Garmin Colo 300 - Strange Beep

[MtnHermit]

I was on an 8-hour hike yesterday and twice got an unexplained beep. Both times I checked the satellite screen; at least 8 bars, all with WAAS "D's", and an EPE in the teens. I also checked the battery: 3 bars.

Their was no screen message, just the single beep.

 

Is their a third beep besides signal strength and battery? Any explanation?

[flyjazz]

Just a guess. The battery or satellite strength monitor could have been briefly irratic for some unknown reason,triggering a momentary alarm.

[+EricRJones]

The Oregon has a anchor drag alarm, an off-course alarm, and an alarm clock. I'm assuming the Colorado is similar. You know when the alarm clock is going off, but the other two are single beeps. Thanks to the touch screen, it's somewhat easy to set these inadvertantly on the Oregon if it is just bouncing around in your pocket (or if you have children who enjoy setting the anchor drag alarm). I imagine that is less true on the Colorado.

[savant9]

Mine has done this on occasion and it was the low battery warning even though it didn't have low batteries. I happened to be looking directly at it and it briefly said low batteries and beeped, within a second it dismissed itself. Checking on the battery display page it still showed 3 bars for batteries. This was with NIMH batts, but I am fairly sure that this bug was fixed with a firmware update quite awhile ago. Are you running the current firmware?

[+ryan3295]

I have heard this on my Colorado 300 as well....I thought that I was imagining it since there was no alarm screen.

[MtnHermit]

I checked my firmware, it's at v3.2, not the very latest but recent.

 

Thanks for all the comments, perhaps someone still has the answer.

[+Timpat]

By chance do have custom POIs loaded, and they are using a proximity alert? A long shot I know, but I use these and sometimes forget I set them for an alert. This wouldn't explain it happening on an 8 mi hike though.

[+g-o-cashers]

Were you navigating? I think there are some off-road navigation beeps if you are navigating to an off-road route and get near one of the route points.

[seldom_sn]

Were you navigating? I think there are some off-road navigation beeps if you are navigating to an off-road route and get near one of the route points.

 

Also, if you are navigating on a trail,(assumes routable trails, or BackTrack), and get off course by more than 500 feet or so you get an off route beep.

[MtnHermit]

Thanks second wave.

 

No POI's, no navigating, but I admit hadn't thought of either of those possibilities.

 

Just the Colo 300, and Topo map with track on. One possibility, I occasionally use the cursor plus center press to measure distance to a feature. If one is not careful, a second press will yield a straight line navigation. But you also get a big magenta line, hard to miss.