Oregon freezing with Wherigo

[+Peter & Di]

Sorry if this has been discussed already, but I'm having lots of problems with my new Oregon 450 and Wherigo. Tried to play the tutorial and the unit just kept freezing as soon as I went into it. I had to remove the batteries to turn off and then power up again. I also downloaded a local Wherigo cartridge and had exactly the same problem, although on just a couple of occasions I was able to get into both of the Wherigos whilst at home.

 

Then suddenly, the problem seemed to go away and I tried several times to access it, just to make sure that it would work when we went to complet the local Wherigo. It worked perfectly! Got home and tried to upload the saved file to Wherigo.com and the unit froze again! I have been unable to access the Wherigo function again on the several times I have tried since then. Haven't got a clue what's going on.

I have updated the Oregon software and had the same problem before and after...

[matejcik]

oregon + Wherigo = problem ;e)

 

but it goes like this: all oregons are generally buggy and unstable when it comes to Wherigo. but some are less unstable (they can play anything until you come to a point that triggers an oregon-specific bug) and some are very unstable (what you are seeing)

the oregon-specific bugs are generally very rare in released cartridges, because people take care to avoid them.

 

the stability varies from unit to unit. you might try to return this one and try a different unit, or maybe buy it from a different retailer (= different manufacturing series).

also, did you load up some geocache queries or something like that? maybe wiping the unit clean will help.

 

in any case, i'd recommend either a different device altogether, or using the oregon only for navigation and playing wherigos on your cellphone

[+pppingme]

There is one author in our area that can consistently write cart's that work just fine on an Oregon. I talked to him briefly about it. He had one statement, keep it simple. I didn't have that much time to get into it with him, but I've played some of his carts (on an oregon 400t) and I thought that they were pretty elaborate, and I've never had a problem with his carts. Others though, don't work.

[matejcik]

this is interesting.

so you have a cartridge that plays fine on an oregon, and is elaborate

and you have a different cartridge that breaks?

 

can you send links to such cartridges?

[+pppingme]

this is interesting.

so you have a cartridge that plays fine on an oregon, and is elaborate

and you have a different cartridge that breaks?

 

can you send links to such cartridges?

Easy, there is a Wherigo in Topeka KS, only one in the area for over 60 miles so it should be easy to find, breaks on Oregons, plays fine on emulators.

 

Anything written by Fried Okra (he has several), I've seen no complaints of them breaking at all on the Oregons, including ones that I've played, and others I've started on my oregon (I was't in the area to play them, this guy lives over 100 miles from me) and I've never had one of his lock up my unit.

 

Most things I've seen seem to go along this line, either the cartridge author is putting out carts that will run on everything, or they run on hardly nothing except the emulator and ppc. Generally when the problem follows the author, its easy to blame the author, but I suspect this is a bigger problem where the compiler/ide/whatever you want to call it, is putting out crappy code and allowing for bad programming practices (of course that doesn't eliminate the author writing good code to start with).

[Ranger Fox]

I won't argue with you that people could have bad coding practices.

 

I would, though, like to make one point. Recently, I released a cartridge that used timers and some custom code. The custom code was only so I didn't have to duplicate common actions across several zones. It was played with a PPC phone, two Oregon 550s, and a Colorado. In the end, only one 550 did not crash (my Colorado 400t, not included in the list, did not crash; it never does, though). Recently, I received a note someone attempted it with a 200 and the GPSr did not crash.

 

In light of all this, I'm beginning to form an opinion that the Garmin Wherigo Player is inconsistent. I wonder if it's bad memory management or something.

[matejcik]

as RangerFox said; i have lots of anecdotal evidence that Wherigo player on Oregon varies from unit to unit. some Oregons are pretty fine (except for oregon-specific bugs), others crash for no good reasons at all

 

i will have a look at the cartridges by Fried Okra.

 

but what i'd love to see - somebody with a "buggy" Oregon try and play one of those cartridges. then we would see whether the problems can be solved in cartridge, or if it's the device's fault

[Ranger Fox]

You know, matejcik, we have Geowoodstock coming up. I'd love to put this Oregon hypothesis to rest and establish some sort of fact. With that many geocachers touting such devices in close proximity, I wonder if we can devise an experiment?

[matejcik]

ho-hum....

we would need a cartridge that would really exercise the Wherigo player.

lots of different zones (three or four active at the same time), lots of items (at most four in a zone) moving around between zones and inventory, long dialogs, maybe even some kind of high-processing computational loop somewhere

plus of course timers.

this way there is a good chance that the cart would crash the problematic units.

but on the other hand there is a good chance that it would crash the other units as well.

maybe there are only "more stable" and "less stable" oregons...

 

i'll think about it, but i don't have a particularly good idea at the moment

[Ranger Fox]

Yeah, me either at the moment. I'd suggest, instead, to separate the tests into their own cartridges. If not, we could always have an item or character with a test selection dialog that could be used to set up a test case.

 

Motivating, organizing, and collecting data from more than 100 people would be a rather interesting feat as well. (Nothing motivates people like free stuff for little effort...)

[Agito]

By extending the sample of Wherigo, I wrote a small and simple Wherigo cartridge too. It does not have any program with PPC. A oregon 400t user complaint that "tried to play the cartridgel and the unit just kept freezing. Reset it from remove the batteries to turn off and then power up again". Another oregon 300 user complaint that after inputed the physical password on phased 1, nothing happen!!! I don't have any oregon device on hand, no idea on their problem!!!

 

What is the "oregon-specific bugs"??

 

Thanks.

[matejcik]

best oregon-specific crasher is ShowScreen other than MAINMENU. (so for example showing list of zones or details for a specific item)

if used often enough, it is almost guaranteed to cause a crash.

[Agito]

An idea sudden glanced in my mind. Will the size of picture/image affect the application of cartridge? PPC is ok because it can resize any oversize or undersize picture automatically. How about oregon? What is the maxmium pixel of the picture which oregon can be read?

[Ranger Fox]

Picture sizes should be kept to a minimum. Please refer to the pinned Media Specs topic for the dimensions. If your question regarded file sizes, there is no specific file size for images with those dimensions as an image's palette affects the file's size. My cartridges' images end up being no more than 25KB.

[matejcik]

I wonder if we can devise an experiment?

something interesting cropped up in the Earwigo group: let's measure the capacity of Oregon's text buffer.

set up a timer that will show a messagebox with longer and longer text every second. initial length and increment will be configured via inputs. the number will be shown at start of text.

let it run and see what number comes up last, before the unit crashes.

see if the number is always the same, or whether it varies

[+TheHarvesters]

I just uploaded this to help with tests regarding the accepted text size in messages on different units:

http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.a...c8-e1b7b2cd1999

 

I'd be interested in any feedback. How you think it could be used at geostock etc.

 

Update: my Nuvi 550 typically bombs at 950 characters, but has also shut down at 910. My Oregan 300 is out on loan at the moment but I will get that tested asap. I will also be asking for some of my geobuddies to help with this testing, but will wait for further comments from this forum first.

 

Paul.

Edited May 28, 2010 by TheHarvesters

[+The-MudSlingers]

I just uploaded this to help with tests regarding the accepted text size in messages on different units:

http://www.Wherigo.com/cartridge/details.a...c8-e1b7b2cd1999

 

I'd be interested in any feedback. How you think it could be used at geostock etc.

 

Update: my Nuvi 550 typically bombs at 950 characters, but has also shut down at 910. My Oregan 300 is out on loan at the moment but I will get that tested asap. I will also be asking for some of my geobuddies to help with this testing, but will wait for further comments from this forum first.

 

Paul.

Using a oregon 200 mine crashes when I open the 1000 text message. 950 and below is fine. For the concatenation test 930 was last I saw before it died. Would the memory used for waypoints and routes and such make any difference?

Edited May 28, 2010 by The-MudSlingers

[+TheHarvesters]

Would the memory used for waypoints and routes and such make any difference?

 

That is one of the theories.

 

As we get some more feedback about the different units we should be able to give a firmer advice to builders to say, "don't set message text above 850 characters, making sure that any inserted variables (i.e. concatenated strings) are taken into account."

 

That's probably a good rule right there, but we need to see if other units are failing at 750 or anything lower.

 

Paul.

[+sTeamTraen]

My Colorado displayed 910 OK on the "Concatenation" test, but crashed when attempting 930. It was able to display 900 characters on the "Standard" test, but crashed when attempting 950.

 

This is with no waypoints and an empty track log.

Edited May 28, 2010 by sTeamTraen

[+Kapitein Haak]

I am building a large Wherigo for customers with 27 points and indeed it freezes. So today i did some testing on the oregon.

 

First of all its a straight forward cartridge, you enter a zone and get a short message and a picture. The sizes of the pictures are up to 11kb so is nothing i would say. I tried first to play the cartridge with all 27 points but without pictures, result a freezing Oregon.

 

Then i started fron scratch with building and after adding each point i tested. This went well untill i reached the 18th zone, this was still playable but from number 19 up it freezed.

 

So my conclusion this is rather some sort of memory fault rather then maybe to much media or so. The total cartridge is about 170 kb. So the limit is some 18 zones.

 

Grtz Haak

 

P.s. Unless somebody knows a solution.

[+sTeamTraen]

Are you making the zones inactive when you leave them? Active zones are what eat memory.

[+Kapitein Haak]

Didn't yet but i could try that.

[+jonsom]

Last week I tried to play a WIG three days in a row and it would always crash at the second stage. The people that I was with did not have any problems and we both had Oregon 400t's. The only difference was I had Software version 3.5 and my friend had v3.3? or something older than v3.5. I updated to v3.8 and the cartridge ran fine. It might be some of the software versions are not stable. Just an idea.

[+Zor]

I can tell you that I found the solution (as a developer) on how to fix the issues I was seeing on my own cartridge.

 

I have a Wherigo geocache (GC1MJP0) that is quite complex and during all of my testing, the Oregon froze on pretty much anything I did. I could not even open up a single dialog. It crashed the unit over and over again. Repeated firmware updates and other tweaks never fixed anything.

 

Then today I heard about some of the 3rd party builders so I loaded my LUA file into Urwigo and a warning came up telling me that because I had more than 7 zones active, the cartridge may not be compatible on all devices. My cartridge has 21 zones and all were active.

 

I changed the logic of how those zones work so that I never had more than four active at a time.

 

I went out on my lunch hour and tried the cartridge and it worked flawlessly. No freezes and was quite quick in response to my commands.

 

If you experience freezes, maybe contact the author of the cart and ask them if they too have too many active zones. It's a possibility at least.

[+walther3]

How can I reinstall the Wherigo Player on my Oregon 450?

 

I accidently deleted the Wherigo folder.

 

Thx for any help and best regards,

walther3

[Ranger Fox]

Huh? If you delete the folder, you should be able to make a new one. Regardless, that should have no bearing on the Player's installation. If removing the folder removes the Player from the device's menu, well, I just have to stare dumbfounded at Garmin. If that's the case, I wonder what would happen if you add a Wherigo folder to the Dakota or 62?

 

If the Wherigo Player is, in fact, gone from the menu and creating the folder doesn't bring it back, install the device's firmware again. This should fix the issue.