Garmin Oregon 450

[+DragonsWest]

I'd like to find a way to get my 450 to reload all caches and waypoints on start up.

 

Again this weekend it went off, turned back on and only had some way points and a couple manually loaded caches - all the rest in the PQs had vamoosed. It's some kind of bug, which nearly resulted in my driving 20 miles back home to reload everything. It has happened before. Theories related to the SIM coming loose appear to be the common thread, but once it has happened it small comfort having an idea what caused it.

 

Does anyone know of a way, in the field, to force the Garmin GPSrs to reload all content?

[+phlatlander]

I wonder if the problem may be related to my experience. Do you have a micro sd?

 

I have a 2 month old 550 and I have had to modify the battery replacement and battery compartment slightly. I used to "pop" the batteries out but after doing that or after removing both batteries and inserting new batteries, every couple of times the 550 would "lose" the micro sd and I as I keep all maps and geocache data on that card, "nada". Took me a while to figure that the little slide/cover over micro sd was not seating completely. So then I began to only remove/replace one battery, then the other. That reduced the "nada" occasions significantly but not completely. So my latest mod is a small piece of folded over duct tape (what else...) laid between the batteries and the micro sd slide/cover. The 550 seems much happier with that arrangement.

 

Your mileage may vary...

Edited March 12, 2012 by phlatlander

[+DragonsWest]

I wonder if the problem may be related to my experience. Do you have a micro sd?

 

I have a 2 month old 550 and I have had to modify the battery replacement and battery compartment slightly. I used to "pop" the batteries out but after doing that or after removing both batteries and inserting new batteries, every couple of times the 550 would "lose" the micro sd and I as I keep all maps and geocache data on that card, "nada". Took me a while to figure that the little slide/cover over micro sd was not seating completely. So then I began to only remove/replace one battery, then the other. That reduced the "nada" occasions significantly but not completely. So my latest mod is a small piece of folded over duct tape (what else...) laid between the batteries and the micro sd slide/cover. The 550 seems much happier with that arrangement.

 

Your mileage may vary...

 

The poor clip arrangement for the memory is undoubtably related, vibration (i.e. dropping the unit) can cause the clip to slip and the chip come loose - I think this is what has made the power suddenly go off on the unit - not really losing power, but a catastrophic system failure, from the system's point of view. I've usually reserved the memory for my map files, which are rather large. May consider placing the GPX folder on there, as it could solve my problem of restoration in the field -- the worst I may encounter is the unit loosing track of which caches I've found.

[+Cacheoholic]

Keep your GPX files on the microSD memory. Then you can reload the cache files anywhere. I’ve mastered it driving down the road. Remove the memory and hold it in your mouth. Boot the GPS. Shutdown, insert the memory taking note of the LOCK arrow and lock in place. Restart the GPS and all caches are reloaded.

[+New Jersey TJ]

If you have the room, why not just load the PQs to the GPS? My City Nav in on a card, so I have all my PQs and my topo maps on the GPS. I suppose that if you have a ton of maps loaded, there may not be room for the PQs, though.

[+ToonAl]

I just posted what i think is the issue in another chain. But I figure if I keep saying it enough people will believe me like some crazy guy.

 

When you reboot your 450 BEFORE looking for caches, ensure that you have a gps lock. That is the bars at the bottom of the main menu showing GPS accuracy some green bars. I bet if you do this you will never face the issue you just have.

[+Chrysalides]

Strangely, I have the opposite problem you're facing.

 

Every once in a while, on startup, my Oregon 450 will decide to reload all the caches, resulting in a very long wait for the unit to come up (4800 caches in one GPX), despite the fact that I have not done anything unusual to the unit, or even connected it to a computer since the last reload. I don't use a micro SD in my 450.

 

For your situation, the only solution I can think of is to load your GPX onto microSD. To force a reload, remove microSD, start up Oregon, shut down, insert microSD, start up again.

 

I'm not sure if a unit reset (touch upper left of screen, power on unit while continuing to touch upper left corner) will force a reload, but it wipes out all personalization and is a major pain getting things back to how you like it. The only other thing you can do is to carry a laptop or an Android phone / tablet that can function as a USB host, and modify the GPX file. The micro SD solution is by far the easiest, if you don't have a dedicated map card.

[+ToonAl]

That might affect it if your GPS thinks it's somewhere else, as I understand that some GPS only show geocaches within a certain distance of where the GPS thinks it is?

 

No it will show you geocaches no matter how far away. An example: last month I took a trip to florida with a cruise to the Caribbean thrown in. I loaded the GPS at home (I am from Canada) and then started the GPS up and to test I look for a geocache and it will show the same closest cache just it will say 2000 km away.

[+coggins]

Yes, that's what I thought but I've seen others post that this is not the case, think it depends on which GPS you have

some of the older ones did that

[+DragonsWest]

My 450 occasionally starts up pointing at Garmin's HQ in the midwest, but that's not the issue I've experienced as a problem.

 

Generally the unit, even with good batteries just shuts off - my guess is this is what it does when encountering some system failure. Upon start up I will see waypoints, some manually loaded caches, but the big PQ files don't show.

 

If you are familiar with the backend of Windows ( or better yet, *ix operating systems) touching a file, which changes its modification/creation date appears to trigger the unit to reload a file, but there's no means I've seen to touch any files from the UI.

 

I don't recall, but it's certainly possible the operating system for the newer units has Linux in its roots.

[+riffraff9000]

There's nothing in the system/about file about Linux copyright on the etrex 20, which is required by law. Also, I see nothing of a source code repository on their web site, as is required by the GPL. But a search for "Linux" on their site does result in eight hits.

Edited March 16, 2012 by riffraff9000

[+Chrysalides]

Generally the unit, even with good batteries just shuts off - my guess is this is what it does when encountering some system failure.

I'd say there's two possibilities here :

 

1. System failure, as you mentioned. I've encountered that only very rarely, with my Oregon 300 and 450. It seems to happen after a firmware update. I'll do a reset on the unit (described above) to fix this.

 

2. Hardware failure - faulty battery connector or similar issue. Was the unit under physical stress when this happened? Being shaken, dropped, etc.?

 

Something else I've noticed but haven't been able to quantify is that the Oregon seems to be flaky when the tracklog (on by default) gets full. On my Oregon 300 I turned tracklogs off. On my 450 I have it on now, but reset the tracklog whenever it approaches 50%.

[+DragonsWest]

Spent the weekend using the GPX directory on the microSD. Works fine, though first boot after installing PQs is about 10% slower than putting the files in the system memory. Works OK for me so far.

[+Chrysalides]

Spent the weekend using the GPX directory on the microSD. Works fine, though first boot after installing PQs is about 10% slower than putting the files in the system memory. Works OK for me so far.

After being bitten a couple of times with the "failure to load GPX in the field" problem, I always turn it on at home immediately after loading to make sure it'll come up. This eliminates the delay when in the field.