Magellan 315 upgrade v. 3.15

[+GeoForse]

Thales recently came out with an upgrade every Mag 315 owner was BEGGING for, and there has been nary a mention in the forums. You know, the solution to the hula wave--no more drunken bee dance, the answer for our prayers...

 

Version 3.15 of the firmware drastically lowers the speed at which the unit breaks out of "auto-averaging". Supposedly, this will make geocaching much easier by giving more accurate results when moving slow, like when you are near a cache.

 

Anybody have any experiance with this?? I upgraded and used it to find one cache, and I thought it worked great!! The distance remaining counted down steadily until it reached 3 feet, and voila, there it was! :

[MadGPS]

Yes LOLOL

 

I've been waiting for almost a year and finally it's here.Updated 4 GPSr to ver 3.15 last tuesday night with the boys and everyone was running outside once the receiver was initialized.Came in from the test and some had mix feelings,but in all were satisfied with it by the end of today and this weekend will be the proving point.So far me personnaly,I'm very please with it and can't wait to find my first cache with the new update.Will post anything,bad or good,after this weekend,but I'm sure that the ver 3.15 will be it.The geocaching community might have found a cure to the hula wave or drunken bee dance.LOLOL

 

MadGPS

[MadGPS]

Yes LOLOL

 

I've been waiting for almost a year and finally it's here.Updated 4 GPSr to ver 3.15 last tuesday night with the boys and everyone was running outside once the receiver was initialized.Came in from the test and some had mix feelings,but in all were satisfied with it by the end of today and this weekend will be the proving point.So far me personnaly,I'm very please with it and can't wait to find my first cache with the new update.Will post anything,bad or good,after this weekend,but I'm sure that the ver 3.15 will be it.The geocaching community might have found a cure to the hula wave or drunken bee dance.LOLOL

 

MadGPS

[+My Blue Heaven]

So far I have found 10 or 12 caches with mine since I did the upgrade. I am very happy with it. It takes very little effort of break out of auto-averaging mode.

 

I was thinking that I would have to buy a new unit to get around this, but thanks to Thales I can spend my extra money on my Land Cruiser. I do need a RAM Mount.

[+azmark]

Yep I think that the reason there has been so little talk of the upgrade is that we are all so pleased with it.

 

If it were another crappy upgrade, we would have all be on here bitc@#% and monaning.

[+craggy (nightcrawler)]

It was almost like buying a new gps. An upgrade well worth the time.

[+snoboardz]

Hello. I am new to the game and am very hooked. This is the second GPS unit that I have owned and have now found a useful and fun excuse to use it. My first GPS was an older ( mid '90's model ) and it went kapoot when Y2K rolled around. Now I have the GPS 315 from Magellan and just completed my first cache hunt. I did notice that we were doing a bit of a drunken bee dance when trying to pinpoint the exact location of the cache. Can someone please tell me the web address of this upgrade. I think it would greatly help. Thanks so much.

 

Absolute knowledge is knowing that you know absolutely nothing.

[JasonW]

http://www.magellangps.com/downloads/gps315.htm

 

[Steak N Eggs]

I have upgraded and have found only a couple of caches with it. I found that the auto-average works at a lower speed and helps to pinpoint the cache (points that have been hit before). For a beginning rig you can do no wrong.

 

"My gps say's it RIGHT HERE".

http://www.geogadgets.com

1240 plus miles and only 8 caches?

[Lost Bob]

I downloaded and ran the update(from v 3.14) a little over a week ago. The improvement to the auto-averaging sounded good. The data transfer seemed to proceed OK and I got the "update complete" message, but my receiver wouldn't turn on! I emailed Thales,got an RMA #, and sent the unit in for repair. Luckily it was less than a year old, and should be covered by warranty. I'll post how it works when I get the unit back. I can't figure out what went wrong. I have flashed a PC BIOS before so I know it's important to follow the instructions carefully. Anyone else have trouble completing this update?

[+phantom4099]

Should came to the group earlier I am sure one of us could have helped.

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[+The Treasurer]

I have a Mag GPS315 running v3.14. I was wondering what version are/did you upgrade from to get such a marked difference in performance?

[+Jeepster]

I started out with a version 2.03 or 2.08 unit and moved through 3.14 till I'm finally at 3.15. Version 3.15 makes ALL the difference in the world. It has increments in feet (like 3.14) not in hundred's of a mile like the early versions. But the most important feature is that auto-averaging doesn't kick in until the unit is moving slower than 0.5 miles per hour ... trust me 0.5 miles per hour is actually very slow ... and very necessary for geocaching with out looking crazy in the woods (you do remember the hula wave).

 

I've upgraded three units with no problems. However, if you have a pre 3.00 version, it might be best to follow instructions (shutter) and do a double install on the firmware. Had one that was upgraded from a version 2.0X, and acted a little strange until the second install.

 

Jeepster

- Road kill on the information highway ...

[+Gloom]

I upgraded mine from 3.14 to 3.15 this weekend and went out after a cache to test it. I was sorely disappointed. While within 50 ft of the cache (this was after I'd found it) it was jumping between .1 mile and 6+ miles from the cache location. It was very hard to actually find the cache and had to use the 'force' to find it. When the unit started tripping out I'd check it and most times the coords would be way off and the elevation would be more than 2000 ft off. At one point it showed me at 55000 ft, yes that's thousand! I'm actually at about 4200. When it started doing this the only way I could get it back to normal was to turn off the unit, wait a minute and then turn it back on.

 

Some things I noticed:

1) this only seemed to happen at slow speeds, the unit was fine when I was driving in the car, how ever if it started messing up and then got in the car and started driving it wouldn't return to normal without a reboot.

2)My batteries were down to 1/4 indicated (NiMH). Usually my GPSr will start messing up like this when the batteries are low, but usually only when it gets down to almost empty.

3)There were small thunder clouds in the area, with lightening reported to the east.

 

My question, has anyone else experienced this with the new firmware? Was it just the low batteries? Could there have been enough electric disturbance due to the thunderclouds to cause it to mess up that bad? Maybe a combination of low batteries and lightening?

 

Any thoughts?

 

[This message was edited by Gloom on April 13, 2002 at 07:58 PM.]

[JasonW]

Well having gone from 3.07 to 3.15 with every step, it just keeps getting better.... the introduction of the feet/metres thing was the clincher though, and with the auto-averaging threshold dropping in 3.15 it's even better than that.

 

I've not seen any spurious wiggles in my track except where poor sattelite reception is causing positional drift.

 

However..... and there's always a however, isn't there.... I notice that the cosmetic error on the trip odo is still present in 3.15 (as it was in 3.07 & all the others I've used so far) - what am I talking about ?

 

Go to your position screen and note the format of the 'trip' field : it should be like 123.4mi, now let your trip odo rollover past 1000 miles (km/nm work in the same way) and go back and have a look at the trip field in the position field - it now starts displaying other characters in place of the 'hundreds' figure - : for 1000 as a for instance.

 

Not that it actually causes any harm or anything, just a bit annoying.

 

[+phantom4099]

Did you clear your memory after the upload as the direction said?

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[JasonW]

The trip odo problem I mentioned is a constant - it's been there through firmware updates, full resets and everything.... it's reproducible on my father's too.

 

Or were you talking about the previous post ?

 

[+phantom4099]

I was talking about the post from Gloom. The error you are talking about is that when it hits a thousand miles on the position screen, then it turns into a "?" or something else?

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[+Gloom]

No, I didn't actually clear the memory myself. I was going to but once it rebooted after updating the firmware, everything was already erased. No waypoints, all settings were back to default, etc. I figured that it had done it itself and I didn't need to do it again.

[JasonW]

quote:

---

Originally posted by phantom4099:

The error you are talking about is that when it hits a thousand miles on the position screen, then it turns into a "?" or something else?

---

 

That's the fella - can't recall what the sequence is, but it's irritating do Magellan think that no-one goes on 1000mi/nm/km trips ?

 

[JasonW]

quote:

---

Originally posted by phantom4099:

The error you are talking about is that when it hits a thousand miles on the position screen, then it turns into a "?" or something else?

---

 

That's the fella - can't recall what the sequence is, but it's irritating do Magellan think that no-one goes on 1000mi/nm/km trips ?

 

[+phantom4099]

I usually don't have a problem with it beacuse I can tell if it went over already and just add 1000 miles to it (I am talking more about the speed screen than the position screen). But at least it has an odometer in it, I placed about 10,000 miles on it now. That is with the updates clearing the memorey in the past.

 

This time I got smart and wrote my milage and used the simiulator to travel all 10,000 miles again (even at 999 mph it still takes 10+ hours).

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[bluemountain]

Just upgraded my Gps 315 and used it today after making the upgrade to version 3.15 from 2.03 and it worked great. i think i will be well satisfied with it.

 

Michael Jerrells Bluemountain

[+Gloom]

OK, I went out yesterday and again today and was having the same problem. At one point it was so bad that I had to turn my reciever off/on about every minute or so. It got really frustrating. To illustrate my point, after finding one cache (no thanks to the GPSr) I set it down while I wrote in the log and checked on it occasionally. It was fine for about 2 minutes, then started jumping between 6 miles and 21 miles (and all points inbetween) from the cache. it was a completely cloudless day and checking the reception showed 6 sattellites with full bars and two that were about half.

 

The only way to get it back to the correct place was to turn it off/on. It seems that this seems to happen about every 5 minutes on average. Very frustrating.

 

No one else have this?

[+phantom4099]

Well if you updated from an earlier version you may want to try to install it again (instructions say you may have to). Also follow the instructions to the letter.

 

Wyatt W.

 

The probability of someone watching you is directly proportional to the stupidity of your actions.

[nv0u]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lost Bob:

I downloaded and ran the update(from v 3.14) a little over a week ago ... The data transfer seemed to proceed OK and I got the "update complete" message, but my receiver wouldn't turn on! I emailed Thales,got an RMA #, and sent the unit in for repair. Luckily it was less than a year old, and should be covered by warranty ... Anyone else have trouble completing this update?

---

 

Yep. Upgraded last week from 3.14 and the unit would not pick up any sats. Just sent my 315 back yesterday, so I should see the replacement at the end of the week. I wonder if there was a faulty batch?

[Night Tracker]

Bought mine May 1st 2002 it had v3.14 so the store clerk offered to update it to v3.15. Waited a few minutes for it to complete walked out of the store

happy, its been great so far no problems.

 

Support PETA: Please Eat Tasty Animals

[Night Tracker]

Bought mine May 1st 2002 it had v3.14 so the store clerk offered to update it to v3.15. Waited a few minutes for it to complete walked out of the store

happy, its been great so far no problems.

 

Support PETA: Please Eat Tasty Animals