GPS Companion for Palm V

[focusdchaos and co.]

Does anyone of you use this Magellan unit?

 

I bought a couple of days ago, and after about 5 hours of playing with it, and seeing how it works, the unit died. The palm could no longer talk to it. I changed the batteries, but that didn't help. I also reset the my Palm Vx, that didn't do anything either.

 

I exchanged it for another Palm Companion. This unit did the same thing, so I knew it was my Palm. I did a HARD reset, and reloaded the software for the GPS companion, and everything works again.

 

Apparently, this is an error with the serial comm of the Palm, not the Magellan's fault.

 

Is this very common with the GPS Companion? It would suck to be out in BFE and the serial com get hung again. I wouldn't know how to get to where ever.

 

Should I exchange it for a Magellan 310? How limited would the 310 be? (costs the same as the GPS Companion ~50$)

 

Thanks yall...

 

[+parkrrrr]

It happened to me once, when I first started using it, but it's never happened since. I had to reinstall the Magellan software, but I didn't have to do any kind of hardware reset. I suspect it wasn't even a hardware problem, but just some sort of problem with the Magellan software. I didn't have Cetus or Tracker at the time, so I'm not sure.

 

In my case, it was easy to fix because Warm also uses a GPS Companion, so she was able to just beam me the appropriate software. I had the same symptoms you had: wouldn't work, changing batteries had no effect, Warm's GPS Companion didn't work with my Palm either. We've since done over a dozen caches without a failure, and hers has never had a problem.

 

[focusdchaos and co.]

Thanks for the info.

 

So I take it you are satisfied with your GPS Companion? Do you feel that the accuracy is very good?

 

What software do you recomend? I guess Cetus or Tracker since you mention them?

 

Thanks again

[+parkrrrr]

It's been accurate enough. Whether I'd call it "very good" is another question; my former employment involved working with submeter differential GPS (prior to the shutdown of SA, no less) so anything bigger than a few feet is insanely inaccurate. The GPS Companion doesn't come close to an eTrex with WAAS, but it seems to do the job. I can't think of a single cache we haven't found where the GPS receiver was to blame.

 

Personally, for software, I mostly use Tracker these days, because I have scripts to automatically download waypoints, cache descriptions, and background imagery:

But it's not necessarily what I recommend. Lots of people seem to like GeoNiche but I haven't tried it yet. As far as I'm concerned, as you can see from my multiple posts in this forum on various threads, there isn't yet a perfect program for geocaching with PalmOS and a non-standalone GPS receiver. Cetus isn't there yet as a geocaching program, because its waypoint support is woefully lacking. It's most useful for placing caches or drawing big etch-a-sketch pictures with your GPS, because it has great track recording and it's the only one of the bunch that does any kind of averaging.

 

So, overall, I'd say my evaluation is that the GPS Companion is "good enough." If you have a choice, and especially if you spent $100 or more for your GPS Companion anyway and still have the option of taking it back, you might be happier with a yellow eTrex or basic Magellan standalone, maybe with appropriate cables to attach it to your Palm. It won't cost much more, it'll be more rugged, and it might even have more functionality out of the box. My use of the GPS Companion is largely due to the fact that I got it for free when I bought my Palm.

 

[focusdchaos and co.]

Gracias-

I got the GPS Companion because it was only $50 and I had the Vx sitting in a closet not being used.

 

I'll stick with my GPS Companion, can't wait to try it out this weekend (dear God, don't let it die on me).

 

Thanks again!

[+Nos402]

I used mine on a day of caching in Austin (found 10 caches) and I loved it. I do indeed use Geoniche which I find absolutely fantastic. Totally customizable and way better than the Magellan software. I also find (with Geoniche anyway) that my palm seems insanely accurate. Many times when I want to check coords I go out with my Palm Vx, an Etrex, and an Etrex legend. The 2 Etrexes seems to fluctuate a lot more than my Companion. When finding coords it seems to be totally consistent, in that no matter how many times I walk away, the coords always lead me back to the exact same spot. Also when taking coords, the first 3 decimal places seem to remain pretty constant, even when I walk away and come back to the same spot. The 4th and 5th decimal place fluctuate, but the first 3 seem to be pretty solid. with Geoniche it's also nice because even if you're standing in the same spot, it's constantly averaging the last 10 coords that it's received. I keep thinking that it just can't be as accurate as it seems, but again, when looking for caches, it always brings me back to pretty much the exact same spot, not just "close".

 

I haven't experienced any of the probs you have, and I hope I don't! Suffice to say, I couldn't be happier with mine.