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Video: garmin etrex 20 sticky problem remains on 2.7 firmware :-(


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I just hook my Etrex up to my PC, track logs then show up in the All data folder :)

 

Copy any track you want to play with into the Basecamp All data folder, then you can do whatever you need to do (modify it etc).

Something is strange here. My eTrex 30 is plugged in right now and I don't see an 'All Data' folder.

 

Neither do I see one in Basecamp when the program is open nor in the PC basecamp file structure when I open that.

 

EDIT: Okay, reloaded basecamp and under devices it shows the eTrex and 'All Files.' That shows the caches and tracks. But I still don't see a way to process/play with the track.

 

EDIT2: Okay, I'm seeing properties now. Whew! That is well hidden. I still prefer MapSoure's way of doing this. One right click and you are there.

Edited by MotorBug
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I'm glad to see this thread as I have been terribly disappointed with my eTrex 20. I have been geocaching for 10 years and loved my original Vista and my Oregon 300. Sadly, the latter was misplaced and I purchased an eTrex 20 in January. I have been suffering from the stickiness problem ever since. On multiple occasions the unit has taken me 100 feet past ground zero (after 10 years I'm resaonably good at finding tupperware containers in the woods - but not that good). I almost always can eventually find the cache but often it is in spite of the device instead of because of it. I had not reported anything to Garmin but will do so. I don't expect a helpful response but adding another report to the dissatisfied file can't hurt our cause. If I were buying I new unit I would definitely not recommend the 20.

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Apologies, in Basecamp it's the 'My collection' folder, it's All Data for the device. You should certainly see that folder listed directly under your device in the left hand pane. If you don't is your device shown?

Yes I see my eTrex now and 'All Files.' I figured out how to see the track info-- properties, elevation, etc. Thanks for the help. That certainly makes Basecamp more useful.

 

I notice you have a Nuvi folder. I've often wondered how to get track info off my Nuvi 500 that has a geocaching mode. I am going to try it with Basecamp.

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Wha? 2.71? Really?!

 

They are gonna fix something that they said was fixed? I have a Mac so please give it a whirl and give feedback... Please! (Been hunting all day for a used gpsmap60... Maybe I should hold off a bit.)

 

Having a mac should not be a limitation - all you need to do is to write the update file to the Garmin folder in the device memory and reboot it.

I can send a link to it extracted if you want.

 

Sure!

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I'm glad to see this thread as I have been terribly disappointed with my eTrex 20. <snip>

Apply the 2.71 beta firmware update and let us know if that fixes things for you. Hope so and good luck!

 

2.71 applied and caching on the docket for Saturday. I'll report back. Thanks!

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Glad to see POSITIVE updates.

 

As I said in the other thread I am going to wait for public release. The 1 Beta I tried was the start of all issues with mine.

 

At this point I have to have have GLONASS and WAAS/EGNOS all OFF to have mine operational in a caching environment.

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Did you both have the issue beforehand ?

 

Yes. Extremely noticable. It got better with 2.70, and got really good with 2.71.

 

Of course, those that like a nice steady pointer when standing still are now all calling Garmin and complaining. :lol:

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Did you both have the issue beforehand ?

 

Yes. Extremely noticable. It got better with 2.70, and got really good with 2.71.

 

Of course, those that like a nice steady pointer when standing still are now all calling Garmin and complaining. :lol:

 

No problems with a jumpy pointer here. If anything, it got far better, because the compass now works, which it indeed did not do before 2.71.

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My theory is that Garmin has ditched the personnel who previously worked with distance calculations, noise filtering, etc and the new team has written completely new routines (or it's the same team who has made a completely new effort). While the stickiness is now gone, I discovered another bug... if the device is set to "goto" any waypoint, and then rebooted, the machine beeps and says you are arriving at said waypoint even if you are halfway around the globe from it.

 

Probably some distance variable is errenously set to zero at boot and they don't update it before some satellite data has been processed.

 

So garmin - Take note of this and fix it in 2.80... (didn't expect a beta to work 100% well and you are on the right track so keep it up).

Edited by tr_s
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My experience with 2.71.

 

A bit of an improvement over 2.7. I got a sticky in a park that was fairly open, I was under a single tree. A reboot got it back on track. I was in the woods and was going down the wrong path before it started slowly swinging around. I then realized I also had glonass enabled. I turned off glonass, rebooted and it seemed to work pretty good the rest of the day. It was mostly open the rest of the day so I don't yet have a solid opinion other than glonass sucks swap water.

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My experience with 2.71.

 

A bit of an improvement over 2.7. I got a sticky in a park that was fairly open, I was under a single tree. A reboot got it back on track. I was in the woods and was going down the wrong path before it started slowly swinging around. I then realized I also had glonass enabled. I turned off glonass, rebooted and it seemed to work pretty good the rest of the day. It was mostly open the rest of the day so I don't yet have a solid opinion other than glonass sucks swap water.

 

Was hoping for some positive 2.71 feedback from this weekends outings... Yours isn't a great start .

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My experience with 2.71.

 

A bit of an improvement over 2.7. I got a sticky in a park that was fairly open, I was under a single tree. A reboot got it back on track. I was in the woods and was going down the wrong path before it started slowly swinging around. I then realized I also had glonass enabled. I turned off glonass, rebooted and it seemed to work pretty good the rest of the day. It was mostly open the rest of the day so I don't yet have a solid opinion other than glonass sucks swap water.

 

Was hoping for some positive 2.71 feedback from this weekends outings... Yours isn't a great start .

Well, except for glonass, I would say that 2.71 certainly is not worse than 2.7. After I turned glosnass off the rest of the day it preformed pretty well, but like I said it was more open urban areas. Maybe tomorrow I'll do a tree farm cache and we will see. Sunday I have more caching planned, but it is mostly urban caching. I'm not ready to say 2.71 is not worth it, just saying with the testing I did it was not heads and shoulders above. Certainly was not like the difference between 2.6 and 2.61. The couple I did in woods after glonass was turned off it worked pretty good. I just need some more tree cover caching to say it is definitely better. I would not hesitate on recommending that you should install it.

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My experience with 2.71.

 

A bit of an improvement over 2.7. I got a sticky in a park that was fairly open, I was under a single tree. A reboot got it back on track. I was in the woods and was going down the wrong path before it started slowly swinging around. I then realized I also had glonass enabled.

 

Could be something - I have glonass turned off in my device as I have found it mostly just seems to sabotage accuracy.

Anyway, a bummer it isn't generally fixed. Guess I am just lucky, woulnd't surprise me if I soon see it stick again as well. Something tells me it does not have with Glonass to do; I had the problem severely without glonass enabled.

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No sticky observed here yet at least. The thing even seems to work at low speeds inside a house where the original etrex yellow (anno 1999) cannot keep a lock at all. Again, note that I do not have GLONASS enabled!

Edited by tr_s
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My experience with 2.71.

 

A bit of an improvement over 2.7. I got a sticky in a park that was fairly open, I was under a single tree. A reboot got it back on track. I was in the woods and was going down the wrong path before it started slowly swinging around. I then realized I also had glonass enabled. I turned off glonass, rebooted and it seemed to work pretty good the rest of the day. It was mostly open the rest of the day so I don't yet have a solid opinion other than glonass sucks swap water.

 

Was hoping for some positive 2.71 feedback from this weekends outings... Yours isn't a great start .

I hope you all keep the pressure on Garmin and get good results before their famous word comes out,,,,DISCONTINUED.

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Cross posting what I wrote in another tread because it's important here too:

 

I did see some sticky behavior (but not severe) when I tried Glonass enabled today. Maybe the calculated position is an average of Glonass and GPS position or something. After all, they have written "improved GPS response..." in the bugfixes, not GLONASS response. And indeed GLONASS is not enabled by default. Duh

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Update on 2.71 for etrex 30. Went out to get two caches today on a tree farm. Heading to the first one and all was doing well. Then suddenly the arrow switches and points to the opposite direction from where I was heading. Looked at the map and the cache should be ahead. Continue to walk, arrow continues to point backwards but the distance continues to count down. Shut unit down, reboot, stop navigating and reselect the cache. Okay, pointing in the right direction but then the arrow snaps back and forth from forward to reverse, but the distance continues to count down. The arrow finally snaps around to the correct heading and we get close to the cache. Initially pointed to the wrong side of the track but after thinking about it for a while points right at the cache. Headed to the second one without problems. It was off a bit from where we found the cache, but it could as well been the coordinates. At least I never saw the distance stick, but not quite as solid as my 76CSx.

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pointing in the right direction but then the arrow snaps back and forth from forward to reverse, but the distance continues to count down. The arrow finally snaps around to the correct heading and we get close to the cache.

 

Sounds like a magnetic compass issue - do you have it turned on?

I've found it definitely requires recalibration after every battery change, or it will jump randomly 180 degrees.

Mostly keep it turned off.

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pointing in the right direction but then the arrow snaps back and forth from forward to reverse, but the distance continues to count down. The arrow finally snaps around to the correct heading and we get close to the cache.

 

Sounds like a magnetic compass issue - do you have it turned on?

I've found it definitely requires recalibration after every battery change, or it will jump randomly 180 degrees.

Mostly keep it turned off.

No, it is a firmware issue. And yes I calibrate the electronic compass all the time when I change the batteries. I never had this problem with my 76CSx that had the electronic compass turned on all the time.

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I predicted people would complain about the compass if they fixed the "sticky" problem in an earlier post. I didn't think it would be so soon. Maybe a picture would help. I searched for scatter plot and found one on this site.

 

gps2.gif

The green shows the positions that an accurate GPS reports when you leave it in one spot for 6 hours. The circle has a 10 meter radius. Lets say the cache is a few meters west and in the green section. The GPS will report your position all around the cache even though you actually in the center of the circle. The magnetic compass will have bearings of 0 and 359 and all bearings in between. Calibrating the compass or changing batteries will have no effect. If the GPS was completely sticky there would only be one point and no cloud and a steady compass.

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I predicted people would complain about the compass if they fixed the "sticky" problem in an earlier post. I didn't think it would be so soon. Maybe a picture would help. I searched for scatter plot and found one on this site.

 

gps2.gif

The green shows the positions that an accurate GPS reports when you leave it in one spot for 6 hours. The circle has a 10 meter radius. Lets say the cache is a few meters west and in the green section. The GPS will report your position all around the cache even though you actually in the center of the circle. The magnetic compass will have bearings of 0 and 359 and all bearings in between. Calibrating the compass or changing batteries will have no effect. If the GPS was completely sticky there would only be one point and no cloud and a steady compass.

Calibrating the compass is to null out the magnetic influence of the batteries. It should be done each time the batteries are changed. I have found re-calibrating after moving a number of miles is also beneficial to null out local abnormalities in the earths magnetic field. The casual observer notes that compass calibration has nothing to do with a static scatter plot, but does have an influence on pointing the causal observer toward the correct bearing when traveling to a waypoint.

The article you reference has nothing to do with the price of rice in China in regards to the compass performance of the etrex 30.

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Update on 2.71 for etrex 30. Went out to get two caches today on a tree farm. Heading to the first one and all was doing well. Then suddenly the arrow switches and points to the opposite direction from where I was heading. Looked at the map and the cache should be ahead. Continue to walk, arrow continues to point backwards but the distance continues to count down. Shut unit down, reboot, stop navigating and reselect the cache. Okay, pointing in the right direction but then the arrow snaps back and forth from forward to reverse, but the distance continues to count down. The arrow finally snaps around to the correct heading and we get close to the cache. Initially pointed to the wrong side of the track but after thinking about it for a while points right at the cache. Headed to the second one without problems. It was off a bit from where we found the cache, but it could as well been the coordinates. At least I never saw the distance stick, but not quite as solid as my 76CSx.

 

I've had issues with the compass in my Etrex 30 pretty much since I bought it in September. For a detailed description of what I usually encounter have a look at this previous post which includes a video. It happens most times I go out and I've lost all faith in it. On one occasion I was using it to navigate (not for caches) and I needed to calibrate the compass several times over a 10 mile walk.

This is the 2nd unit I've had (first was replaced due to faulty sound) and they've both had this problem, no matter what firmware I was using.

 

I've contacted Garmin who said that they'd replace it and I'll probably do this in a couple of weeks after my next trip where I can't be without it.

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I predicted people would complain about the compass if they fixed the "sticky" problem in an earlier post. I didn't think it would be so soon.

 

Why use the same non-agressive filter on the heading as on the position? I'm fairly certain none of my older receivers do, as they do not stick and still manage to show a stable heading during slow walking or passing brush... the eTrex-H is fine and dandy.

 

Haven't had any real issues with 2.71 yet myself using only GPS, but the responses from others seem far from promising.

 

Compass got much better with 2.71 but compared to an ordinary toy compass for keychains, it is still absolutely laughable.

Edited by tr_s
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Update on 2.71 for etrex 30. Went out to get two caches today on a tree farm. Heading to the first one and all was doing well. Then suddenly the arrow switches and points to the opposite direction from where I was heading. Looked at the map and the cache should be ahead. Continue to walk, arrow continues to point backwards but the distance continues to count down. Shut unit down, reboot, stop navigating and reselect the cache. Okay, pointing in the right direction but then the arrow snaps back and forth from forward to reverse, but the distance continues to count down. The arrow finally snaps around to the correct heading and we get close to the cache. Initially pointed to the wrong side of the track but after thinking about it for a while points right at the cache. Headed to the second one without problems. It was off a bit from where we found the cache, but it could as well been the coordinates. At least I never saw the distance stick, but not quite as solid as my 76CSx.

 

I've had issues with the compass in my Etrex 30 pretty much since I bought it in September. For a detailed description of what I usually encounter have a look at this previous post which includes a video. It happens most times I go out and I've lost all faith in it. On one occasion I was using it to navigate (not for caches) and I needed to calibrate the compass several times over a 10 mile walk.

This is the 2nd unit I've had (first was replaced due to faulty sound) and they've both had this problem, no matter what firmware I was using.

 

I've contacted Garmin who said that they'd replace it and I'll probably do this in a couple of weeks after my next trip where I can't be without it.

I watched that linked video again. If I had that compass AND the sticky issue, I would have left the 30 in that cache as swag.

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That compass makes me dizzy,I use my gps for backcountry use mainly,this product would be scary and dangerous.Their must be some people that get themselves totaly lost,confused and possibly into a dangerous situation in the bush.The best use for this product is probably for throwing at bears.

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I'm glad to see this thread as I have been terribly disappointed with my eTrex 20. <snip>

Apply the 2.71 beta firmware update and let us know if that fixes things for you. Hope so and good luck!

 

2.71 applied and caching on the docket for Saturday. I'll report back. Thanks!

 

UPDATE: After downloading 2.71 I hit the trails last weekend and found my GPS performance to be much improved. I wouldn't say 100% better as I still experienced some minor sticking but significantly better in that most of the time I was directed to the cache. I had no instances of 100-foot+ overshoots (as I did before). In fact, I was 26 for 26 caches which was a career high. I feel much better about the device now.

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I'm glad to see this thread as I have been terribly disappointed with my eTrex 20. <snip>

Apply the 2.71 beta firmware update and let us know if that fixes things for you. Hope so and good luck!

 

2.71 applied and caching on the docket for Saturday. I'll report back. Thanks!

 

UPDATE: After downloading 2.71 I hit the trails last weekend and found my GPS performance to be much improved. I wouldn't say 100% better as I still experienced some minor sticking but significantly better in that most of the time I was directed to the cache. I had no instances of 100-foot+ overshoots (as I did before). In fact, I was 26 for 26 caches which was a career high. I feel much better about the device now.

This is great news... Can't wait to try it myself!

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I know this is an old topic, but I'm really having troubles with the sticky issue on my Etrex 20 and Garmin says they never heard it on Etrex.

Software is already 4.50 and it's still there. Anybody who can help me, please ?

Garmin advice is to buy a new one. As if.

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