Magellan Meridian Troubles Any Advice

[+JoiseyGirl]

I've had my Magellan for about three years now and as of late it has been doing some wierd things. Twice now after downloading way points into it, checking that they are there, then turning off, and turning back on the waypoints are not there.

Also sometimes when I hit the power button it takes several times before it actually turns on. the clincher was while caching with friends in NH this past weekend at the top of the hill we were hiking my magellin's reading was 450ft then immediately went to .20 then .15 then 150ft and I was standing in the same spot. My arrow was pointing in the right direction but my distance kept bouncing.

So My question is has anyone else had this trouble? Is it time to upgrade? Or is my gps possessed?

Would appreciate any advice.

[+embra]

Which model do you have? (Not that it would make any difference that I know of)

 

Losing the waypoints sounds like a hardware malfunction. I have a memory fragment of this symptom rattling around my head, but I can't recall any details about the resolution. It might be worth a try to re-load the firmware to insure that corrupted firmware is not the problem, although I tend to doubt that as the cause. Still, it doesn't cost anything and it's easy to do.

 

I have thought that I have started to see a lack of response to my button pushes, requiring a second or third try. My Plat is about two years old now. It hasn't become a problem yet, just something that I notice I have to be more purposeful about. I'm curious to see if anyone else has started to notice anything like that...I've not seen it mentioned before.

 

I wouldn't be too concerned about the rapidly varying distance and altitude fluctuations unless you see it again. I've heard of units going nuts briefly; usually turning them off and back on seems to correct the weirdness. If it happens with any regularity...yeah, that's a problem.

 

So, I wouldn't be surprised if a repair by customer support or a new unit was in order.

[+JoiseyGirl]

It's a meridian, and I really dont want to buy a new one if I dont have to. I'm hoping that it just didnt like the elevations in NH. It's never done that here in NJ.

[+TotemLake]

After 1 1/2 years, I've noticed I have to be a little bit more firm with my power button for it to turn on. After the abuse it's gone through, I'm not entirely surprised.

 

Every now and then my signal goes whacko as described above. Sometimes cycling the power works, othertimes I have to look around and see what could be causing the apparent multipath echoes. That's the more common cause.

[+embra]

Uh, there are five models of the Meridians. The reason I was asking was that there was a known problem with the green/yellow version with waypoints disappearing if the unit had not been powered off when shutting down (i.e., the batteries failed). However, it sounds like you powered yours off the right way, and powered it back up to discover the waypoints AWOL.

 

The safe thing to do if you want to try and stretch out the life of your unit is to back up waypoints to the SD card as a precaution.

[+Thomas & Dingo]

Yea I have noticed that the buttons on my 2 year old Plat. are also getting touchy, they required a very firm press sometimes. Just saw some new Magellens, mmmm. yea I think my Plat may need to be replaced soon

[+JoiseyGirl]

Thanks for all the great advice its nice to know its not just my gps and that they do have some kinks.

[+GOT GPS?]

I have had experience where HARD keypresses seemed to cause the buttons to fail more quickly.

[+briansnat]

if your problems continue, maybe you need to do a full reset on your unit. Not sure how its done with a Meridian but someone here might be able to help.

[+Cherokeecacher]

Thanks for all the great advice its nice to know its not just my gps and that they do have some kinks.

Click on the link in Embra's sig line. Lots of good stuff in that FAQ