Oregon battery drain solved

[+terratin]

A while ago I was whining about the batteries in my oregon 450 draining far too quickly. I solved the problem now: get rid of all open streetmaps. Not sure why, but they do drain the batteries much faster than the old Gamin Euopean map that I have.

 

I noticed this quick drain before on the Faroe Islands, which are outside the European map, and now again on Malta. One small day of caching, with fresh eneloops and all energy saving options on were sufficient to drain them. When the open streetmap of Malta crashed and would not display anymore I found the old Europe map, activated it and suddenly had three days of energy instead of one. Amazing!

 

Of course this won't help me everywhere, and new Garmin maps are expensive. But at least I now know what the reason is.

 

Mrs. Terratin

[+splashy]

I use OSM often and don't have this issue.

[+splashy]

B

Edited February 22, 2014 by splashy

[+Lil Devil]

I use OSM maps exclusively, and batteries last 3 to 4 days, so it's difficult to see why a map would affect your Oregon?

Same here. I would hazard a guess that your OSM maps are corrupted. Try downloading a fresh mapset and see if that cures your problem.

[+splashy]

Maybe you have a route running (searching) in the background?

This happened to me one time, it stayed active for more then a week and went on searching after the gps was fired up again.

[+terratin]

I've experienced this with several OSM maps. I travel a lot, and quite often also outside the european garmin map range. I noticed the battery drain every time with OSM with only the relevant map activated. In the end I was running OSM for my home location because the garmin map got a bit old. One thing: on the garmin map I always use 'less detail' and on OSM 'more' because small roads don't show up on my customary zoom level, but that should also not drain the batteries much faster, should it?

[+BlackRose67]

I use OSM on two different Garmin units (eTrex 20 and GPSMAP 62s).

 

No issues with battery drain.

[+terratin]

ok, then that is strange. Well, for me it does offer an explanation anyway

[+gpsblake]

Do Opensource maps auto-route on the Dakotas and Oregons???? I really don't feel like forking out 70 bucks for new Garmin maps when Opensource is free.

[+splashy]

Else have a look at

gpsfiledepot.com

 

But OSM maps are most of the time very nice and if something is missing you can put it in yourself.

Garmin is actually selling some units included with OSM maps and many other vedors, including some Android apps work only with OSM maps.

Edited February 28, 2014 by splashy

[ZeMartelo]

I get my OSM maps from here :

http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

 

No issues with them.