+Bullygoat29 Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Garmin Montana Wiki I've started some of the editing. Join the fun and give a helping hand. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 (edited) Does anyone else that has City Navigator find that it takes a racoons age to query for stuff while moving? I tried to find a fast food joint on my way across town today and that little green wheel kept spinning and spinning under a blank screen. 5 minutes later I pulled into a Wendys and turned my confused unit off. Hmm. Yogazoo, I have CN installed on my Montana 650. I haven't searched for POI's while moving... but I do have a thought. Is your Map Speed set to Fast or to Normal? (Setup->Map->Fast/Normal) If it's set to Normal, may I suggest you switch it to Fast and see if there is a difference. Even if I'm standing still the search still takes about 1.5 minutes. If you have city navigator 2012 try searching for a "Food and Drink" category. It doesn't matter which one but lets say "All Categories" and see how long it takes to return any hits. Montana 650 with CNNA NT2012.10 took 109 seconds. Edited July 12, 2011 by Cacheoholic Quote
yogazoo Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Montana 650 with CNNA NT2012.10 took 109 seconds. Well, at least I'm not crazy. There has to be something that's causing it. I also have Garmin topo 24K and BirdsEye loaded. Cacheholic, would you mind sending an email to MontanaBeta@garmin.com describing the delay. The good folks there think I'm crazy on this one. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Will do. I've experienced map freezes. The track line keeps going but the vehicle position is stationary. Nothing but a reboot corrects it. Also have random times when the unit freezes on shutdown in car mount. I get only the backlight when I press the power button. Holding in power button for several seconds shuts it down then I can restart normally. Quote
+ryan3295 Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Montana 650 with CNNA NT2012.10 took 109 seconds. Well, at least I'm not crazy. There has to be something that's causing it. I also have Garmin topo 24K and BirdsEye loaded. Cacheholic, would you mind sending an email to MontanaBeta@garmin.com describing the delay. The good folks there think I'm crazy on this one. I have CN 2012.1 and topo 24k loaded as well, and I am getting about 10 seconds before it will display the search results. Quote
yogazoo Posted July 12, 2011 Posted July 12, 2011 Some test results when querying “All Categories” under “Food and Drink”. I deleted all mapsets from my SD card except City Navigator and added the topos one by one. The only map enabled in the active unit profile is city navigator.: With only CityNav loaded it query’s instantly With CityNav and Garmin Topo 24K loaded on the SD card it takes 40 seconds to display any data With CityNav, Garmin Topo 24K and Topo 2008 loaded on the SD card it takes 1 minute and 30 seconds to return any data. Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 If you have city navigator 2012 try searching for a "Food and Drink" category. It doesn't matter which one but lets say "All Categories" and see how long it takes to return any hits. 4 seconds for a list of All Categories under Food & Drink, and I am sitting at my desk indoors, although I have 5 bars reception. Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 I will try it with some other maps loaded. Do you have birdseye loaded too? Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Still 4 seconds with CN, Topo 2008, California Topo (free), Calif Topo 2011 and Birdseye enabled. Although I do have an uSD card in it, there is nothing on it. Perhaps it is a speed issue on your uSD card? Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 In order to test the search speed I am moving about 700MB of .img files from the Montana to the uSD card in it, and it's VERY slow... it's estimating about 14 minutes to do the transfer. Looks like a good reason to not keep maps on a slow device, and if using a uSD card, it needs to be an expensive, fast one. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 I only have CN enabled but have the following maps on SD: 1) City Navigator NA 2012.10 (all) 2) Topo US 2008 (all) 3) Topo US 24K Midatlantic 4) Topo US 24K Northeast 5) Brazil map 6) My Trails 7) Public Land Ownership 8) Columbia map 9) A few custom maps (KMZ) Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It would be interesting to me to see if moving the maps off of the SD onto the Montana would improve the performance. I will test the opposite scenario when it finishes moving the maps. Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Well so much for the slow uSD theory. Still took 4 seconds with all my maps enabled. But I don't have large maps installed.... all of the .img files I mentioned only total about 700 MB. Maybe it's the SIZE of the maps? Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Yup, but there’s only 3 gb internal memory and I’m using about 11 gb of external. Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 I've got everything on a 16GB class 4 MicroSD. Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 My maps (I have each one in a different .img file, ie: ctnav.img, topo2008.img, catopo11.img and califtopo.img) are fairly small in area, because I don't get very far away from San Francisco. They cover from the Pacific coast to about Lake Tahoe (California / Nevada border) and maybe 200 miles north to south. If I don't need huge maps I don't see any reason to have them loaded all the time. If I go somewhere not currently covered, I will install what maps I need for the trip. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) Here it is! I removed my external memory with 10 – 11 gb of maps and installed CNNA NT2012.10 (all) in the internal memory. The search that took 109 seconds now takes less than 1 second! Edited July 13, 2011 by Cacheoholic Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Glad to hear you solved it. I wonder if getting some smaller but really fast uSD cards and splitting up the load amongst 'em might help, then you could install whatever ones you need when you need them. Quote
Barrikady Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Here it is! I removed my external memory with 10 – 11 gb of maps and installed CNNA NT2012.10 (all) in the internal memory. The search that took 109 seconds now takes less than 1 second! Ah, interesting. I have CN NA2012.10 on a 16gb class 4 micro card. I'm going to put CN NA in internal memory also. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Glad to hear you solved it. I wonder if getting some smaller but really fast uSD cards and splitting up the load amongst 'em might help, then you could install whatever ones you need when you need them. Doesn’t matter to me ‘cause I’m still using my nuvi for searches. The Montana will never take the place of my nuvi unless it can play mp3’s over my FM radio. The nuvi allows me to drop my satellite radio subscription. Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Here it is! I removed my external memory with 10 – 11 gb of maps and installed CNNA NT2012.10 (all) in the internal memory. The search that took 109 seconds now takes less than 1 second! 1) No one has to "remove" mapsets from their cards to test this. All you have to do is create a folder inside your Garmin folder on your SD and name it whatever (I named mine "disable"). Simply cut and paste your mapsets into this folder. The unit will not see them. 2) Wait a second Cacheoholic, the unit memory has nothing to do with it. If you only have City Navigator on your SD card the query results will also be instant. It's not the transfer speed of the card. It's something else. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Finial test. I left the City Navigator on internal memory and removed it from external memory. I put the external memory back in and the same search is now about 90 seconds. It's the total size of map data causing it. Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) Finial test. I left the City Navigator on internal memory and removed it from external memory. I put the external memory back in and the same search is now about 90 seconds. It's the total size of map data causing it. My Topo 24K .img file is 2.6GB. I'll bet your right about map size Caheoholic. I'm going to do some more tests tonight rendering smaller topo maps to see if this fixes the problem. I wonder why it only does this with "Food and Drink" categories??? Edited July 13, 2011 by yogazoo Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It appears that the Montana looks thru all .img files for its search even if they are not enabled? Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 When searching “All POI’s”, which includes all “Food and Drink” the search completes in 9 seconds??? Quote
Barrikady Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Finial test. I left the City Navigator on internal memory and removed it from external memory. I put the external memory back in and the same search is now about 90 seconds. It's the total size of map data causing it. Well, I took CN NA 2012.10 which is on my micro card, and I copied it to the internal memory of the Montana. I then disabled it on the micro card. Unlike Cacheoholic, the time it took to search the same search parameters when CN NA was on the micro card is just about the same... a second slower when the map is in internal memory Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 We probably ought to powercycle the Montana between tests so there is no memory caching effect skewing the results. Make a change, reboot, then test. You want to control as many variables as you can. Quote
+Cacheoholic Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) Finial test. I left the City Navigator on internal memory and removed it from external memory. I put the external memory back in and the same search is now about 90 seconds. It's the total size of map data causing it. Well, I took CN NA 2012.10 which is on my micro card, and I copied it to the internal memory of the Montana. I then disabled it on the micro card. Unlike Cacheoholic, the time it took to search the same search parameters when CN NA was on the micro card is just about the same... a second slower when the map is in internal memory What happens when you remove the MicroSD? Edited July 13, 2011 by Cacheoholic Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) Look, the way I see it is that the search for "Food and Drink" is busted somehow under the right conditions. I'll keep reporting this issue after every firmware update until they fix the darn thing. Until then I'll just have to use my cell phone GPS to find restaraunts which takes about two seconds. Every other query works within a reasonable few seconds it just defies logic that this one doesn't. It should search within a perimeter around my current location and it shouldn't take almost 2 minutes to do so. I don't care how big my .img files are. Here's another bug; try placing the search by "Coordinates" "Where to" button on the main menu. Yeah, now go ahead and tap that shortcut on the main menu page and hold on to your hat! Poof, nothing happens. Edited July 13, 2011 by yogazoo Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) WHOAAA PARTNER!!! Check this out, me findy new hidden trick! Try holding down one of the icons on the main menu pages. After about two seconds the icon breaks free and you can move it around to wherever you like. You don't even have to go to the Main Menu setup page to move things around anymore! Pretty sweet function! Works the same in the "Tray". Edited July 13, 2011 by yogazoo Quote
+ecanderson Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It's STILL copying the maps over... What are you running for a uSD card - a Class 2 'cell phone' card? Those can be killers. They're a good deal harder to find, but we don't use anything less than Class 6 in either the Oregon or the TomTom. Quote
+michaelnel Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It was a cheap one. I think it was a "Low Class" Transcend card. No matter, I don't need it and I took it out. I am only using about 1/2 of the internal storage anyway. Quote
+ecanderson Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It was a cheap one. I think it was a "Low Class" Transcend card. No matter, I don't need it and I took it out. I am only using about 1/2 of the internal storage anyway. Without any other reason, sticking with internal is probably best. For uSD cell phone photos and audio, they've been selling mostly (mostly) cheap Class 2 cards. Easy to come by - to slow for decent map redraws, etc. Experiments with the Oregon showed significant improvement with Class 4, and just a skosh more with Class 6 -- if you ever find the need for some more space. The TomTom units that employ SD and uSD card behave similarly. Quote
freeday Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It charges off of USB and in the automotive mount. In case anyone is curious, I did find the webpage for the battery. http://www.samsungsdi.com/battery/prismatic-ICP103450.jsp But this batterie looks different to the garmin batterie http://garminoregon.wikispaces.com/message/view/Montana/40792301 Quote
savant9 Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 It appears that the Montana looks thru all .img files for its search even if they are not enabled? Yes it does, but so does the Oregon and the Colorado. You can see this by disabling all maps in the setup and then searching for the same poi's, you will get the same list even with no active maps. Quote
+kentwoodkrew Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 I am still wondering about cheap options for my cheap Montana. Money is tight and times are hard. What would be a cheap speaker system to add to a cheap mount? How about antennas? Do They help? What is the connection type? I reckon I can run some wire to my backpack and set up something like a PRC-25. Would it help? Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) WHOAAA PARTNER!!! Check this out, me findy new hidden trick! Try holding down one of the icons on the main menu pages. After about two seconds the icon breaks free and you can move it around to wherever you like. You don't even have to go to the Main Menu setup page to move things around anymore! Pretty sweet function! Works the same in the "Tray". Oh well, I thought it was cool. Anyone else think this is cool or is my "new" trick old news? I know I know, you could do this with the Oregons three years ago right? Edited July 13, 2011 by yogazoo Quote
Barrikady Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 WHOAAA PARTNER!!! Check this out, me findy new hidden trick! Try holding down one of the icons on the main menu pages. After about two seconds the icon breaks free and you can move it around to wherever you like. You don't even have to go to the Main Menu setup page to move things around anymore! Pretty sweet function! Works the same in the "Tray". Oh well, I thought it was cool. Anyone else think this is cool or is my "new" trick old news? I know I know, you could do this with the Oregons three years ago right? Yes, that is WAY COOL...really. Quote
Barrikady Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Finial test. I left the City Navigator on internal memory and removed it from external memory. I put the external memory back in and the same search is now about 90 seconds. It's the total size of map data causing it. Well, I took CN NA 2012.10 which is on my micro card, and I copied it to the internal memory of the Montana. I then disabled it on the micro card. Unlike Cacheoholic, the time it took to search the same search parameters when CN NA was on the micro card is just about the same... a second slower when the map is in internal memory What happens when you remove the MicroSD? That is an excellent question. I just removed the Adata 16gb Class4 MicroSD from the 650. I rebooted and did the same search I did previously when the MicroSD was installed. The search took approximately one second without the MicroSD as compared to approximately 8 seconds when the MicroSD was installed. Quote
+Catch Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Montana SW version 2.60 (Webupdater) Changes from version 2.50 to version 2.60: Improved camera Low Light Mode (650 and 650t) Improved route recalculations with 24K TOPO maps Fixed intermittent voice issues when navigating Fixed issues with orientation lock after a power cycle Fixed intermittent issues with Address and Intersection searches Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 The camera low light mode works great now. Not alot of fixes but it's only been about a week since the last release. Still have a way to go but I'll take it! Quote
+lensgrabber Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 (edited) Anyone having a problem with waypoints showing up? My waypoints and geocaches are both missing when searching on the gps but basecamp shows them when the Montana is plugged in. This happened just after upgrading to 2.60 grrr Edit: Okay after mounting/unmounting a few times both waypoints and caches are back. Not sure what the problem was. Edited July 13, 2011 by lensgrabber Quote
yogazoo Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Anyone having a problem with waypoints showing up? My waypoints and geocaches are both missing when searching on the gps but basecamp shows them when the Montana is plugged in. This happened just after upgrading to 2.60 grrr Sorry, i'm not having the problem you describe. All of my waypoints, tracks, and geocaches (anything .GPX) is still there. Quote
+Catch Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 i can't upgrade server error... Same problem here.. Quote
+Gob-ler Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Did the upgrade here with no difficulties. All seems well! Quote
+Catch Posted July 13, 2011 Posted July 13, 2011 Looks like US upgrades goes well, so I guess it is a different server here in Europe.. (I'm in Norway) Quote
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