Garmin Oregon 400t Locks Up on a Wherigo

[+TheSurfcaster]

On Saturday I wanted to try my first Wherigo (GC19M6B). It is a 13 stage tour of Ramapo College in New Jersey. Each stage just gives you some short verbage about the campus building you are at and there are no fancy cartoon characters. I'm using a Garmin Orgeon 400t. The first two stages went fine and then on the third stage the Oregon locked up after the fouth information screen came up. I pulled the batteries out a couple of times and put them back but could not get Wherigo to work. Decided to walk back to the car and pulled out the batteries once again and Wherigo started to work so I headed back to stage three and get to zero feet and it locks again. Decided to call it a day.

 

Just wondering if I'm doing anything wrong or what I could try.

 

Thank You for the hep.

[+MountainRacer]

Ah yes, I know the cache well... I ought to, oughtn't I? A few people have had issues with it, but others have breezed through, with no apparent hit-or-miss pattern. I wrote it to be as simple as possible, because I was worried that early units might have memory-usage issues with more complex cartridges. If any of the Wherigo Ph.D. crew comes through this thread, I'd be much obliged if you took a peek at the code to see if the problems could be stemming from there. Thanks, and apologies for the inconvenience.

[+MickEMT]

I haven't looked at the cartridge yet, but one idea comes to mind. Do you keep all the zones active? If so, having the Wherigo player turn them "inactive" when you don't need them might save some processor time.

[+jeffnerner]

Another thing to try while playing would be to save after clearing each zone, so that you can restart at the most recent point if something fails. The other thing is to make sure your 400t software is up to date. While I didn't see anything specifically listed about Wherigo fixes in the documentation, the most recent software for my Oregon 300 seemed to improve its stability with Wherigo.

[kvhollis]

On Saturday I wanted to try my first Wherigo (GC19M6B). It is a 13 stage tour of Ramapo College in New Jersey. Each stage just gives you some short verbage about the campus building you are at and there are no fancy cartoon characters. I'm using a Garmin Orgeon 400t. The first two stages went fine and then on the third stage the Oregon locked up after the fouth information screen came up. I pulled the batteries out a couple of times and put them back but could not get Wherigo to work. Decided to walk back to the car and pulled out the batteries once again and Wherigo started to work so I headed back to stage three and get to zero feet and it locks again. Decided to call it a day.

 

Just wondering if I'm doing anything wrong or what I could try.

 

Thank You for the hep.

 

How much text are in the text diaglog box? It if is a lot (there is a known issue at least with the Colorado) it is known the lock the unit up. However, in the same thread I see that others have had no issues.... so I am at a loss at the moment.

[+wild-wildbill]

I looked at the cartridge and I see no difference between the stages. Of coarse I don’t have the LUA file to look at the “insides” but I am certain that it’s got nothing to do with length of the dialog. The dialog is nowhere near long enough to cause the issue experienced in the Colorado (I played it last summer with no problems). If the Oregon can’t read three 3 lines of text we are all doomed! The visible zones shouldn’t make that much of a difference either ,it’s not the processing power or memory that’s the issue here. I’m leaning towards the zones not playing again after being visited (the qualifier), but that’s a WAG and should not be an issue. The bottom line is the Oregon should play this strait forward cartridge better, not worse than, the Colorado.

[+MickEMT]

OK, works on the CO, but not the OR?? Are there any tasks that have to be clicked on? I'm thinking that for some strange reason, the OR handles tasks differently than the CO.

[+TheSurfcaster]

I was up by the college this Saturday so I thought why not give it a try again. It froze up at the exact same spot. I guess I just have to wait for Wherigo to come out with a new version of software and hopefully I'll have better luck. The little sample Wherigo that comes with the Oregon runs fine.

[+MickEMT]

Any chance we could take a look at the LUA file?

[+wild-wildbill]

I’m not the author of this cartridges but it looks like he uses the task of “go to the zone” complete/not complete to show the dialog or message at that zone. It’s the same throughout the cartridge at each zone. Surfcaster had no trouble with this task/switch the first two zones but the third lock up. So what’s the difference between the 1st or 2nd and 3rd zone? Task wise nothing. The only difference I see is the length of the dialog is 1 line longer. The dialog does use characters I found do not show on the Colorado. Specifically the apostrophe, the colon, and semi colon. These however don’t cause the player to lock up; they just give some html tags on playback. Maybe the Oregon can’t handle these as well as the Colorado. The fourth (arch) zone has some parenthesis for the first time in the cartridge. So I’ve got to ask what zone gave you the trouble the 3rd (the Bradley Center sports complex) or the 4th (the arch). Just goes to show how difficult it is to write code with very limited and fragile hardware

[+TheSurfcaster]

WildBill- It guides me to Bradey, GPS hits zero feet, & locks. Then I don't get the next location, the arch.

[+trowel32]

Well I guess I'm glad I didn't try that one, since I have a brand new Oregon 400T too. Of the three Wherigo's in NJ, the Ramapo Tour at least LOOKED like it might work. The other two NJ cartridges crashed immediately. I guess I should sell the Oregon and get a Colorado since half the reason I bought it was to try out the Wherigo cartrdiges