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Garmin Gpsmap 60cs


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I just received my 60CS via DHL delivery and I am one happy camper now! I feel like I've been researching this thing forever and now I can finally touch it and squeeze it and hold it... (ok, maybe some of you will remember those Bugs Bunny cartoons :cool: ).

 

I've been looking for a case for awhile now and have put it off until actually getting my GPSr. I have it narrowed down to the following two units:

 

Gilsson Neoprene Case: http://www.gpsgeek.com/page6.html

 

BE130 "Sharkskin" Case: http://www.thegpsstore.com/detail.asp?product_id=BE130

 

I was hoping that some kind folks with these cases could answer a couple of questions for me. The photos on the above websites leave a little to be desired in detail and first hand experiences would be great!

 

1. Gilsson Case: Can the swivel clip stud on the 60CS be used while in this case? It appears that the hook clip on the neoprene case would interfere with the belt clip stud built onto the 60CS itself.

 

2. BE130 Sharkskin Case: I can't find a photo of the back of the case. One other person who has this case told me that there is a hole in the back for the swivel clip stud to protrude through. Are there any other features on the back of this case?

 

3. BOTH Cases: How easy/difficult is it to remove the 60CS from these cases? I'm getting the automobile navigation kit and will be taking it out of the case in the car to put it into the nav kit mount.

 

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can give!

 

BradW0807

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I recently purchased the BE130 Sharkskin Case. It does have a small hole for the swivel clip stud but nothing else (no clips, straps, etc). It's easy to get the GPS into the case and it fits snuggly.

 

I cut another hole in the back of the case so I could plug in the external power cord without taking the case off.

 

The main reason I purchased the case was to protect the GPS display and it does that well. The rocker button is a bit more difficult to accuratly manipulate with the case on but other than that all the controls are visable and easy to press. The plastic covering is and the overall fabrication of the case seems to be of good quality.

 

Hope this helps.

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Gilsson Neoprene Case: http://www.gpsgeek.com/page6.html

 

1. Gilsson Case: Can the swivel clip stud on the 60CS be used while in this case? It appears that the hook clip on the neoprene case would interfere with the belt clip stud built onto the 60CS itself.

 

3. BOTH Cases: How easy/difficult is it to remove the 60CS from these cases? I'm getting the automobile navigation kit and will be taking it out of the case in the car to put it into the nav kit mount.

The Gilsson case accomodates the swivel clip stud. The case droops down slightly at that point. I have no problem taking the GPSr out of the case.

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Garmin just sent me a replacement 60CS and I'm having to set it up again. One thing I can't seem to find out (or remember how I did it) is how do I change the track color. I remember I had mine green but have been through all the menus and can't find where I had changed it. Thanks... <_<

Menu-->Menu-->Tracks-->Enter-->Setup-->Enter-->Color-->Enter-->Pick your favorite.

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Garmin just sent me a replacement 60CS and I'm having to set it up again.  One thing I can't seem to find out (or remember how I did it)  is how do I change the track color.  I remember I had mine green but have been through all the menus and can't find where I had changed it.  Thanks...  <_<

Menu-->Menu-->Tracks-->Enter-->Setup-->Enter-->Color-->Enter-->Pick your favorite.

Thank you! :o

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I was playing around with my friends dads quest and the ability to avoid certain road segments is really cool. Now i know that the 60c/s doesnt have this feature becasue it is not as new but garmin has add other features with firmware upgrades so why couldent they add this one.

 

what im asking is is there a way to contact garmin and suggest that this be added in the next firmware upgrade

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Maybe someone could help me out here. I just got a 60cs and visited Garmin's web-site to check on firmware updates. Garmin's instructions say that the upgrade must be done using a serial cable. My unit came with a USB cable. Will I be able to download the update to my gps using the USB cable? Sorry if this has already been addressed but I did a search and couldn't find the answer to my question. Thanks.

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Garmin's instructions say that the upgrade must be done using a serial cable. My unit came with a USB cable. Will I be able to download the update to my gps using the USB cable? Sorry if this has already been addressed but I did a search and couldn't find the answer to my question. Thanks.

You should be ok updating the firmware with the USB cable. I have both, but I think my last update for the 76CS was done with the USB cable. In fact, looking at the 60CS firmware update page at http://www.garmin.com/support/download_det...id=549#Instruct it shows the following:

9. Connect your GPS to your computer using a GARMIN PC Interface cable to an open USB port. Turn the GPS on.

 

You should be fine.

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I was playing around with my friends dads quest and the ability to avoid certain road segments is really cool.  Now i know that the 60c/s doesnt have this feature becasue it is not as new but garmin has add other features with firmware upgrades so why couldent they add this one.

 

what im asking is is there a way to contact garmin and suggest that this be added in the next firmware upgrade

If the 60cs had things like the ability to expand the memory and avoid certian road segments, then more people would chose the 60CS over the Quest, and the Quest being the more expensive unit = more $$$ for Garmin. Don't hold your breath waiting for this feature.

Edited by kbn
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A couple of questions - please forgive if duplicates from earlier posts.

 

1. When traveling, on an interstate for example, I would like to be able to know if a particular restaurant or brand of gas lies ahead on my route, even if 30 or more miles away. I have only been able to search POIs by nearest, which mostly gives stuff well off the interstate.

 

2. I don't use the belt clip fitting that came with my 60c, which leaves the screwhole uncovered. I assume this is waterproof??? Am I missing some sort of rubber plug like the ones over the USB and antenna connections???

 

3. Related to #2. I just bought a RAM mount and I'm hundreds of miles away from home and therefore the beltclip fitting that came with my 60c. Is this fitting needed to attach the 60c to the RAM mount??? Without it the 60c fits very loosely into the mount.

 

4. I have noticed you guys all like to keep firmware up to date. If I'm happy with the performance of my firmware, should I even worry about firmware updates?

 

Thanks for any replies,

 

Ben

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A couple of questions - please forgive if duplicates from earlier

 

4. I have noticed you guys all like to keep firmware up to date.  If I'm happy with the performance of my firmware, should I even worry about firmware updates?

 

 

Take a look at the firmware download site at garmin.com and decide for yourself. It contains a listing of all changes to the firmware at each version. Some of these may be of interest to you, even if you are satisfied whit your current firmware. Personally I haven't bothered with upgrading from 3.50 to 3.60 as the change in that version is not important to me.

 

Garmin 60CS firmware download page

Edited by Tzoid
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2. I don't use the belt clip fitting that came with my 60c, which leaves the screwhole uncovered.  I assume this is waterproof???  Am I missing some sort of rubber plug like the ones over the USB and antenna connections???

 

3. Related to #2.  I just bought a RAM mount and I'm hundreds of miles away from home and therefore the beltclip fitting that came with my 60c.  Is this fitting needed to attach the 60c to the RAM mount???  Without it the 60c fits very loosely into the mount.

2. Removing the belt clip post does not affect the waterproof rating for the unit. There is no rubber plug for the hole.

 

3. The RAM mount uses the belt clip post to hold the GRSr in place. (It fits into the round hole at the top of the mount). With the clip, the unit is rock solid in the mount. Without it, you may want to put a rubber band around the mount and GPSr near the top to stabilize it.

 

4. I am still using 3.5, and see no reason to go to 3.6 since it fixes things that I am not worried about. When I registered, I asked the Garmin site to e-mail me with new firmware announcements, and I keep my eyes peeled here in the forums.

 

edit: (3 down, one to go.)

Edited by Sputnik 57
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I just stumbled across this wealth of information. I've had my 60CS for 6-months now and it would have been great to know about this back then. I've learned more in the last hour of reading than I had in all this time "playing" with it. I came across this site by accident. I was researching Geocaching and it sounded interesting. Of course, that led me to the Geocaching website, which led me to this place. Absolutely awesome.

 

I know that I'm going to have many questions to be answered.

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I've had my Garmin 60cs since Christmas and this thing is AWESOME! Unbelievable, such a change from my old Eagle that was the size of a small laptop! Anyway, for some reason I've lost my bearing pointer on the compass page. I've gone into the menu and changed back and forth between 'Course Pointer' and 'Bearing Pointer' and the bearing pointer never shows up. I've upgraded to version 3.6 and am not sure if the upgrade had anything to do with it. Any ideas??

Thanks

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Today, my wife and I did our first ever caching. We had success on 5 finds, with nothing on 3 others. On the finds, I noticed my 60CS registered the find to be 40, 50, sometimes 60 feet away from where the find really was located? Is this normal? It's the 1st we've ever used this for foot navigation.

I have been using a 60cs since June and that is not normal for the couple a hundred finds I have had since then. Couple of things, make sure you are on WGS84 Datum. also, it will be more accurate if you are receiving a WAAS Satellite (a satellite number in the upper 30's and 40's). There are a couple of great writeups about WAAS in the forums.

 

Now that all of that has been said, remember you are chasing a location that has been posted from a GPS that you have no idea of how accurate IT is.

 

Happy hunting and do rely more on your geocaching skills once you get in the alleged vicinity of the cache.

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Today, my wife and I did our first ever caching.  We had success on 5 finds, with nothing on 3 others.  On the finds, I noticed my 60CS registered the find to be 40, 50, sometimes 60 feet away from where the find really was located?  Is this normal?  It's the 1st we've ever used this for foot navigation.

When on the arrow screen, hit MENU then CHANGE DATA FIELDS. Change one of the fields to "Accuracy of GPS". The other data field should be "Distance to Destination". If you are using the 3rd data field, choose whatever you want. I use "Bearing" though it can be anything.

 

By using the Accuracy of GPS reading you'll know whether or not the 60' you think the cache is off is realistic or not. If your accuracy shows 75', and you think the cache is 60' off, then chances are very good the GPS is not off at all! One common mistake I see people make is keeping the GPS in their pocket on longer hikes then taking it out when they get closer to the cache. This decreases the accuracy of the reading since not all of the satellites are being received.

 

Try that for a while and see if it helps you out any. My guess is it will. If not, then those caches may very well be "off".

 

Hope that helps.

 

:D

 

edit: If you use the map/navigation screen rather than the arrow/compass screen, you can follow the same steps above.

Edited by robert
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Today, my wife and I did our first ever caching. We had success on 5 finds, with nothing on 3 others. On the finds, I noticed my 60CS registered the find to be 40, 50, sometimes 60 feet away from where the find really was located? Is this normal? It's the 1st we've ever used this for foot navigation.

It really depends on the accuracy you are currently receiving with the GPS combined with the accuracy of the GPS used by whomever placed the cache. If the person who placed it had 20 foot accuracy and you had 20 foot accuracy you could in reality end up 40 feet from the cache. You can try turning on WAAS but unless you have a clear view of the sky it will not work as WAAS satellites tend to be on the horizon. Also turning on WAAS can slow down the GPS while it's trying to receive those satellites and actually hurt accuracy until it receives them. Also turning on WAAS uses more power. Speaking of using more power you might want to check your system settings. The GPS will track more accurately under cover if you turn off battery saver mode.

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Does anyone know how to customize icons on the 60CS?  There are 24 large blue circles under the heading "custom" and I was hoping I could add some geocaching specific icons (a ghost or question mark for a virtual).  Thanks for any help!! :unsure:

so i've been editing these customizeable waypoints icons and was wondering if they will work in the geocache mode .i know in "geocache setup" page you have to select the icon (closed treasure chest) so i dont think if you edit these customizeable waypoints icons into a ghost or a ? mark and then put them on the appropriate geocaches , they wont come up on a "find geocache" and therefore you wont be able to do a "found"geocache. im figuring they will only come up on a "find waypoints" screen,does anybody else agree with me and is this something we might suggest as a future software upgrade to Garmin to allow more than one icon as a "geocache". :rolleyes:

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Does anyone know how to customize icons on the 60CS?  There are 24 large blue circles under the heading "custom" and I was hoping I could add some geocaching specific icons (a ghost or question mark for a virtual).  Thanks for any help!! :unsure:

so i've been editing these customizeable waypoints icons and was wondering if they will work in the geocache mode .i know in "geocache setup" page you have to select the icon (closed treasure chest) so i dont think if you edit these customizeable waypoints icons into a ghost or a ? mark and then put them on the appropriate geocaches , they wont come up on a "find geocache" and therefore you wont be able to do a "found"geocache. im figuring they will only come up on a "find waypoints" screen,does anybody else agree with me and is this something we might suggest as a future software upgrade to Garmin to allow more than one icon as a "geocache". :rolleyes:

I haven't tried this yet, but based upon my understanding of "Geocaching Mode," I think you are right. The GPSr uses the closed treasure chest symbol (or whatever symbol you select) to identify geocaches. If you change a waypoint symbol to an ammo can or a ghost, the GPSr won't think it is a geocache.

 

I guess, when looking for a vitual, you could go Geocaching Mode set up and change the symbol to ghost (and the found symbol to ghost with a red check mark) and then use the Geocaching Mode. To find a traditional, you could set it to ammo box.

 

Your "next closest" that shows when you hit "Found" would only show the next closest of that type, but I think it should work.

 

Maybe Neo Geo or TheOfficeMaven can chime in here.

Edited by Sputnik 57
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Today, my wife and I did our first ever caching. We had success on 5 finds, with nothing on 3 others. On the finds, I noticed my 60CS registered the find to be 40, 50, sometimes 60 feet away from where the find really was located? Is this normal? It's the 1st we've ever used this for foot navigation.

Here is the site with a pretty detailed explanation of WAAS, I was trying to find it to include it in my prior post.

 

http://www.gpsinformation.org/dale/dgps.htm#waas

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I have a dell axim PDA. I just bought a 60CS. How do I hook the two up?

Since no one has answered in a couple of days, I will put my best suggestion forward and then you should get some good information. I would think you hook it up with the USB cable that is made for your Dell to allow you to hook up to other devices.

 

When I hooked my GPS up to my PC I used a USB cable and started Street Atlas USA on the PC and after a few rounds at set up, it connected then down the road I went watching my track on the PC. Good luck.

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The 60cs locked-up on me twice yesterday.  Both times it was recalculating an auto-route when I decided to not follow the route set out by the unit.

 

Had to shut down and bring back up.  Funny screen fading, etc.  A week or so ago, the display screen went crazy, like the old TVs when the horizontal hold let go.  Had to shut it off that time, too. 

 

Have not lost any of the data in the unit when it happens, but it sure does make me nervous.  Has anyone else had this sort of experience?  Any thoughts about it?  Thanks.

 

KeepOnTruckin

I too have found that my 60cs will lock up while using the City Select V6 software when the map is displayed and I am traveling over 50mph. I returned the unit to Garmin and they reloaded the operating software. When I got it back the problem has not been fixed.

 

I have "repaired" the CS-V6 software in my PC by selecting that function in the installation process. Then I reloaded a map into the 60cs via the USB cable. Still locks up. This unit is truly feature packed. Amazing what technology can do.

 

Garmin is sending me a brand new unit and CS-V6 North America disc. Has this problem been discussed in the forum and/or does any one have a fix for it?

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The 60cs locked-up on me twice yesterday.  Both times it was recalculating an auto-route when I decided to not follow the route set out by the unit.

 

Had to shut down and bring back up.  Funny screen fading, etc.  A week or so ago, the display screen went crazy, like the old TVs when the horizontal hold let go.  Had to shut it off that time, too. 

 

Have not lost any of the data in the unit when it happens, but it sure does make me nervous.  Has anyone else had this sort of experience?  Any thoughts about it?  Thanks.

 

KeepOnTruckin

I too have found that my 60cs will lock up while using the City Select V6 software when the map is displayed and I am traveling over 50mph. I returned the unit to Garmin and they reloaded the operating software. When I got it back the problem has not been fixed.

 

I have "repaired" the CS-V6 software in my PC by selecting that function in the installation process. Then I reloaded a map into the 60cs via the USB cable. Still locks up. This unit is truly feature packed. Amazing what technology can do.

 

Garmin is sending me a brand new unit and CS-V6 North America disc. Has this problem been discussed in the forum and/or does any one have a fix for it?

I have not experienced this problem and have hundreds of hours auto navigating using City Select 5 and 6.

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Thanks so much for answering my questions from above. Very helpful.

 

I'm still wondering if my 60c has the functionality of searching for POIs, amenities, etc. along a route instead of those near to my current location. I know this is possible on the 'in car' style GPSr's, but I can't for the life of me figure out if I can do this on my 60c.

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Thanks so much for answering my questions from above. Very helpful.

 

I'm still wondering if my 60c has the functionality of searching for POIs, amenities, etc. along a route instead of those near to my current location. I know this is possible on the 'in car' style GPSr's, but I can't for the life of me figure out if I can do this on my 60c.

Use the D-Pad to move the cursor to an area you'd like to search. Then push FIND and go from there.

 

For example, let's say I'd like to find a McD's 20 miles north of my on I-95. I simply use the D-Pad to scroll up I-95 to the area I'd like to search and hit FIND. It uses that position as the search start point rather than my current position. When you want to go back to your current position, push quit a few times until it goes back.

 

Hope that helps.

 

:o

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The 60cs locked-up on me twice yesterday.  Both times it was recalculating an auto-route when I decided to not follow the route set out by the unit.

 

Had to shut down and bring back up.  Funny screen fading, etc.  A week or so ago, the display screen went crazy, like the old TVs when the horizontal hold let go.  Had to shut it off that time, too. 

 

Have not lost any of the data in the unit when it happens, but it sure does make me nervous.  Has anyone else had this sort of experience?  Any thoughts about it?  Thanks.

 

KeepOnTruckin

I too have found that my 60cs will lock up while using the City Select V6 software when the map is displayed and I am traveling over 50mph. I returned the unit to Garmin and they reloaded the operating software. When I got it back the problem has not been fixed.

 

I have "repaired" the CS-V6 software in my PC by selecting that function in the installation process. Then I reloaded a map into the 60cs via the USB cable. Still locks up. This unit is truly feature packed. Amazing what technology can do.

 

Garmin is sending me a brand new unit and CS-V6 North America disc. Has this problem been discussed in the forum and/or does any one have a fix for it?

Just had this happen to me tonight. Same symptom. Recalculating a route, then it locks up. Had to shut the unit down to get it to respond to anything. As mentioned, travelling over 50 and going a different route than what was indicated.

 

Another anomoly seems to occure in the "highway" display. Every now and then, there will be a stray line at an angle to the "grid" that creates the "distance" perspective. I noted it travelling north on I-55 mostly in northern Mississippi and Arkansas. One of the instances appeared between MM 262 and 263. The road curves at about 263, and the line seems to be an extension from the section of road that didn't "turn" with the actual highway depiction. That was just an interesting oddity that didn't cause a problem.

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Am I the only one here who thinks that the only thing that really needs protection on the 60cs is the screen?

 

I too considered a case when I bought mine last year but I just used a Palm Pilot screen protector sticker cut out to fit the 60cs's screen. So far it has worked great. The actual body of the 60cs is made of a hard, difficult to scratch, plastic composite. Although it won't take a gouge, it does not register almost all of the normal wear from use. So far, there are a couple of nicks on the screen protector but not the screen itself and the body looks new.

 

Anyone else tried this?

Edited by jcc123
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Am I the only one here who thinks that the only thing that really needs protection on the 60cs is the screen?

 

I too considered a case when I bought mine last year but I just used a Palm Pilot screen protector sticker cut out to fit the 60cs's screen. So far it has worked great. The actual body of the 60cs is made of a hard, difficult to scratch, plastic composite. Although it won't take a gouge, it does not register almost all of the normal wear from use. So far, there are a couple of nicks on the screen protector but not the screen itself and the body looks new.

 

Anyone else tried this?

:rolleyes: Exactly what I did, bought the 12 pack for about 4 bucks at Radio Shack, Works like a charm...

 

Brian

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I had thoughts about the screen. But what really bothers me is when I have it mounted in the car, and get a terrible reflection and cannot read the screen. At times like that it is better as a rear view mirror than a GPS. It would seem that a texture to a protector would help in that situation. Maybe I can kill two birds with one stone.

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