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Delorme PN-40 firmware 2.7


user13371

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It's not a secret, but not being widely advertised either. Why not? I dunno, except that the primary enhancements (in DeLorme's view) are mainly of interest to XMap users. But others might like some of its goodies too - like saving waypoints and tracks in GPX files on the SD card.

 

4df86461-480c-4205-831f-f54c79ad779f.jpg

 

Log in at http://forum.delorme.com and visit the XMap 7 Professional forum -- note you must be registered and logged in to visit that area, though you don't need to be an XMap owner.

Edited by lee_rimar
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Make sure you read the PDF notes with it, especially if you're more a geocacher than an XMap 7 user. There are some caveats for geocachers when dealing with waypoints, symbols, etc. Might want to keep a copy of the 2.6 firmware around in case 2.7 isn't to your liking.

 

As for "wondering when it would be released..." XMap 7 was released a short time ago and the firmware hit the public XMap forum yesterday. I'm fairly sure I'm not breaking the NDA by mentioning it here now, but if I disappear you'll know what happened :)

Edited by lee_rimar
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Loaded it, will need to load a few PQs so I can see what it does?
Not necessarily -- remember, this firmware upgrade wasn't targeted for geocachers*.

 

If you're using Cache Register and can live with the PN-40's 1000 waypoint limit, there's no advantage of loading a PQ from GC.com directly to the SD card. And I'm pretty sure it would confuse Cache Register's syncing feature if you swap different sets of caches in and out of memory from outside of CR. And you'd have to get the PQs out of your email "the old fashioned way."

 

If you need LOTS of waypoints and tracks, that's something this firmware update gives you. If you use XMap and understand DeLorme's concept of forms, that's what this update is REALLY for. Hit DeLorme's XMap forum for info on that.

 

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* That's going to be hard for a lot of folks in this forum to grasp -- there's some other use for a GPS besides caching?

Edited by lee_rimar
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Loaded it, will need to load a few PQs so I can see what it does?
Not necessarily -- remember, this firmware upgrade wasn't targeted for geocachers*.
I usually jump on firmware updates immediately, but I'm holding off on this one. I expect there to be a 2.8 release in the near future, given that
  • This hasn't been advertised to cachers
  • There seem to be some glitches with cache data from the early adopters
  • The documentation originally referenced firmware 2.8, but this is only 2.7

I'm doing a couple big cache runs over the holiday and don't want to risk compromising the status quo of my GPS. It works fine right now, and I want it to work fine all weekend.

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Yeah it works for Geocaching (Sortof). I loaded 994 not found geocaches to my PN40 using GSAK and saved it to a file called NotFound. I then loaded 604 Found geocaches and named it Found. I can load either set at will. My NotFound file shows all 994 perfectly. However the Found file had 89 NotFound and 515 found. For some reason, it is switching the found/not found status but it is loading all my caches.

 

So if you do not mind not trusting the status, all caches were saved. I can now save 1000's of caches on my SD card!

Edited by FatherAndProgeny
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I wish some of this wasn't so over my head.

 

So I bought CacheRegister and have been using it. It seems to work ok, but sometimes I have issues with it.

 

I have no problem moving GPX files from e-mail to an SD card. Are you saying with the firmware upgrade you can do that now and go over the 1000 cache limit?

 

Did they fix the PQ srcrew up from a few weeks ago? I haven't tried to load a PQ since then.

Edited by elrojo14
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I wish some of this wasn't so over my head.

 

So I bought CacheRegister and have been using it. It seems to work ok, but sometimes I have issues with it.

 

I have no problem moving GPX files from e-mail to an SD card. Are you saying with the firmware upgrade you can do that now and go over the 1000 cache limit?

 

Did they fix the PQ srcrew up from a few weeks ago? I haven't tried to load a PQ since then.

Groundspeak made changes without informing their partners. As best I can tell, that change was rolled back until they have a chance to work it out with their partners what the change is and how best to implement it.

 

From the posts I've been reading, the firmware upgrade will allow you to save waypoint layers as GPX to the PN SD card and swap the layers out. You're still limited to 1000 waypoints per layer. If you're familiar with the Magellan way of doing this, then this is a no brainer. There may be some issues with some caches that may have special characters based on early reports. I haven't seen anything yet indicating this is a widespread issue.

 

I'll be doing my own upgrade after Saturday's hike.

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From the posts I've been reading, the firmware upgrade will allow you to save waypoint layers as GPX to the PN SD card and swap the layers out. You're still limited to 1000 waypoints per layer. If you're familiar with the Magellan way of doing this, then this is a no brainer. There may be some issues with some caches that may have special characters based on early reports. I haven't seen anything yet indicating this is a widespread issue.

 

Ok, that sounds easy. I just need a little help understanding layers.

 

Or should I just stick to Cache Register since there is no way I am going to find 1000 caches in a day?

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From the posts I've been reading, the firmware upgrade will allow you to save waypoint layers as GPX to the PN SD card and swap the layers out. You're still limited to 1000 waypoints per layer. If you're familiar with the Magellan way of doing this, then this is a no brainer. There may be some issues with some caches that may have special characters based on early reports. I haven't seen anything yet indicating this is a widespread issue.

 

Ok, that sounds easy. I just need a little help understanding layers.

 

Or should I just stick to Cache Register since there is no way I am going to find 1000 caches in a day?

Play the game as best suits you. The advantage to multiple files is your range is now extended without concern of limitations to how many you can have saved aside from space on your SD card.

 

With the Magellan, when I was limited to 200 waypoints, the multiple files was paramount to having anything beyond a couple of miles in my home area. With 1000 waypoints, I haven't seen as critical a need, but it's a good thing to have when traveling a few hundred or thousand miles.

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This is one of those updates that wasn't specifically designed for geocachers. However, the more tenacious ones figured out it works pretty good, but you can't use it with CR to manage multiple files. You have to load the GPX to Topo, then save the GPX file from Topo to the SD card in a folder named GPX. Then you can load it to the PN through the menu system when you have waypoints selected. The same is true when saving the file back, you have to be viewing the waypoints and then go to the menu to save the file back to the SD card.

 

If that little bit of extra work isn't for you, you aren't missing anything by not loading it. The update was more for XMap usage.

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