rejected to do so before the restart. The short WIG cache took me 9 restarts.

 

I got in touch with one the the WIG cache author and we will try to identify where Oregon has the problem and if there is a possible workaround when creating the WIG cache.

[+jeffnerner]

I've had the same issue more than once. The first time it was with a cart that someone else wrote and I was playing, and then after that it happened a number of times during development of my own cartridge.

 

In the first case, it would happen after clearing through the cart's first zone. What I ended up doing was to simply not touch anything and go to where I thought the 2nd zone was. Once I got to the 2nd zone, one of the zone's event handlers fired and then things worked OK from there.

 

In the case of my own cart, I thought I had the cause narrowed down to something relating to the cart's onStart handler firing while already in the initial zone, but eventually the problem happened during other parts of the cart. Ultimately, I got rid of all event handlers associated with the cartridge object itself and I didn't see the problem after that...though I'm not sure it wasn't just a coincidence.

 

If you figure out what causes it, please come back and let us know. Good luck.

[+wild-wildbill]

As you can tell, the problem is not the code. It's the Oregon. It doesn't play Wherigos, maybe some simple 1+1 cartridges, but not the cartridges you want to play.

[+MickEMT]

Bill, Did you build the cartridge with just the builder program or did you add custom code with a text editor?

I'm wondering if there is some small difference in how the OR's handle the Wherigo app compared to the CO units.

[+wild-wildbill]

Bill, Did you build the cartridge with just the builder program or did you add custom code with a text editor?

I'm wondering if there is some small difference in how the OR's handle the Wherigo app compared to the CO units.

 

Hi mick,

I used the builder. I also tried to keep it as simple as possible but the program has lots of dialog, inputs, and IF Than Else qualifiers. The length of the dialogs was an issue. If the message or dialog box exceeds a certain length the Colorado will shutdown but only if the cartridge is downloaded from the Wherigo site (not if you load it directly from the builder). I troubleshot it down to 7 and ½ lines of text on the builder box. I split the dialog to keep the screens to no more than 7 lines and that worked for the Colorado but not the Oregon. I did not change anything using a text editor, I used the canned commands from the builder.

Edited December 21, 2008 by wild-wildbill

[+MickEMT]

OK, sounds like part of the problem is solved.

As a random thought we should probably have a thread for these little "tips" we find.

 

Do you have any "Tasks" that need to be clicked on? I know that seems to throw the OR units more than the CO's. My workaround was to have an NPC "ask" the player the question using "Talk To" as a command.

[+wild-wildbill]

No, nothing like that. In fact I took out all the click ons. To play the game you just go to the zone ( I also made the next zone the only visable zone) read the message, answer the quetion ( I used the input command) and read another message. Go to the next zone. Really simple commands but lots of stuff going on that simple computers do well. If Then else. The tasks I use do not do anything and the user dosen't need to mess with them.

[+MickEMT]

Bill,

Your cartridge sounds pretty close to how mine is run, check out Wherigo Clarence Town Park, I've left it open source so you can get the LUA file. Mine works on both the OR and CO. See how I set up the Q&A parts, maybe that will help.

[+wild-wildbill]

Thanks! I'll do that. I'll let you know if I find out what's wrong with my code vis a vis the Oregon. I'm going to be a little busy the next few days (work, geez, I hate it with THAT gets in the way). Thanks again.