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Garmin Montana Calendar


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Has anyone had a problem with the Calendar on the Garmin Montana not logging geocaches?

 

It was fine when I first had the unit, but now, despite resetting the unit,a and reinstalling

the latest firmware, it doesn't record the number of geocaches logged on any day. It does

however, record the number of waypoints found (like the coords for a bonus cache).

 

Perhaps it a setting on the unit that I can't find?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

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Has anyone had a problem with the Calendar on the Garmin Montana not logging geocaches?

 

It was fine when I first had the unit, but now, despite resetting the unit,a and reinstalling

the latest firmware, it doesn't record the number of geocaches logged on any day. It does

however, record the number of waypoints found (like the coords for a bonus cache).

 

Perhaps it a setting on the unit that I can't find?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Check your geocache_visits.txt file (I think it's called that, I forget offhand) on the unit's \garmin folder

 

I'll bet you've put a comma in one of your field notes. If so, take it out using a text editor and it should work OK.

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I have the same problem with my 600. I did look at the visits text file and found a comma in one field note that I had entered a couple of weeks ago. Since I don't enter many field notes, it was easy to find the offending comma. After removing it my finds showed up in the calendar, with the exception of the ones I found this week. Couldn't find any more commas. Strange.

 

By the way, thanks for bringing this subject up. I didn't realize that found caches would show up on the calendar. Now I do.

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It would be interesting to see what you both had in your file. I had the exact same problem and realised it was an offending comma, I'm just wondering what other characters the unit will allow a user to enter will cause the same problem.

 

Fiver, would you mind posting the most recent finds from your file? I'm curious to see it from the last cache it does correctly report onwards as that will usually identify the problem.

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I kept a backup of the geocache_visits.txt file before I edited it, and the only two field notes I had were...

 

-------------

 

GC2W8Y7,2012-01-14T09:18Z,Found it,"S

tb swap"

 

GC2W534,2012-01-14T12:13Z,Found it,"Left drag

 

left tb"

 

------------------------

 

These are copied exactly from the file, so perhaps a couple of return characters have crept in there somehow?

The texts appear a single lines in the garmin file, and as you can see, no commas.

 

And I know the notes don't make sense, but I had gloves on and it was cold which is why I gave up after that.

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Garmin's Field Notes has to be UTF-16 coded.

 

Could you briefly explain what this means in relation to the comma problem to folks like me who aren't code nerds? :) Thank you.

 

That means that Field Notes code other than that are not detected from the Garmin unit.

For more technical infos on UTF: please check wikipedia

 

Hans

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I don't understand that the coding being in UTF format would have anything to do with the calendar not working as it was (I hope) intended. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Also, I haven't seen anything from Garmin that states you shouldn't use any common characters in a field note. Perhaps they could shed more light on this.

 

For what it's worth, here is my geocache_visits.txt file. I don't see anything obviously wrong with it but I'm sure something is as no caches are showing on the calendar from 1/21 onward.

 

GC2P4JP,2011-12-24T11:57Z,Found it,""

GC2D8TM,2011-12-26T09:59Z,Found it,""

GC304DY,2011-12-26T09:59Z,Found it,""

GC2NF3J,2011-12-26T10:04Z,Found it,""

GC1GWE2,2011-12-29T13:51Z,Found it,""

GC2K9Y7,2011-12-31T13:18Z,Found it,""

GC2KZKC,2011-12-31T13:24Z,Needs Maintenance" LOG VERY WET"

GC304EQ,2012-01-05T17:46Z,Found it,""

GC382VM,2012-01-08T13:29Z,Found it,""

GC382V7,2012-01-08T13:34Z,Found it,""

GC2P4JK,2012-01-08T13:38Z,Found it,""

GC266T9,2012-01-10T14:25Z,Found it,""

GC2P4JF,2012-01-10T15:04Z,Found it,""

GC2BTPE,2012-01-10T16:51Z,Found it,""

GC28C93,2012-01-10T17:19Z,Found it,"Log is in bad shape

"

GC2F2T6,2012-01-10T18:36Z,Found it,"Easy find as cache was visible"

GC2MRH5,2012-01-11T15:15Z,Found it,""

GC2MRHA,2012-01-11T15:22Z,Found it,""

GC33K5N,2012-01-11T17:18Z,Found it,""

GC2E2CH,2012-01-12T13:35Z,Found it,""

GC2MEYK,2012-01-12T13:53Z,Found it,""

GC3A68J,2012-01-13T14:31Z,Found it,""

GC2W0AV,2012-01-13T14:41Z,Found it,""

GC1PPQV,2012-01-13T15:11Z,Found it,""

GC39A7H,2012-01-14T22:43Z,Found it,""

GC2NF43,2012-01-15T12:48Z,Found it,""

GC304D5,2012-01-15T12:52Z,Found it,""

GC29K85,2012-01-15T13:04Z,Found it,""

GC30ZK2,2012-01-15T13:08Z,Found it,""

GC2C66H,2012-01-15T13:20Z,Found it,""

GC3A68V,2012-01-16T14:37Z,Found it,""

GC2AHP0,2012-01-16T14:50Z,Found it,""

GC2MEYA,2012-01-16T15:00Z,Found it,""

GC2MRH6,2012-01-17T14:29Z,Found it,""

GC2NF44,2012-01-17T15:17Z,Found it,""

GC2PZ8E,2012-01-17T15:22Z,Found it,""

GC382VP,2012-01-17T15:35Z,Found it,""

GC325J2,2012-01-17T17:06Z,Found it,""

GC2NF43,2012-01-18T14:58Z,Found it,""

GC2C66H,2012-01-18T14:59Z,Found it,""

GC304D5,2012-01-18T15:00Z,Found it,""

GC2Q7XE,2012-01-18T15:47Z,Found it,""

GC304DW,2012-01-18T16:11Z,Found it,""

GC2MQ6A,2012-01-19T15:06Z,Found it,""

GC30ZK2,2012-01-20T14:28Z,Found it,""

GC2P4JE,2012-01-20T17:43Z,Found it,""

GCNH4D,2012-01-20T17:55Z,Found it,""

GC3A695,2012-01-20T18:21Z,Found it,""

GC2P4JJ,2012-01-20T18:30Z,Found it,""

GC34N9V,2012-01-21T12:43Z,Found it,""

GC2W0AG,2012-01-21T12:53Z,Found it,""

GC2RHT6,2012-01-21T16:08Z,Found it,"Wet

"

GC1AQDG,2012-01-21T16:17Z,Found it,""

GC2P9YT,2012-01-25T15:50Z,Found it,"Left TB"

GC2KG8K,2012-01-25T16:25Z,Found it,"Discovered 0003878"

GC1D7RQ,2012-01-25T17:49Z,Didn't find it,""

GC24MHA,2012-01-25T18:02Z,Found it,""

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There is a missing comma after the NM log. This is probably messing up the file. Possible a unit bug?

 

Yep. Now that you mention it, the comma is missing. But, why would all the other logs show up until the 21st? I have finds past this date and they don't show in the calendar. Puzzling.

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There is a missing comma after the NM log. This is probably messing up the file. Possible a unit bug?

 

Yep. Now that you mention it, the comma is missing. But, why would all the other logs show up until the 21st? I have finds past this date and they don't show in the calendar. Puzzling.

 

You've got a line break on one of the notes there. It's odd that the break apparently causes problems while a previous line break doesn't.

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Update on this problem. I went in to the geocaches_visits file and corrected the above mentioned things, and the calendar still won't work. I still don't have anything past 1/21 showing on the calendar. I found five caches today and they aren't showing either. Very frustating that it would work for a while and then out of the blue, quit. As for all the logs, they were entered on the 600. I hope Garmin is reading this as sending them an email is pretty useless.

 

If anyone comes up with any more info, I'm sure it would be appreciated by the community.

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In poking around in the Garmin directory on the 600, I looked at the geocaches_log file. It references the geocaches_visits file. I suspect that if these two files don't agree, then that may be where the problem lies. I'll try to edit the HTML log file in the next couple of days to get it and the _visits file to agree and see what comes up.

 

I'll post my findings.

 

Fingers crossed.

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Update on this problem. I went in to the geocaches_visits file and corrected the above mentioned things, and the calendar still won't work. I still don't have anything past 1/21 showing on the calendar. I found five caches today and they aren't showing either. Very frustating that it would work for a while and then out of the blue, quit. As for all the logs, they were entered on the 600. I hope Garmin is reading this as sending them an email is pretty useless.

 

If anyone comes up with any more info, I'm sure it would be appreciated by the community.

 

If you email MontanaBeta (at) garmin.com they are usually pretty responsive.

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I went through both the files and didn't find any obvious problems. It appears the log file is recording everything correctly but it is not writing it to the visits file.

 

I sent the Montana Beta team an email and attached both files. Hopefully they will look into this and come up with a solution.

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Update on this.

 

I sent an email to the Montana Beta team and included both my geocaches.log and geocache_visits.txt files for them to look at. About a week later, I received a reply that there was indeed a break in the visits file and they don't know what caused it. The beta member corrected my file and returned it to me and I installed it on my 600. It seems to be working now. I was told they would look into this and see if they could find out why bad info is being written to the visits file. Let's keep our fingers crossed that they find the problem and correct it.

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I think I may uncovered the problem with the calendar. When entering a comment, do not press the left bent arrow (cr/lf) as this will pad the comment that is saved with blank spaces and the cr/lf. This corrupts the file and all subsequent caches will not show on the calendar. I confirmed this by editing the file this morning and all works fine now. Use the check mark, not the return key.

 

Cache on.

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I think I may uncovered the problem with the calendar. When entering a comment, do not press the left bent arrow (cr/lf) as this will pad the comment that is saved with blank spaces and the cr/lf. This corrupts the file and all subsequent caches will not show on the calendar. I confirmed this by editing the file this morning and all works fine now. Use the check mark, not the return key.

 

Cache on.

 

That makes sense, although why the programmers gave the user the ability to enter characters into the logs that would break the logs remains a mystery.

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