vista HCx coordinates way off in google earth

[+Pulvertoastmann]

Hi everybody,

 

two days ago i bought a new garmin etrex vista hcx. Found a few caches using it, all seems just fine.

 

But one thing is quite puzzling me - when I take coordinates and enter them in google earth, they are almost always like 20 meters off.

 

In one case I averaged a waypoint up to the point where the GPSr claimed it had reached a precision of 1,6 meters (about 280 measurements, WAAS / EGNOS active), and even this waypoint was displayed about 25 meters off the location as shown in google earth.

 

How is this possible? Who is to blame - google earth or my new GPSr?

 

thanks in advance,

 

Pulvertoastmann

[Motorcycle_Mama]

Are you entering the coordinates into Google Earth manually? If so, are you using the same coordinate format?

 

What happens if you view the same coordinates in Google Maps or Live Maps instead?

[jmundinger]

Hi everybody,

 

two days ago i bought a new garmin etrex vista hcx. Found a few caches using it, all seems just fine.

 

But one thing is quite puzzling me - when I take coordinates and enter them in google earth, they are almost always like 20 meters off.

 

In one case I averaged a waypoint up to the point where the GPSr claimed it had reached a precision of 1,6 meters (about 280 measurements, WAAS / EGNOS active), and even this waypoint was displayed about 25 meters off the location as shown in google earth.

 

How is this possible? Who is to blame - google earth or my new GPSr?

 

thanks in advance,

 

Pulvertoastmann

 

try downloading the coordinates from your gpsr to MapSource and then select view in GoogleEarth from MapSource and see how the two compare.

[+allory]

Paste N43 33'33.0" W106 04'27.5" into Google Earth and then consider where the error lies. My track log from driving that road many times usually follows the road as shown on the east side of the seam and tracks and waypoints on the west side are off by about 25 meters east and about 7 north of the Google Earth position.

 

Probably both GE and my HCx are off, but in this area GE is my guess for the major part of the error. Your area may have similar problems.

[+Pulvertoastmann]

Paste N43 33'33.0" W106 04'27.5" into Google Earth and then consider where the error lies. My track log from driving that road many times usually follows the road as shown on the east side of the seam and tracks and waypoints on the west side are off by about 25 meters east and about 7 north of the Google Earth position.

 

Probably both GE and my HCx are off, but in this area GE is my guess for the major part of the error. Your area may have similar problems.

 

Hi,

 

thanks so far!

I would have assumed that both ge AND my vista are prone to a slight error, but the last evening I figured out even more:

 

I had my vista running for maybe 45 minutes while sitting in my backyard and it displayed an accuracy of 4 meters. I entered the coordinates manually into google earth AND google maps (and yes, I used the same coordinate format) and the vista-position was about 25 meters to the west from where I was actually sitting.

Then, I switched my unit off for half a minute and turned it back on. Took a few seconds to get a position fix and when it reached an accuracy of 4 meters again (almost immediately) I tried the coordinates in the two googles again.

Result: The position was EXACTLY where I was sitting, one meter off at max.

That leads me to the conclusion that my vista is not working as it should, because even if there was a misalignment between google and the actual coordinates it should be always the same. But if the Vista returns two positions with a distance of 25 meters between them, both times stating it had 4 meters EPE, this seems very odd to me.

I have retaken some of the other coordinates that I got during the last two days and the results are similar - sometimes they are still of, sometimes they have shifted to be almost spot-on.

 

Some research in the forum led me to others having a similar offset-bug, with no solution so far.

Do you have any recommendations?

 

If not, I think I will return the unit, maybe in exchange for a gpsmap 60CSx, hoping it will perform better.

 

thanks again,

Pulvertoastmann

[jmundinger]

If you really want to check the accuracy of the unit, I would hunt up a few benchmarks so that you can compare the unit against surveyed points on the ground.

 

When you are running these tests against google earth, how clear is your view of the sky?

 

Some of the firmware/chipset software combinations are prone to inconsistent behavior. To be honest, I don't have a lot of confidence in the most current versions (3.0/3.0), although that combination is more reliable than some of the earliest configurations. My personal preference is for firmware 2.80 with chipset 2.50.

[+Pulvertoastmann]

Well, never mind.

 

Just returned the vista HCx to the store and grabbed the gpsmap 60CSx instead.

 

The first coordinates I took were shown by the two googles exactly on the right spot - I will return to a couple of locations repeatedly during the next days to make sure they don't jump like it was the case with the vista.

 

I'll let you know about my findings, if you guys are interested.

 

thanks alot,

Pulvertoastmann