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Jan. 28 updates for Dakota, Oregon


allory

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My OR 300 is way off as well. Did my usual test out and back walk (everything from open sky to light tree cover) and best accuracy reported was 18m. That appeared correct as there were major deviations between the outbound and inbound recorded tracks. Took along my trusty 76csx and accuracy was normally 2-3m and the out and back tracks laid directly on top of each other. It's very frustrating having my Oregon now for well over a year, multiple sw and fw upgrades and my 76csx ALWAYS kicks it a** for accuracy.

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I walked around the back yard with a Nuvi and my Oregon and they sure weren't reporting the same location, though I had both in my same hand.

Any chance that one of the two was road-snapped and the other was not? I'd put my money on the Nuvi being locked to the nearest road. It's configurable.

 

Even if it was set to "Lock on road" surely it wouldn't report its location as relative to the road? I don't think you can set the Nuvi to not lock on road, anyway. Just checked and if you can, it's not obvious.

 

Your reported location can't possibly be relative to a road. That would be ludicrous. :ph34r:

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Moosemama's Oregon 400t Ver 3.60 installed, and my Oregon 550t with Ver 3.10 installed worked flawlessly last time out, distance to destination (cache) counted down to within a few feet on each cache hunt. On the road, AutoRouting using MetroGuide USA Ver 4.02 and City Navigator North American NT respectively...worked as designed. We're both very pleased with the Oregon final version upgrades.

 

Bill

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Your reported location can't possibly be relative to a road. That would be ludicrous. :ph34r:

Not true! As you are aware, automotive nav units will road-snap by default in an attempt to maintain your position on a road in the event that there is (and there will be) errors between actual coordinates and the geolocation of the road from the map supplier. It's what keeps your unit from showing you off the road instead of on it when there are map/coordinate errors. However, a few of the units (specifically, newer Garmin Nuvi units that can be configured for geocaching) will permit you to disable this feature for off-road coordinates. Even the TomTom units will eventually give up road-snap if you wander far enough off of the closest known road, and they're not configurable for this.

 

Anyway - the most likely scenario:

 

If the Nuvi in the photo was in "road snap" mode (and that assumes that the model in the photo is even configurable - it may well not be) and the Oregon being used for comparison was NOT set to road navigation, the difference in the coordinates is easily explained. Nuvi = road (default), Oregon = non-road (default), you get a disparity in readings that would explain what was shown in the photo.

Edited by ecanderson
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Your reported location can't possibly be relative to a road. That would be ludicrous. :ph34r:

Not true! Many automotive nav units will road-snap by default in an attempt to maintain your position on a road in the event that there is (and there will be) errors between actual coordinates and the geolocation of the road from the map supplier. It's what keeps your unit from showing you off the road instead of on it when there are map/coordinate errors. I've heard that a few of the units (specifically, newer Garmin Nuvi units) will permit you to disable this feature for walking coordinates.

 

I understand that but still a gps is not going to report co-ordinates which place you on the road - it might show you on the road in a map display but it's not going to lie in the co-ordinate display.

 

I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

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I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Hope I don't take us out of sync - I had to edit that post above about 4 times to get it to say what I meant. You might want to refresh the page to keep us "on the same page"!

 

Actually, TomTom does precisely as I describe for all units with firmware versions since 7, and I would not be surprised if Garmin does the same with their road navigation units. As long as the unit is attempting to road-snap, the TomTom will display the road-snapped set of coordinates (90 degrees vs the nearest road) for a fair little distance until it gives up and admits you're elsewhere (like a parking lot or an unmapped road, or having a little off-road fun) and begins to show the actual coordinates again. I know - it seems nuts to me, too. I have always believed the best known coordinates should be displayed, not the ones being used for assumptions about road location.

 

FWIW - that's one of the very few downsides I see in the TomTom units (although a typical user would never know or care about it). The "pedestrian" mode does not release the road-snap feature - it just allows you to walk the wrong way on 1-way streets, etc. I believe the more recent Nuvi models will allow you to shut off road-snap altogether. The geocaching friendly units MUST do it.

Edited by ecanderson
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I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Hope I don't take us out of sync - I had to edit that post above about 4 times to get it to say what I meant. You might want to refresh the page to keep us "on the same page"!

 

Actually, TomTom does precisely as I describe for all units with firmware versions since 7, and I would not be surprised if Garmin does the same with their road navigation units. As long as the unit is attempting to road-snap, the TomTom will display the road-snapped set of coordinates (90 degrees vs the nearest road) for a fair little distance until it gives up and admits you're elsewhere (like a parking lot or an unmapped road, or having a little off-road fun) and begins to show the actual coordinates again. I know - it seems nuts to me, too. I have always believed the best known coordinates should be displayed, not the ones being used for assumptions about road location.

 

FWIW - that's one of the very few downsides I see in the TomTom units (although a typical user would never know or care about it). The "pedestrian" mode does not release the road-snap feature - it just allows you to walk the wrong way on 1-way streets, etc. I believe the more recent Nuvi models will allow you to shut off road-snap altogether. The geocaching friendly units MUST do it.

 

I assume "road-snap" is TT Speak for "lock on road". My Nuvi is a 780 and has no way of turning off "lock on road" unless I choose the navigation method "Off Road", but even then, that only applies while navigating, which I wasn't when I took the screen shots.

 

But even assuming that it was "lock on road" causing the problem, this does not explain why the N co-ordinates were identical, but the W were off. There's actually a road about 50 feet South of the position I was in, and another about 200 West. So I'd have expected the N to be different if the "lock on road" was the explanation.

 

But I think if I have time tomorrow I'll set up both gps in the car with a video camera on them to show if there is a difference in reported co-ordinates under normal conditions while on the road.

Edited by Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hide
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Note in the photo that the N/S coordinates are dead on, but E/W are out, with the automotive nav unit showing a location DUE west of the location of the handheld. That's an indication that the nearest road runs N/S and that the owner was to the east side of the nearest road.

 

To tell you the truth, I hope you're right and that the Oregon is reporting correctly, but I would still be surprised if the gps lied to me as to its real current co-ordinates.

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But even assuming that it was "lock on road" causing the problem, this does not explain why the N co-ordinates were identical, but the W were off. There's actually a road about 50 feet South of the position I was in, and another about 200 West. So I'd have expected the N to be different if the "lock on road" was the explanation.

With that in mind, there probably is something else even goofier going on. Assuming a little less than 4' per 0.001 E/W at your latitude, the delta was on the order of 700'.
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With that in mind, there probably is something else even goofier going on. Assuming a little less than 4' per 0.001 E/W at your latitude, the delta was on the order of 700'.

 

Took this pic out in the work parking lot - looks to me like both units are reporting very similar co-ordinates in this test:

SANY0773.JPG

 

So maybe there's nothing to worry about in my case, anyway. The Oregon does not seem to have any variance beyond what would normally be expected.

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I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

Hope I don't take us out of sync - I had to edit that post above about 4 times to get it to say what I meant. You might want to refresh the page to keep us "on the same page"!

 

Actually, TomTom does precisely as I describe for all units with firmware versions since 7, and I would not be surprised if Garmin does the same with their road navigation units. As long as the unit is attempting to road-snap, the TomTom will display the road-snapped set of coordinates (90 degrees vs the nearest road) for a fair little distance until it gives up and admits you're elsewhere (like a parking lot or an unmapped road, or having a little off-road fun) and begins to show the actual coordinates again. I know - it seems nuts to me, too. I have always believed the best known coordinates should be displayed, not the ones being used for assumptions about road location.

 

FWIW - that's one of the very few downsides I see in the TomTom units (although a typical user would never know or care about it). The "pedestrian" mode does not release the road-snap feature - it just allows you to walk the wrong way on 1-way streets, etc. I believe the more recent Nuvi models will allow you to shut off road-snap altogether. The geocaching friendly units MUST do it.

 

I assume "road-snap" is TT Speak for "lock on road". My Nuvi is a 780 and has no way of turning off "lock on road" unless I choose the navigation method "Off Road", but even then, that only applies while navigating, which I wasn't when I took the screen shots.

 

But even assuming that it was "lock on road" causing the problem, this does not explain why the N co-ordinates were identical, but the W were off. There's actually a road about 50 feet South of the position I was in, and another about 200 West. So I'd have expected the N to be different if the "lock on road" was the explanation.

 

But I think if I have time tomorrow I'll set up both gps in the car with a video camera on them to show if there is a difference in reported co-ordinates under normal conditions while on the road.

 

Remember, you can't really compare on the road because of the Lock to road feature. All you will be looking at is the coordinates of the road position on the map. When the unit locks to a road, the reported position is actually the location it puts itself onto on the map, and not the GPS computed location. Even the track log will be offset by the amount of the map errors.

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I too had a distance from cache variance with v3.6... I was 25 ft from the cache when my spouse yelled "Found it" - prior version I always got down to within about 10 feet or less to a cache.

 

As stated earlier, I downgraded back to Ver 3.2 (v3.15) and re-verifed my gps, and it was back to its old self.

 

It still seems to me that Oregon 400 / 500 series seem to take the upgrade well, while us with Oregon 200 / 300's have less luck...

 

PS Your welcome, Yalcis!

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I contacted GARMIN regarding this, referencing this thread. Here is their reply:

 

It sounds like there might be some software corruption in the device. To delete this corruption, I would recommend resetting the device. To perform the Master Reset, please follow these instructions:

 

NOTE: By doing this reset, ALL user information will be ERASED and ALL settings will be defaulted back to the factory settings. Please make sure to save all information to the computer before doing reset.

 

1. Power the unit OFF.

 

2. Press the Power button and top-left corner of the display.

 

3. When the unit powers on, please release on the Power button, but continue to hold the top-left corner of the display.

 

4. The unit will ask you "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO ERASE ALL USER DATA?”. Once you see this, you may release you finger on the display.

 

5. Press on Yes.

 

6. Put the unit outside with a clear view of the sky for a minimum of 20 minutes to get satellite data.

 

7. The unit is now reset and has found satellites all over again.

 

Please let me know if you have any further questions. Thank you and have a great day!

 

With Best Regards,

Heath H

 

I did it...sill see if I have any difference soon, when I can get cachin'.

-WHO-DEY

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I have been trying to update the firmware on my Oregon 400t but I keep getting the message "the update file is corrupted". What do I do now? BTW, I currently have 3.10 on the GPS - do I have to process the upgrades one at a time until I get to 3.6 or just once? Thanks for any help.

 

Edit: Problem solved. Apparently you need to be in Mass Storage mode to update. I did not have to process the upgrades one at a time, either.

Edited by Afternoonshift
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hmmm, ive just read this thread and have just this second updated, now wondering if ive done the right thing.

 

With reference above to the customer service answer of reset the device, most help desks will ask this as often it can solve most problems. They will have a huge list of things to do and normally in an order of most commonly solved. Mobile/cell phone companies will often tell you to turn off the phone and remove the sim as the first thing to do, this does a number of things re logs to a cell tower and in case anything has got on the contacts between the phone and sim or if the sim had got knocked losing connection.

 

If those contacting garmin in future say they have done the reset and nothing has changed then no doubt they will give you the next instruction on the list to try.

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Anyone having this issue...

 

When you go and find a POI and then when you have the POI and you select it you have the option to create a waypoint. When you press OK it goes back a screen and freezes...You have to turn it off and then restart.

 

No on my OR300 with 3.6. This firmware seems really stable, apart from a issue I have with HTML processing on a lot of cache pages. My unit crashes on several cache description pages since 3.42b like this one:

 

- GC1WBBP

 

and it breaks text display on others, like this one:

 

- GC1PJWF

 

I know that this is not a bug that affects everyone but I also know that it is not just me. I ended up solving my problem by writing a small program that removes most of the useless HTML formatting tags from the .GPX files.

 

Oh, and one more bug. My compass seems to hang for long periods of time. I solve it by calibrating it again.

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