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Garmin Monterra Compass Mis-calibrated


yogazoo

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I've had my Monterra for about two weeks now, right after the 1.18 update came out. It has been working pretty well, especially since the compass was resolved. However, in the last two days, I can't get it to point "up" on the map when I'm navigating to a cache except when I'm driving. If I'm walking, the compass is pointed either 90 degrees left or right or even worse, today it was pointed 180 degrees so basically the map was backwards - as I'm walking towards the cache. I have the latest 1.19 update so I'm not sure what the heck is going on with this thing. I tried calibrating the compass while I was in the field but that was an effort in futility. I just calibrated it now so I'll see how it performs tomorrow...

 

Have you tried a hard reset? If not, I would try there first, then report back.

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I've had my Monterra for about two weeks now, right after the 1.18 update came out. It has been working pretty well, especially since the compass was resolved. However, in the last two days, I can't get it to point "up" on the map when I'm navigating to a cache except when I'm driving. If I'm walking, the compass is pointed either 90 degrees left or right or even worse, today it was pointed 180 degrees so basically the map was backwards - as I'm walking towards the cache. I have the latest 1.19 update so I'm not sure what the heck is going on with this thing. I tried calibrating the compass while I was in the field but that was an effort in futility. I just calibrated it now so I'll see how it performs tomorrow...

 

Have you tried a hard reset? If not, I would try there first, then report back.

 

Thankfully, I didn't need to resort to that. I went caching all day yesterday and part of today. After properly calibrating the compass, it has kept me on track.

 

Now, if I could get more than 3 hours of battery life out of it, I'd be ecstatic. I go caching every day (my streak is well over 900 days) and on weekends I typically go caching all day. My Montana would last at least 8 hours of solid caching, sometimes more, sometimes less. I'm lucky to get 3 hours out of my Monterra.

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I've had my Monterra for about two weeks now, right after the 1.18 update came out. It has been working pretty well, especially since the compass was resolved. However, in the last two days, I can't get it to point "up" on the map when I'm navigating to a cache except when I'm driving. If I'm walking, the compass is pointed either 90 degrees left or right or even worse, today it was pointed 180 degrees so basically the map was backwards - as I'm walking towards the cache. I have the latest 1.19 update so I'm not sure what the heck is going on with this thing. I tried calibrating the compass while I was in the field but that was an effort in futility. I just calibrated it now so I'll see how it performs tomorrow...

 

Have you tried a hard reset? If not, I would try there first, then report back.

 

Thankfully, I didn't need to resort to that. I went caching all day yesterday and part of today. After properly calibrating the compass, it has kept me on track.

 

Now, if I could get more than 3 hours of battery life out of it, I'd be ecstatic. I go caching every day (my streak is well over 900 days) and on weekends I typically go caching all day. My Montana would last at least 8 hours of solid caching, sometimes more, sometimes less. I'm lucky to get 3 hours out of my Monterra.

 

That's horrible. My Garmin 60S and 60csx lasted about 6 hours which I thought was annoying, but three hours. I guess, buying a backup batter is a must. Would you ever go back to the Montana?

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I've had my Monterra for about two weeks now, right after the 1.18 update came out. It has been working pretty well, especially since the compass was resolved. However, in the last two days, I can't get it to point "up" on the map when I'm navigating to a cache except when I'm driving. If I'm walking, the compass is pointed either 90 degrees left or right or even worse, today it was pointed 180 degrees so basically the map was backwards - as I'm walking towards the cache. I have the latest 1.19 update so I'm not sure what the heck is going on with this thing. I tried calibrating the compass while I was in the field but that was an effort in futility. I just calibrated it now so I'll see how it performs tomorrow...

 

Have you tried a hard reset? If not, I would try there first, then report back.

 

Thankfully, I didn't need to resort to that. I went caching all day yesterday and part of today. After properly calibrating the compass, it has kept me on track.

 

Now, if I could get more than 3 hours of battery life out of it, I'd be ecstatic. I go caching every day (my streak is well over 900 days) and on weekends I typically go caching all day. My Montana would last at least 8 hours of solid caching, sometimes more, sometimes less. I'm lucky to get 3 hours out of my Monterra.

 

That's horrible. My Garmin 60S and 60csx lasted about 6 hours which I thought was annoying, but three hours. I guess, buying a backup batter is a must. Would you ever go back to the Montana?

 

I still have my Montana and I also have multiple sets of AA batteries, so swapping them in mid-caching day isn't THAT big of a deal. The Monterra is a perfectly capable GPSr now that the compass is fixed, but it is still missing some key features, like the ability to wirelessly send and receive caches between other Garmin units. I am hopeful that they will fix that in a future update.

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I still have my Montana and I also have multiple sets of AA batteries, so swapping them in mid-caching day isn't THAT big of a deal. The Monterra is a perfectly capable GPSr now that the compass is fixed, but it is still missing some key features, like the ability to wirelessly send and receive caches between other Garmin units. I am hopeful that they will fix that in a future update.

 

I'm not so hopeful as I asked for Inter-model data sharing over six months ago and since we haven't seen that capability on any Garmin device, I rather doubt it's doable. I hope I'm wrong.

Edited by DRTBYK
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I still have my Montana and I also have multiple sets of AA batteries, so swapping them in mid-caching day isn't THAT big of a deal. The Monterra is a perfectly capable GPSr now that the compass is fixed, but it is still missing some key features, like the ability to wirelessly send and receive caches between other Garmin units. I am hopeful that they will fix that in a future update.

 

I'm not so hopeful as I asked for Inter-model data sharing over six months ago and since we haven't seen that capability on any Garmin device, I rather doubt it's doable. I hope I'm wrong.

 

Are we talking about the same thing? I'm talking about the Share Wirelessly feature that is on almost all Garmin units that lets you send caches and waypoints between Garmin units.

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No reason they shouldn't be able to add unit-to-unit communication, then. At least the hardware is in place.

You are of course correct in that they should be able to do this. But, Garmin has never provided a device that can share data wirelessly between dissimilar devices. Whether they use ANT or Bluetooth makes no difference the Monterra has all of the radios but if they don't provide the code doesn't much matter.

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So now that the compass problem is fixed, how is the Monterra's functionality? any other bugs/crashes? how are you guys finding the battery life?

 

i went out caching for the day with the backlight on all time but lowest possible setting and i got 4 and half hours with 16% left so i reckon five hours tops 30 caches found but always carry spare batteries would be nice to share geocaches between devices my oregon 400t plus have the geocache total of the dashboard im still getting used to it not used for auto mode im wondering if gb discover sd card map is ok for routing with it on the whole i pretty happy compass issue is ok i had no probs one issues is you cannot see on the cahche desciption the photos from geocaching dot.com cheers

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So now that the compass problem is fixed, how is the Monterra's functionality? any other bugs/crashes? how are you guys finding the battery life?

 

i went out caching for the day with the backlight on all time but lowest possible setting and i got 4 and half hours with 16% left so i reckon five hours tops 30 caches found but always carry spare batteries would be nice to share geocaches between devices my oregon 400t plus have the geocache total of the dashboard im still getting used to it not used for auto mode im wondering if gb discover sd card map is ok for routing with it on the whole i pretty happy compass issue is ok i had no probs one issues is you cannot see on the cahche desciption the photos from geocaching dot.com cheers

 

That's good to hear you didn't have any issues and the battery made it that long. I remember trying to hike and navigate with the Monterra when I had it. It's very big compared to the 62s. I also didn't have a d-link attached to it so it was like holding one of the original cell phones with no place to put it. Obviously too big for pockets. Have they launched any D-link attachments for the Monterra? Had anyone used any aftermarket components for such or have thoughts on how to carry this device when on a hike?

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So now that the compass problem is fixed, how is the Monterra's functionality? any other bugs/crashes? how are you guys finding the battery life?

 

i went out caching for the day with the backlight on all time but lowest possible setting and i got 4 and half hours with 16% left so i reckon five hours tops 30 caches found but always carry spare batteries would be nice to share geocaches between devices my oregon 400t plus have the geocache total of the dashboard im still getting used to it not used for auto mode im wondering if gb discover sd card map is ok for routing with it on the whole i pretty happy compass issue is ok i had no probs one issues is you cannot see on the cahche desciption the photos from geocaching dot.com cheers

 

That's good to hear you didn't have any issues and the battery made it that long. I remember trying to hike and navigate with the Monterra when I had it. It's very big compared to the 62s. I also didn't have a d-link attached to it so it was like holding one of the original cell phones with no place to put it. Obviously too big for pockets. Have they launched any D-link attachments for the Monterra? Had anyone used any aftermarket components for such or have thoughts on how to carry this device when on a hike?

 

 

went out last week for a big series and it lasted six hours and that is absolute max im sure with screen backlight on 15 secs and sleep 30 secs and brightness low as poss so still the are few things like the geocache widget not changing just stays on the nearest one to you and as said before a geocache count

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i went out caching for the day with the backlight on all time but lowest possible setting and i got 4 and half hours with 16% left so i reckon five hours tops 30 caches found but always carry spare batteries would be nice to share geocaches between devices my oregon 400t plus have the geocache total of the dashboard im still getting used to it not used for auto mode im wondering if gb discover sd card map is ok for routing with it on the whole i pretty happy compass issue is ok i had no probs one issues is you cannot see on the cahche desciption the photos from geocaching dot.com cheers

 

went out last week for a big series and it lasted six hours and that is absolute max im sure with screen backlight on 15 secs and sleep 30 secs and brightness low as poss so still the are few things like the geocache widget not changing just stays on the nearest one to you and as said before a geocache count

 

Your posts are very hard to read. You should become friends with Mr Punctuation.

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Not sure where to post this, but have all of the major issues affecting the Monterra been resolved yet? When the Monterra was launched, everyone was saying the unit should be avoided due to the number of major software bugs. It's been more than half a year since the Monterra have been launched so I'm curious if this is finally worth purchasing yet?

 

Thanks!

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Not sure where to post this, but have all of the major issues affecting the Monterra been resolved yet? When the Monterra was launched, everyone was saying the unit should be avoided due to the number of major software bugs. It's been more than half a year since the Monterra have been launched so I'm curious if this is finally worth purchasing yet?

 

Thanks!

Take a look here:

Monterra Wiki Common Issues

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Not sure where to post this, but have all of the major issues affecting the Monterra been resolved yet? When the Monterra was launched, everyone was saying the unit should be avoided due to the number of major software bugs. It's been more than half a year since the Monterra have been launched so I'm curious if this is finally worth purchasing yet?

 

Thanks!

Take a look here:

Monterra Wiki Common Issues

I do not believe all of those "bugs" have been validated with Monterra v2.90_1.20.00. Which is the latest update since many of them are no longer present on my Monterra.

Edited by DRTBYK
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Not sure where to post this, but have all of the major issues affecting the Monterra been resolved yet? When the Monterra was launched, everyone was saying the unit should be avoided due to the number of major software bugs. It's been more than half a year since the Monterra have been launched so I'm curious if this is finally worth purchasing yet?

 

Thanks!

Take a look here:

Monterra Wiki Common Issues

I do not believe all of those "bugs" have been validated with Monterra v2.90_1.20.00. Which is the latest update since many of them are no longer present on my Monterra.

 

How do you find the Monterra with the latest firmware?

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Not sure where to post this, but have all of the major issues affecting the Monterra been resolved yet? When the Monterra was launched, everyone was saying the unit should be avoided due to the number of major software bugs. It's been more than half a year since the Monterra have been launched so I'm curious if this is finally worth purchasing yet?

 

Thanks!

Take a look here:

Monterra Wiki Common Issues

I do not believe all of those "bugs" have been validated with Monterra v2.90_1.20.00. Which is the latest update since many of them are no longer present on my Monterra.

 

How do you find the Monterra with the latest firmware?

 

its better for sure but not perfect i had issues with gallery as well

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there is a new update 3.20 and I'm not having any problems at all. Maybe I don't use EVERY function, but I do use a lot of them. I navigate with the monterra, I don't play with it. And when I'm out Geocaching, I can go all day. But just in case, I always have a external battery pack of 11000 mAH. If my internal is drained, I connect the cable to the 2 Amp and it charges while using it, giving me more than a day extra since the internal is only 2000 mAH.

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Monterra was my first choice but Etrex 20 won out. Do you think I made the right choice?

 

:unsure:

 

It all depends on your primary use for the device. If you're a hiker and need something light, small, and with great battery life then you've made a good choice.

Edited by yogazoo
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