adjusting Time/Date

[soberrover]

need a little help...

my Garmin eTrex Legend won't acquire any satellites. not even partially. according to my unit, there's nothing but clouds in the sky.

the only thing out of the ordinary I can find on my unit is that the date&time displayed are wrong, and I'm thinking that's causing the problem.

my GPSr is trying to convince me that it is currently 6:31pm on Apr 1st, 2009

the actual time/date is 1:20am Apr 16th, 2009.

I can't find any way to change it on the unit.

Am I missing something?

Simply connecting it to my serial port isn't automatically updating the time from my computer. Do I need to use a program to do that? Is there one out there that will?

And just to throw an extra wrench into this, I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid), not windows.

[+webscouter.]

The date and time are set when the GPS gets a satellite lock.

 

It can sometimes take up to thirty minutes if it has been a while for it to lock.

[soberrover]

any other ideas then?

I left my unit to try and acquire for hours on end over the weekend as I was canoeing down the Fraser River.

[+webscouter.]

First make sure you have the most current firmware.

 

Then do a master reset.

The newer etrex units (venture, legend, and vista) with the "Click Stick" use different keys to accomplish these tasks but the idea is the same. Holding the click stick down and then powering up will enter the test screen while holding the "page" key down and the "click stick" down and then powering up will reset the unit. You will be prompted with an "are you sure?" message. On these units holding down the "find" button in addition to the others will avoid the "are you sure" message. Hold the buttons for 5 seconds to clear the unit.

[+JBnW]

Agree with Webscouter's advice. Also, if that doesn't work, I used to have a basic eTrex Vista that would randomly go on a time trip. Sometimes thought it was the year 2079 with the wrong calendar date, but it still worked (locked onto sats and gave good coords). Garmin emailed me a small program called "garmin timeset" that would fix the problem. Might want to give them a call, or check to see if it's on the download page somewhere. Hope this helps!

[soberrover]

odeargod, it works!

I didn't bother to check the firmware because I didn't know how to upload a more current version to my unit.

the test screen is rather interesting. I call bs on the accuracy of the thermometer though. 25C? I would've been cracking windows open. Maybe it's an internal unit temp. numeric battery strength and signal strength values are interesting.

did the reset, and was excited to see the unit get a fuzzy grey signal on a satellite. more excited still when it got a lock and displayed my coordinates!

although I'm shedding a tear for all my waypoints and 10 tracks. at least I have 10 new spaces for tracks now.

the reset did not delete my 12 topo maps though, that was nice.

thanks webscouter

Yours in Scouting,

Wrongway (the sober rover)

[+julianh]

Agree with Webscouter's advice. Also, if that doesn't work, I used to have a basic eTrex Vista that would randomly go on a time trip. Sometimes thought it was the year 2079 with the wrong calendar date, but it still worked (locked onto sats and gave good coords). Garmin emailed me a small program called "garmin timeset" that would fix the problem. Might want to give them a call, or check to see if it's on the download page somewhere. Hope this helps!

There is a known issue with the old B&W Vista - periodically showing the wrong time and date (out by many years), but otherwise apparently functioning in every respect. (How on Earth the GPSr actually finds the satellites from the almanac when the date is wrong is totally beyond me!)

 

I contacted Garmin about it - they were aware of the issue, but there was no permanent fix available, and even after a full reset to correct the clock, the problem would recur. I had to replace my unit with a Summit HC, because all of my tracklogs were scrambled (corrupt time and date), so that MapSource would not load the files (it recognise the time and date as being corrupt), and I was not able to use the corrupted tracklogs to geo-reference my digital site photos - one of my main uses of the GPSr.

 

More details in this thread: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=177915&hl=

[+julianh]

I call bs on the accuracy of the thermometer though. 25C? I would've been cracking windows open. Maybe it's an internal unit temp.

Yes, it is reporting the internal temperature of the circuit board, NOT the ambient air temperature. Interesting for a techno-geek perhaps, but of no practical purpose in telling you what sort of underwear to pack for your hike!

 

(It needs to know the actual temperature of the electronics to get an accurate temperature-compensated frequency for the quartz oscillators, or something like that.)