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New Garmin Oregon 600 Series


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I tried today using battery saver to record a track. The screen and backlight turned off after the 30second time limit I set. However, unfortunately when I viewed the track later, it showed a straight "bee line" from where it turned off to where I then powered it back on. So it appears that allowing it to enter battery saver does not continue to record tracks or GPS locations.

 

This sounds like behavior I saw with Auto Pause. It would tend to jump largeish distances when it detected a pause because it would wait for you to travel 100+ ft before turning tracking back on. Made the Auto Pause feature not nearly as helpful as I would have liked.

 

Do you have Auto Pause on? As I can't reproduce it even sitting still with Auto Pause off (it keeps generating points while the screen is off). Wouldn't surprise me if there was a bug with Auto Pause + Battery Save, as Auto Pause is a new feature, and itself a little touchy/buggy.

 

Since Kolenka is clearly an expert user, will be interesting if he can duplicate your results.

 

Expert user? Maybe. More like bored engineer that likes to dabble. ;)

Edited by Kolenka
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Assuming you had it set correctly, then you've found the first bug in the 6xx firmware. Based on past history, many more bugs will follow.

 

Your wishing for bugs so your not tempted to buy one. :) Just go ahead and sell your 450, the new Oregon's are ready from day one. Nothing but glowing reviews from the same jaded users who have gone through years of bugs with other models. Me being one.

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And why run the risk, it's simple enough to extract a couple of batteries and put them on charge :)

 

Unless you wear out the latching mechanism and/or gasket. :anibad:

 

Everything wears out, sure, but I've used my 60CSX for 5 years, heavily, and never wore that latch/gasket out. Why would I believe that I would on my Oregon 600?

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And why run the risk, it's simple enough to extract a couple of batteries and put them on charge :)

 

Unless you wear out the latching mechanism and/or gasket. :anibad:

 

Everything wears out, sure, but I've used my 60CSX for 5 years, heavily, and never wore that latch/gasket out. Why would I believe that I would on my Oregon 600?

 

Oh, I don't know... A sneaking suspicion that the case/latch/gasket area isn't anywhere near as robust as your (and mine) 60CSx?

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And why run the risk, it's simple enough to extract a couple of batteries and put them on charge :)

 

Unless you wear out the latching mechanism and/or gasket. :anibad:

 

Everything wears out, sure, but I've used my 60CSX for 5 years, heavily, and never wore that latch/gasket out. Why would I believe that I would on my Oregon 600?

 

Oh, I don't know... A sneaking suspicion that the case/latch/gasket area isn't anywhere near as robust as your (and mine) 60CSx?

 

I'm going to buy the rechargable battery pack for my 600. I see a huge benefit in not having to remove my batteries constantly and charging them in external charger. It will still be cheaper than buying 650 and I do not need the camera feature.

 

On road trips it will be great to just plug the GPS in the car charger and then take it out when looking for a cache, never fearing about battery life. Even though the latch on my 60csx is still in great shape after many year, not having to ever open it is a much better solution IMHO

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I'm going to buy the rechargable battery pack for my 600.

 

It' doesn't come with the rechargeable battery? Even my "low end" Montana 600 came with one. :rolleyes:

 

Only 650 comes with it.fine by me, still saving bunch, though I'm sure it costs Garmin couple bucks and charges us 25

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The number of units delivered is so low that I am starting to think that GARMIN has manufacturing issues with the Oregon.

The units in the market would be the ones that have passed the quality test.

 

Garmin product ( as far as I know ) are manufactured in Taiwan – lower price but in many cases also lower manufacturing quality.

Aviation related products are still build on US.

 

What do you think ?

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Oh, I don't know... A sneaking suspicion that the case/latch/gasket area isn't anywhere near as robust as your (and mine) 60CSx?

 

It's using the same gasket and locking mechanism that Garmin used on the 60CSx, what sneaking suspicion makes you believe that it is not "anywhere near as robust" as the same mechanism in another model?

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Garmin product ( as far as I know ) are manufactured in Taiwan – lower price but in many cases also lower manufacturing quality.

Aviation related products are still build on US.

 

What do you think ?

 

Nothing wrong with stuff made in Taiwan. MUCH better than China. The build quality on my 60CSx and Montana 600 was excellent.

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Expert user? Maybe. More like bored engineer that likes to dabble. ;)

It's all relative. :P

 

BTW have you gotten brave enough to open her up and tell us what kind of chip its running. Apparently, no longer the STM Cartesio. Not surprising, that chip is now 4-years old, ancient by CPU standards

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Garmin product ( as far as I know ) are manufactured in Taiwan – lower price but in many cases also lower manufacturing quality.

Aviation related products are still build on US.

What do you think ?

 

Inside the battery compartment of my 600t it says made in Taiwan. There is also a track recorded from April 2nd that shows GPS coordinates of Garmin in Taiwan. I guess they were testing it at the factory :) But agreed, Taiwan and Thailand are much better at this stuff than the Chinese. Lots of computer equipment like hard drives are made in Thailand.

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This sounds like behavior I saw with Auto Pause. It would tend to jump largeish distances when it detected a pause because it would wait for you to travel 100+ ft before turning tracking back on. Made the Auto Pause feature not nearly as helpful as I would have liked.

 

Do you have Auto Pause on? As I can't reproduce it even sitting still with Auto Pause off (it keeps generating points while the screen is off). Wouldn't surprise me if there was a bug with Auto Pause + Battery Save, as Auto Pause is a new feature, and itself a little touchy/buggy.

 

Hi Kolenka,

 

Perhaps auto pause is on. I'm not 100% sure where to check it. The other thing is during my test track, I was actually driving my car and I stopped for about 45 minutes and did not move the unit. Perhaps it detected no movement and went from low power to off. Regardless, it would have been nice if it detected the movement later when I began to go again. I'm taking a long trip soon and want to be able to have it track with the screen off to save battery.

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Hi Kolenka,

 

Perhaps auto pause is on. I'm not 100% sure where to check it. The other thing is during my test track, I was actually driving my car and I stopped for about 45 minutes and did not move the unit. Perhaps it detected no movement and went from low power to off. Regardless, it would have been nice if it detected the movement later when I began to go again. I'm taking a long trip soon and want to be able to have it track with the screen off to save battery.

 

Auto Pause is under the track options. You can get to it from Settings > Tracks or the menu from the current track screen as well.

 

But another question then is: Do you get the Garmin boot screen when you turn it back on? If so, it was off.

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Let me ask about Your experience with battery life in Oregon 6xx.

What is predicted time if screen is ON and both maps (IMG vector and raster, custom map KMZ) are redrawing constantly? Is it something between 8 and 12 hours??? (estimation based on Colorado 300).

In other words: map view, map orientation set to: "track up" (both KMZ and IMG rotates) and screen is ON (just backlight is turned OFF).

BTW, this is my bike ride setting.

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Auto Pause is under the track options. You can get to it from Settings > Tracks or the menu from the current track screen as well.

 

But another question then is: Do you get the Garmin boot screen when you turn it back on? If so, it was off.

 

Hi Kolenka,

 

Thanks. Interestingly enough, auto pause was off. I did get the bootup screen when I hit the power button. Today, I turned auto pause ON and did the trip again on a new track. It behaved as expected. When I got to where I stopped the car it beeped at me, presumably to signal tracking was paused because movement had ceased. After an hour or so, I got back in the car and drove off and as soon as I had moved about 100 feet, it beeped again, signaling auto-pause began tracking again. I got to my destination and looked at the track in basecamp and no bee line. So perhaps auto-pause needs to be on or else the unit powers itself down after no movement for a period? I'll try on a longer trip and with a longer "rest" period and see what happens.

 

Any idea how many data points a track can hold? Just driving around for 45 minutes with data interval set to "least" generated 325 track points.

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Thanks. Interestingly enough, auto pause was off. I did get the bootup screen when I hit the power button.

 

That tells me one of two things: Either you tried to turn the screen off yourself and accidentally turned the whole unit off, or it crashed while the screen was off. I honestly would not be surprised if it crashed.

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Garmin product ( as far as I know ) are manufactured in Taiwan – lower price but in many cases also lower manufacturing quality.

Aviation related products are still build on US.

What do you think ?

 

Inside the battery compartment of my 600t it says made in Taiwan. There is also a track recorded from April 2nd that shows GPS coordinates of Garmin in Taiwan. I guess they were testing it at the factory :) But agreed, Taiwan and Thailand are much better at this stuff than the Chinese. Lots of computer equipment like hard drives are made in Thailand.

 

Please, can we get away from these pseudo-nationalist/racist generalisations?

 

I have seen no evidence that goods manufactured in China are inherently worse made than those made elsewhere. That's not to say that I haven't seen shoddy Chinese goods - of course I have, but there are plenty of countries manufacturing poor quality goods - if you go looking, and regard price as your main purchasing criterion.

 

I have recently bought a Panasonic Lumix GH3 camera - £1000 worth of camera - made in China. The build quality of that camera is, simply, superb - easily on a par with any of the Japanese-made cameras I've owned in the past. It's much more down to the quality control and production management systems that are employed in the factories, be they in Guangzhou, Osaka, New Taipei, or Kansas.

 

As to what chipset is in the new Oregon - it won't be the ST Micro Cartesio as that is a GPS/WAAS only product. It might be the ST Micro Teseo II which is used in the new Etrexes, but if it is, I think it would have to be paired up with an additional graphics/system processor as the Teseo II is pretty slow in that department (certainly as implemented in the Etrex).

My guess would be that it's a new one chip solution - but it'd be nice to know for sure. :rolleyes:

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I finally broke down and bought a 600. It's being delivered today. I hope that I'm happy with it because it will be my official first hand held. I've been using my phone or tablet GPS but decided that with all the ATVing and hiking we do that a hand held would do better. Oh yea.. I'm new to this stuff and hope that it will be fun for my son and I to do. We've been looking for more stuff that we could do together and this looked like it might be fun to do. Any suggestions as to were we should start?

Edited by ibesnoopy
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I used my Garmin 600 today first the first time. Since I have an Oregon 450, there wasn’t much of a learning curve.

 

Quick Field Report:

 

Display can easily be read in the sunlight.

 

Crashed a couple of time when I checked the Elevation Plot while I was navigating to a geocache. This is most likely a bug.

 

Maybe it’s just a setting but when I logged a geocache as found it remained on my geocache list. The there is an option to “Show Found” but not to remove/filter out Found geocaches.

 

Software Version is 2.60

Edited by The North Star
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Again to battery life for clearance:

Is it possible to have more than 10 hours with screen ON (as most convinient for bike ride) and map redrawing?

Did Ya try to switch off GLONASS (GPS only) to safe energy? What was the result? Would be therefore ossible to have declared 16 hours with screen ON?

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Map drawing is processor-intensive, so it's going to eat up the battery faster if you leave the map displayed -- especially if you leave the map displayed in track up mode because of all the extra work necessary to rotate the entire map. The good news is that you probably won't need the backlight, so that saves a lot of power. Sorry I don't have any real-world figures for you. I haven't tried leaving it on all day. I'm usually hopping in and out of the car and plugging it in when driving.

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I used my Garmin 600 today first the first time. Since I have an Oregon 450, there wasn’t much of a learning curve.

 

Quick Field Report:

 

Display can easily be read in the sunlight.

 

Crashed a couple of time when I checked the Elevation Plot while I was navigating to a geocache. This is most likely a bug.

 

Maybe it’s just a setting but when I logged a geocache as found it remained on my geocache list. The there is an option to “Show Found” but not to remove/filter out Found geocaches.

 

Software Version is 2.60

 

Select the filter tab of the geocaching app. Tap Status and uncheck "Found". Go back to the list of caches, and the found ones will be gone out of that list.

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Map drawing is processor-intensive, so it's going to eat up the battery faster if you leave the map displayed -- especially if you leave the map displayed in track up mode because of all the extra work necessary to rotate the entire map. The good news is that you probably won't need the backlight, so that saves a lot of power. Sorry I don't have any real-world figures for you. I haven't tried leaving it on all day. I'm usually hopping in and out of the car and plugging it in when driving.

 

I'd need a few more trips myself to be able to give more solid numbers. I can hit 12+ hours with the backlight off but the map on, but that's also mostly letting it squirm around indoors (which does do map redraw due to it jumping around, but that's it). However, I don't use raster maps or anything like that, so it isn't terribly helpful on that front in terms of numbers. I might have some better ones after this weekend.

 

insig is on the right track though. The longer it takes the unit to draw the map, the more CPU time it is spending doing that, which means more battery. So the more layers it has to draw, the worse your battery will be if the screen is on.

Edited by Kolenka
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I used my Garmin 600 today first the first time. Since I have an Oregon 450, there wasn’t much of a learning curve.

 

Maybe it’s just a setting but when I logged a geocache as found it remained on my geocache list. The there is an option to “Show Found” but not to remove/filter out Found geocaches.

 

Select the filter tab of the geocaching app. Tap Status and uncheck "Found". Go back to the list of caches, and the found ones will be gone out of that list.

 

Issue resolved! Thanks for the help...

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I used my Garmin 600 today first the first time. Since I have an Oregon 450, there wasn’t much of a learning curve.

 

What, you posted this here before you logged your finds? The shame! :D

 

I was there when it crashed - Garmin definitely needs some time to get this stable. It sure is a very nice looking unit though.

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To battery grain:

 

Insig, Kolenka

Thanks for future data.

I am aware that even redrawing single IMG map in "track up" position will drain battery. On the other hand, I am curious how much energy we can save when we turn OFF GLONASS (which seems unnecessary in most cases).

Of course, it is not a matter of very detailed times.

Just roughly: with screenON - can we get close to 10 hours or much longer (without GLONASS) - close to 16-20 hours? I prefer Eneloops XX...

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Anyone having issues with the electronic compass on the Oregon 600? Have calibrated it twice and have not changed the batteries but it will freeze and not work or point in the wrong direction. If I go to the map screen and then back to the compass screen it will the work. Also loaded the update and no change in the behavior.

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Anyone having issues with the electronic compass on the Oregon 600? Have calibrated it twice and have not changed the batteries but it will freeze and not work or point in the wrong direction. If I go to the map screen and then back to the compass screen it will the work. Also loaded the update and no change in the behavior.

 

I've only seen two things that might match this description:

 

- Being near EM sources can confuse the compass. Even just being near a computer can make the compass difficult to get a good reading from.

- When moving, the GPS compass takes over. The default is set that you don't have to be moving very fast, and this confused me the first time I saw it. In that situation, even walking speed will cause it to point your walking direction and not the direction the unit is pointing.

 

Other than that, it has been working fine for me.

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Just curious, how many of the current Oregon 600 owners have the Trip Data set to only record when the tracklog is actively recording?

 

Tracks => Advanced Setup => Trip Recording =>(options) When Tracking/Always

 

I have mine set to "Always". I've tried it the other way but it is somewhat annoying to me. Glad to have the option.

Edited by yogazoo
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Just curious, how many of the current Oregon 600 owners have the Trip Data set to only record when the tracklog is actively recording?

 

Tracks => Advanced Setup => Trip Recording =>(options) When Tracking/Always

 

I have mine set to "Always". I've tried it the other way but it is somewhat annoying to me. Glad to have the option.

Yogazoo,

 

My 600 has been shipped to me and it is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday.

 

What is it exactly that you find annoying about the trip data recoding only when the tracklog is active?

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Yogazoo,

 

My 600 has been shipped to me and it is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday.

 

What is it exactly that you find annoying about the trip data recoding only when the tracklog is active?

 

Well, for me, having the trip data rolling with the tracklog off is my default operational mode. I only record a tracklog when I'm off on a trail or actually recording something I want to view later. I don't want to be filling up my tracklog with junk just to have my trip data show up on the Trip Computer. I like the Trip Data rolling when I power up, and then stop when I power down. Tracklogs, for me, are something to be used on special occasions but I want my Trip Computer to always be showing Trip Data regardless.

 

The new Oregon let's you have the option of tying Trip Data to Tracklog recording. That means the Trip Data will only be calculated (actively recording in the data fields) if you are currently recording a tracklog. You can also choose to "Always" record Trip Data regardless of whether or not your recording a track.

 

It's annoying to me to tie the Trip Data to Tracklog recording because I reserve Tracklog recording for special occasions. I hate looking at my Trip Computer fields only to realize that I forgot to turn my Tracklog on. So I simply adjust the settings so I don't have to.

 

I was just curious how everyone here has that setting adjusted. Trip Data tied to the tracklog or not?

Edited by yogazoo
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I don't think Garmin has implemented the GCZ format yet. Until they do GPX works just fine.

 

I don't think Garmin has implemented the GCZ format yet. Until they do GPX works just fine.

There is a link on the squirrel's site to down load the entire site as a .ggz. I'm guessing it has been implemented. Groundspeak's turn now. Clyde is currently putting it into GSAK, basically by reverse engineering the format. There are users working with him on it.

Edited by jholly
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I don't think Garmin has implemented the GCZ format yet. Until they do GPX works just fine.

 

I don't think Garmin has implemented the GCZ format yet. Until they do GPX works just fine.

There is a link on the squirrel's site to down load the entire site as a .ggz. I'm guessing it has been implemented. Groundspeak's turn now. Clyde is currently putting it into GSAK, basically by reverse engineering the format. There are users working with him on it.

 

It sounds like he's got an inside source from what he posted here.

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I stand corrected. Can anyone comment on the advantages to this new format? Any advantages in speed, content, size? If the new Oregon's can use GPX why worry about GGZ?

 

The reason I say that Garmin hasn't "implemented" it yet is because, the last time I tried a few days ago, Opencaching only offers a GPX. I meant that the GGZ files don't seem to be available anywhere. Maybe someone could shed light.

Edited by yogazoo
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I stand corrected. Can anyone comment on the advantages to this new format? Any advantages in speed, content, size? If the new Oregon's can use GPX why worry about GGZ?

 

The reason I say that Garmin hasn't "implemented" it yet is because, the last time I tried a few days ago, Opencaching only offers a GPX. I meant that the GGZ files don't seem to be available anywhere. Maybe someone could shed light.

 

From what I'm reading about the format so far: It is a zip file full of GPX files, with an XML index telling the unit which GPX file contains the details for a particular cache coordinate. The compression + index provide some tangible benefits:

 

- I can be smarter about which GPX files I load. If my GGZ output splits the caches into rectangles for example, I can greatly reduce the number of caches the Garmin holds in RAM at any one time, and the number of disk reads I need to load them. Loading a GGZ should be faster than a comparable set of GPX files.

- By not having the whole data set in RAM at one time, I can scale to larger data sets (the 4 million cache number comes from GGZ use). This means I can handle larger numbers of caches using GGZ than GPX alone.

- Compression means my disk reads are faster as well, and my GGZ should be smaller than a comparable set of GPX files.

 

But since GGZ is built on top of GPX, the only proprietary bit is the index, and even that is just some streamlined XML that includes a subset of what you find in the GPX to save RAM. The folks who want it most are the ones bumping up against the existing limit, or otherwise loading thousands of caches already. Those who only load a few hundred at a time might not care.

 

GSAK seems to have beta support for GGZ already. In the sense that it is possible to get a GGZ file that the 600 will load and use from it. Seems to be fairly stable already.

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