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Oregon 2.95 beta released


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Just to follow up on my previous post to this topic (see Post #79 on April 5th, 09). Since reverting to Ver. 2.93 I have had no problems with my 400t. Neither have I received a response to my e-mail to Garmin. I do believe the "bug" is directly related to PRN 01 and the way the Oregons handle the current "not yet healthy status" of that particular satellite. Will let you know if/when I hear from Garmin.

 

Bill

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3428011615_294ec0660e.jpg

 

Kinda says it all doesn't it. You can guess which line is the Oregon 300 running 2.95 and which one is the 60CSx running 3.70 (tracks taken simultaneously)

 

I think this product may be officially out of beta when Garmin can actually get the accuracy good enough to introduce a waypoint averaging feature that matches the 60CSx. Looking at this kind of shift and drift - not for a while yet.

 

(and no I wasn't dancing in the road :laughing:)

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To elaborate on my earlier post about not getting signal from sats 5, 10, 15, etc. The mystery sat 01 is there and unit was receiving signal from it and then signal appeared to cut off as it has been doing. The others appear to be in the sky and viewable but not getting signal from them...or unit is not interpreting it correctly...or something else.

1011.jpg

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I just bumbled in here at the end, so I lack any sense of continuity in this thread. But re: Sat 1, it looks like it's not healthy at the moment as reported here.

 

Edit: sorry the image is as small as it is. It looks like 5 is not firing on all cylinders, either.

 

Javad.jpg

Edited by embra
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PRN 01 is new and just started testing today I believe and 05 was disabled several weeks ago.

 

When the OR is first turned on with visibility to either it will display a hollow bar for 30-60 seconds and then it will drop the satellite although it is still listed and visible in the sky view. Originally I thought the satellite lock issue was related to having visibility to one or both of these. While that still might be a factor there is more to it. Yesterday morning I had almost identical sky view with both 01 and 05 visible but I was able to lock on all visible satellites except these two -- everything worked fine. Sometimes, however, the OR gets into a state like mattalbr shows where you can't lock onto certain good satellites, I've seen cases where there were 4-5 perfectly good satellites that my CO and 60csx locked onto that the OR couldn't.

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3428011615_294ec0660e.jpg

 

Kinda says it all doesn't it. You can guess which line is the Oregon 300 running 2.95 and which one is the 60CSx running 3.70 (tracks taken simultaneously)

 

I think this product may be officially out of beta when Garmin can actually get the accuracy good enough to introduce a waypoint averaging feature that matches the 60CSx. Looking at this kind of shift and drift - not for a while yet.

 

(and no I wasn't dancing in the road :laughing:)

 

It needs to be noted that the above was done in England. not to leesen an issue, but I really think there is an solid difference between the results seen here in the U.S.A and overseas. NOT that it is perfect here....but that above is just silly. I never get anything that "off".

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It should be nice to have some more info about the tracks made, because I believe there are several issues here.

 

1 Where it is made

2 Was the gps shielded at any side during the track

3 When walking, did you carry it in your hands and if yes, did you move your arms?

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It should be nice to have some more info about the tracks made, because I believe there are several issues here.

 

1 Where it is made

2 Was the gps shielded at any side during the track

3 When walking, did you carry it in your hands and if yes, did you move your arms?

 

1. Byfleet, Surrey, UK on a bright cloudless day. (well THE bright cloudless day we had this year :laughing:)

2. The Oregon was in one of the Garmin rugged cases attached to a belt loop by the caribiner. The 60CSx was on my opposite side in a pocket - again about hip height.

3. No, not carried in my hands so not swinging about - but I haven't actually found this to be a problem when I have walked like this with the 60CSx.

 

Both units were showing about 12ft accuracy for this whole trip (of which this is a small segment) with the Oregon occasionally showing down to 8ft accuracy. The Oregon had a periodic EGNOS lock and the 60CSx got an EGNOS lock all the way round.

Edited by iamasmith
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Used 2.95 on an Oregon 300 all day yesterday. 9:30am to 5pm. I had no trouble with the unit all day. Accuracy was good and I was locked on to 12 birds or so all day. 01 was visible at times but didn't seem to give me any issue this time.

 

Make that two, have about 30 lined up for today if the weather holds out, so today will be a good test with mine. Comparing against our Vista and Legend on accuracy..

Edited by Dig Teamsters
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Against which, since a week or so ago when I left my Oregon (300 / 2.95) laying out on the deck for two hours to remove any possibility of an incomplete almanac it has behaved perfectly, even among the tall buildings downtown with sat 01 showing up in the list.

 

Gary

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Went out today on a cache run, and did not notice any improvement or change from the previous run. Even when out in the open, the compass needle would make sporadic direction changes, not to mention what it would do when in tree cover.

 

Many times I would be walking in the direction the needle was pointing, without the Distance to Destination dropping, only to have it suddenly flip directions and tell me I was MANY feet away. One notable cache was found about 24' from where I had my gps sitting, while it was showing the cache being 3' away.

 

Interestingly enough, I see that Maingray lives in NC, not incredibly far from where I am, and he is reporting a well behaved unit :rolleyes:

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Just wanted to join in a say that I am experiencing the exact same issues as Mydnyghte.

 

I just bought the Oregon last week and immediately flashed to 2.95. I'm in NW Florida. I never saw 1 or 5 and had WAAS off. (With it on, it's way off!)

 

Given enough persistence, I can usually still find the cache, but it's not easy at times.

 

On Saturday I looked for a cache with no tree cover and clear blue skies and the needle was jumping around everywhere and the distance was not reliable. I finally had to search a 50 ft. area to find it (it was beside a small pond).

 

FWIW, my Colorado has never acted link this.

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3428011615_294ec0660e.jpg

 

Kinda says it all doesn't it. You can guess which line is the Oregon 300 running 2.95 and which one is the 60CSx running 3.70 (tracks taken simultaneously)

 

I think this product may be officially out of beta when Garmin can actually get the accuracy good enough to introduce a waypoint averaging feature that matches the 60CSx. Looking at this kind of shift and drift - not for a while yet.

 

(and no I wasn't dancing in the road :laughing:)

 

Maybe I'm lucky, but I haven't observed the "erratic" track accuracy others are reporting. In fact, the vast majority of mine have been quite good. The issue I've observed is a gradual drift of about 60-100 ft off true that is corrected with a power cycle. Have only observed that a couple times, but would only know it happens if I'm navigating a road. That is a serious bug when off road...

 

Here's an example of a typical track I have captured with 2.95. Can even pick the parking spot I used!

 

111283462.GngCJdgK.jpg

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..

Here's an example of a typical track I have captured with 2.95. Can even pick the parking spot I used!

 

111283462.GngCJdgK.jpg

 

That link is broken out here in public land...

 

Forbidden

 

You don't have permission to access /g3/43/354243/2/111283462.GngCJdgK.jpg on this server.

 

Apache/2.0.58 (Unix) Server at i.pbase.com Port 80

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..

Here's an example of a typical track I have captured with 2.95. Can even pick the parking spot I used!

 

111283462.GngCJdgK.jpg

 

That link is broken out here in public land...

 

Forbidden

 

You don't have permission to access /g3/43/354243/2/111283462.GngCJdgK.jpg on this server.

 

Apache/2.0.58 (Unix) Server at i.pbase.com Port 80

 

Sorry, hope this link works...

 

3441231333_93b42e2a37.jpg

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I've found that the speed i am moving with makes a LOT of difference for the quality of the tracks.

Tracks recorded from a car or on the bike look usually really good. But if you're walking and the reception is not PERFECT, the results are very often not usable (drifts of several 10 meters, "drunken lines" etc...).

 

Generally it helps before recording a track to power the GPS on at a place with good reception and keep that position for a couple of minutes before moving.

 

Be it as it may...i really hope Garmin gets this issue under control, cause correct coordinates is what should be expected from a device in that pricerange...

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Interesting, mine was a walking track, what about you PAJALLAN? Also remember that automotive profiles probably 'handrail' the road.

 

PAJALLEN was talking of his "parking spot". So, as long as he's not in a need to park his shoes... :D Sorry, had a clown for breakfast.

Seriously....good point about the automotive profiles...guidance mode in menu /settings/routing should be "off road" to do any tests....

for my tests I used the same (off road) profile....

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Interesting, mine was a walking track, what about you PAJALLAN? Also remember that automotive profiles probably 'handrail' the road.

 

Was driving and parked stationary with the gps hidden under the dash for about 45 minutes. I do not have the profile set to "Lock on Road".

 

I also have noticed that walking tracks look noisier, but haven't looked closely enough to know if it looks that way because the track points are compressed closer together because you are traveling so much slower, or if the error is larger when walking.

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So again the inaccuracies seem to be based on a slower speed?

 

My OR 300 with 2.95 has been performing very well on decent length caching runs (hikes + road), WAAS+, been getting me consistently to within 10-20 feet of caches when I put the GPS down and start using eyes. Don't forget these are consumer units, not the high grade military units :D

 

I sent garmin a thumbs up email with some notes about the erratic sat acquisition, a desire for slightly better get-me-back-on-track automotive choices and deeper searches for better road routes. The OR sometimes does not make the best road routing choices.

Edited by Maingray
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You don't think it is plausible that the GPS may be augmenting its position calculation using PVT values do you when it is moving over a certain speed?

 

The chip is known as a CARTesio after all even though its logo says 'Tesio'... hmm, could have some very automotive specific features.

Edited by iamasmith
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I wonder if the unit is really any more/less accurate at different speeds. Any GPS is going to have a certain amount of location "noise". This noise is more noticeable when you are only moving a few feet a second and the GPS might be jumping by a similar amount. When you are doing 40mph (or even 5mph) the noise is still there but as a percentage of overall movement it becomes small and less noticeable.

 

Combine this with the fact that many times when you are walking you might be under cover which increases the noise and this probably explains a lot of what we see.

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I wonder if the unit is really any more/less accurate at different speeds. Any GPS is going to have a certain amount of location "noise". This noise is more noticeable when you are only moving a few feet a second and the GPS might be jumping by a similar amount. When you are doing 40mph (or even 5mph) the noise is still there but as a percentage of overall movement it becomes small and less noticeable.

 

Combine this with the fact that many times when you are walking you might be under cover which increases the noise and this probably explains a lot of what we see.

 

True, but under the same paths, my forerunner performs much better than my Oregon. Both units should be "tuned" to slower speeds as neither is meant to be a pure automotive gps (at least the Oregon should work this way in Geocaching, recreation and fitness mode). A hiking GPS and a fitness GPS should perform nearly the same under slower moving conditions.

Edited by fourbeer
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I've heard the many potential reasons to theorize why the Oregon shows alot of noise when recording a tracklog at slow speeds.

 

Look I know these aren't commercial grade units, and I know there will be some funky aberrations time and again. Acceptable. But once again the 60CSX is used as the standard for accuracy in the lineup of consumer grade handhelds currently available. When the Oregon tracklogs live up to it's predecessor I'll let Garmin off the hook. Until then I will kindly let them know that they have some work to do.

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Hello to all!

 

I am from Lisbon, Portugal and I too purchased a brand new Oregon 400T last week. I immediately updated the unit's software to 2.95 and also immediately stuttered when I tried to go geocaching with it. It is simply useless!! I have a Geko 301 that was my tool untill now and never had any direction pointing problems like this. When used in the car the needle keeps a good solid lock on the correct direction, but once you step out and start walking the last meters it goes berserk and swings all over the place and often freezes in a wrong direction...all this with 6m accuracy showing! I have rolled the software to 2.94; 2.93; and 2.85 and it is still the same!!

E-mailed the OregonBeta guys and they told me to calibrate my compass...which I had already done some 20 times!! Then I sent them a very detailed description of my problem and their response was that they had understood what I was writing :rolleyes: nothing more. Today I went out caching and almost threw the dadgum unit in the garbage can! I was standing 20cm from the cache and it was pointing in all possible directions and telling me I was 12m away!

For the time being I am still crying my 500 bucks I spent on this unit...

 

Cheers to all,

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Hmm, I'm wondering if this might be WAAS/EGNOS related.

 

I repeated my walking test and turned off WAAS on both units (a 60CSx on 3.70 and an Oregon 300 on 2.95) and the results are as shown here.

 

The 60CSx is the blue track and the Oregon is the Orange.

 

3452576136_c44d28b9be.jpg

 

Both units are on default sampling rates as they were on the previous test. Notice now though that there aren't any major swings in the Oregon track and it actually looks closer than the 60CSx without WAAS.

 

A shame I don't have another 300 and another 60CSx but I will repeat the test overlaying a pass for both units with WAAS and then a pass for both without WAAS (maybe 5 mins apart at the most).

 

So, folks with good tracking results, do you have WAAS turned on?

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Hmm, I'm wondering if this might be WAAS/EGNOS related.

 

 

possible, i have WAAS/EGNOS switched off in my Oregon300 after a strange behavior on a hiking trip. Here in germany i have not often a EGNOS lock. The track logging was ok, but after a walk of approx. 5km the track becomes erratic and begins to drift away. After a error of 50m i was wondering whats going on. I looked to the sat page and there was an WAAS/EGNOS lock (the D under the satelitte bars). I immediately switched off EGNOS and the track was stable again, also the drift was corrected after a short time of walking (power-cycle the device was not required).

 

Maybe the people who wrote that a power-cycle was required to correct the drift has no WAAS/EGNOS lock after restart?! Now my Oregon runs without WAAS/EGNOS and the tracklogging is ok. It is not perfect, but it is also not so bad as it was descibed in this forum.

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Good day to all,

 

I got totally fed up with my Oregon and phoned up Garmin at Portugal about it's strange behaviour. After a short drive to their headquarters I was was told my unit had some sort of a problem with the electronic compass module. As soon as the technician hooked the unit to the testing tool the compass wouldn't stop spinning. He also told me that although one can switch the compass off, the unit still uses it to cross-check the info from the GPS tracking so it is always screwing up the direction arrow! I was given a new unit which was extensively tested outside their door by the technician and me. Things were totally different!! I spent all my day today under rain geocaching in some woods near Lisbon and the equipment worked flawlessly.

The new unit came with a 2.90 firmware which is the last shipping firmware and was told to update it to 2.95 at home. Which I did...

 

All is fine now!

 

Cheers,

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