SatMap have quietly released a new firmware, v1.4, for their SatMap Active 10 devices. As well as addressing a range of bugs, the full Changelog is included in this article. Highlights include better Geocaching.com support, better power management, including hibernation support. For the full changelog, read the rest of the article…
Garmin has today announced two new touchscreen models. The Dakota10 & Dakota20, pictured here.
Physically smaller than the iconic Garmin eTrex, Dakota boasts a much bigger color display thanks to the 2.6-inch glove-friendly touchscreen.
Lightweight, rugged and waterproof, Garmin’s new Dakota devices quickly acquire and maintain satellite reception – even in heavy tree cover or deep canyons – thanks to a high-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFixTM, which automatically calculates and stores critical satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a position. Everyone from geocachers and youth scouts to surveyors and hunters can take advantage of Dakota’s 850 MB of internal memory, which can store up to 1,000 waypoints, 50 routes, 2,000 geocaches and an active tracklog of up to 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks.
The Dakota20 adds even more features, including a 3-axis compass, barometric altimeter, a microSD card slot for increased mapping and memory storage, and wireless unit-to-unit connectivity for sharing your waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches wirelessly with compatible Dakota, Oregon, Colorado and Foretrex devices. Dakota 20’s 3-axis, tilt-compensated electronic compass shows your heading even when you’re standing still, without needing to hold it level.
Engadget have picked up a story from gpsreview.net that cover the possible addtion to the Garmin Oregon range, the new models 500 & 500t will include a camera. No detail on what functionality a camera is likely to bring, we suspect geotagging of photos.
The Ordance Survey Outdoors Show takes place in 20 days time, starting on the 27th March 2009, and finishing on the 29th March, with over 250 exhibitors and lots of “Have a go” activities to take part in as well. Pocket GPS World has managed to negotiate a discount to this show, so head over to their site for more information and the instructions on how to obtain a discount on advanced tickets.
It’s a while since we’ve heard anything from SatMap, but, according to Pocket GPS World, they’ve just released a new update (v1.3) for their device. The Changelog states this update includes:
Map Features
User Interface
Functions
Settings
Routes
This update is available from here, with a warning that you must be running v1.16 or higher else you risk corrupting the device; story courtesy of Pocket GPS World. [Via UK Gadgeteer]
With the New Year brings new ideas, and today we would like to announce we are launching our OSM Canal Map for Garmin GPS units. As with all our maps this is initially UK based only, although we are looking to expand and offer more countries during 2009 (if you have any particular requests, please create an account in the forums and ask for your country).
The Canal Map is a little experimental at the moment, and we would welcome feedback good and bad in our forums. We started with a similar profile as our UK OSM Cycle Map for Garmin, and de-emphasised the cycle routes (although they still appear on the Canal Map to show our Canal Map users easy routes into town centres), and added a number of very specific canal / river POIs (Points of Interest) as well.
Most of the additional POIs are self-explanatory, using the standard Garmin symbols for Marinas, Boatyards etc. but we discovered Garmin did not have a symbol for locks, so we have used the White Navaid symbol for this. If any Canal Map users can find us a more appropriate symbol, we’ll happily change over. Also, as OSM maps each individual lock gate, we often find at least 2 occurrences of the lock name in close proximity, which can make the name look blurred. We’re looking into whether there is anything we can do to improve this, but do let us know whether it’s a real issue or not.
Of course, if you zoom in sufficiently far, you can actually see the individual lock gates…
We believe this is the first UK Canal Map for GPS devices created using OSM data, and hope it proves popular.
As always, this is available for download alongside our other OSM Maps for Garmin here.
We’ve now completed our first hardware review.
This review is of the Garmin Colorado 300. We make some comparisons to the GPSMap60Csx.
We’ll take a look at using the Colorado 300 to go caching. Including some screen shots to wet you appetite.
Follow the link to get to the Full Review
The Garmin Colorado 300
So what do you get for your money, at the time of writing a Colorado 300 from Amazon is £265, with the GMAP 60CSx £210. The contents of the box for both units is roughly the same.
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Colorado 300
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GPSMAP 60CSx
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To get going all thats needed is to unpack the device, remove the the back cover, insert 2 AA batteries and away you go. Its at this point that the first difference between then units becomes apparent, removal of the back cover requires two totally different techniques, on the Colorado you have to prise open a stiff locking clip that holds the back cover in place, the GPSMap is somewhat simpler with a lift and twist ring common to the rest of the Garmin hand held range.
Taken from the manuals of both units here are the instructions for installing the units batteries.
Design.The Colorado moves away from the traditional Garmin user interface of a cursor keypad, and 8 function keys, all functions on the unit are now controlled using the Rock ‘n Roller™ input wheel designed to allow easy one handed operation.
From the images above the differences between the units are clear.
In physical size, theres not much difference between the units.
Using the Colorado for paperless caching is an absolute pleasure. To make best use of the Colorado you need to be a premium member of the main geocaching listing site geocaching.com. Then simply create a pocket query for the area you wish to go caching in, download to an SD memory card, insert the card into the bottom of the Colorado 300, and off you go.
In the field we found the GPS reception to be matched to the GPSMAP60 both in accuracy, satellites seen, with the Colorado 300 aquiring it’s initial GPS fix slightly faster than the GPSMAP60. Both units proved to be a significant improvememnt on our current GPS60 Garmin unit, not surprising really given that developments in GPS technology.
The paperless caching capabilities of the Colorado give you access to the all the details on the cache listing page, including that all important hint. Along with several of the previous logs, these often prove invaluable in giving you some guidance on those more challenging geocaches.
The size, shape and weight of the unit mean that it sits nicely in the hand, making following of that all important arrow a pleasure, where the Colorado really wins over previous GPS units from Garmin is the introduction of the Rock ‘n Roller™ input wheel, using this input device located atop the Colorado’s clear LCD display you can easily use the same hand that you’re holding the unit in to navigate you way round the extensive menus and features of the Colorado 300 simply by rolling the wheel with an action similar to that used on a mouse wheel, or rocking the wheel in an action that can be best described as pushing a joystick. At first it does seem a little alien, but we soon got to grips with this new input device.
Perhaps the best example of the Rock ‘n Roller™ input wheel working to best effect can be shown on the map page, previously you would have used the cursor pad on the GPSMAP to move around the map, and the ‘in’ and ‘out’ buttons to zoom the map, using the ‘enter’ key to select or mark an item on the map. Now you simply rock the input wheel up, down, left and right to move around the map pretty much as before, roll the wheel to zoom in and out, and press the wheel to select, all whilst holding the unit with the same hand that your using to navigate around the map.
Discussed above in the geocaching part of this review, both the Colorado and GPSMap can have additional maps, and waypoints added by way of an additional memory card, in addition the colorado can have geocaching information stored on the card. The location, and type of memory card differ between the two units.
With the Colorado, a standard full size memory card can be used, installation is under the battery cover, into a slot in the bottom of the unit, as illustrated below.
The GPSMap60 uses a microSD card located underneath the batteries. Again this is shown below.
One thing is clear, you certainly don’t want to be swapping the memory of the GPSMap60 when your out in a field, microSD cards are tiny, really tiny, they’re smaller than a mobile phone sim card, and anyone thats ever had to remove or re-insert on of those will agree it’s not the easiest task.
The colorado makes use of the larger full size SD card, which makes it easier to change in the a field, but not something we’d recommend doing unless you absolutely had to.
Would we recommend the Colorado 300 ? Thats a most definitive yes, so much so with the unit from Garmin now returned, we’ve gone out and bought one to go geocaching with.
| GPSMAP60CSx | Colorado 300 | |
| Unit dimensions, WxHxD: | 2.4″ x 6.1″ x 1.3″ (6.1 x 15.5 x 3.3 cm) | 2.4″ x 5.5″ x 1.4″ (6.0 x 13.9 x 3.5 cm) |
| Display size, WxH: | 1.5″ x 2.2″ (3.8 x 5.6 cm) | 1.53″W x 2.55″H (3.8 x 6.3 cm); 3″ diag (7.6 cm) |
| Display resolution, WxH: | 160 x 240 pixels | 240 x 400 pixels |
| Display type: | 256 level color TFT | Transflective color TFT |
| Weight: | 7.5 oz (213 g) with batteries | 7.3 oz (206.9 g) with batteries |
| Battery: | 2 AA batteries (not included) | Recommended for use with NiMH batteries (not included) with 2500mAh capacity or greater |
| Waterproof: | yes (IPX7) | yes (IPX7) |
| Floats: | no | no |
| High-sensitivity receiver: | yes | yes |
| Interface: | serial and USB | USB and NMEA 0183 compatible |
| RoHS version available: | yes | NA |
| Basemap: | yes | NA |
| Preloaded Maps: | no | no |
| Ability to add maps: | yes | yes |
| Built in Memory: | no | 384MB |
| Accepts Data Cards: | yes 64MB micoSD | yes SD |
| Waypoints: | 1000 | 1000 |
| Routes: | 50 | 50 |
| Tracklog: | 10000 points 20 tracks | 10000 points 20 tracks |
| Automatic routing (turn by turn routing on roads): | yes | yes (option mapping for detailed routes) |
| Electronic Compass: | yes | yes |
| Barometric Altimeter: | yes | yes |
| Paperless Geocaching: | no | yes |
| Outdoor GPS Games: | yes | yes |
| Sun and Moon information: | yes | yes |
| Area Calculations: | yes | yes |
| Custom POIs (ability to add additional points of interest): | yes | yes |
| Unit-to-unit transfer (shares data wirelessly with similar units):: | no | yes |
| Picture Viewer: | no | yes |
| Tide Tables: | yes | yes |
| Hunt / Fish Calendar: | yes | yes |
Although we’ve seen OS maps on other devices, such as the SatMap Active 10 before, and in software, such as the ViewRanger software for Symbian phones, Garmin are shortly to release UK OS Maps for their Garmin Colorado and Garmin Oregon GPS devices.
The OS Maps will come on a microSD card that you can slot straight into the units (although knowing Garmin you will not be able to transfer the maps to another memory card, as they use the “Secure” bit of the SD card standard to store the license to use the maps). This should not be a major problem for these devices, as they have some internal memory for storing additional POIs, and they support multiple map files on the internal memory too.
What’s different about these Garmin maps though is that as well as featuring the full visual OS maps, all the data has been included to allow you to navigate via the maps too, and POI information is included as well.
At some point, Garmin will also sell the units and maps together, but in the meantime the OS Maps will be available from November priced at £129.99.
For those who want better mapping on their GPS units, but don’t want to pay at all, then we offer the Garmin UK OSM maps (using the OpenStreetMap maps) free of charge! OpenStreetMap is still a “Work in Progress”, so not every road or footpath is covered, but the data will still enhance your GPS if you only have a very rough basemap (or no map at all), and best of all, you can help improve the map by uploading your GPS traces, and adding the missing roads and footpaths yourself.
If you are a cyclists, don’t forget we also have the OSM Cycle Map available in Garmin format.
Both downloads are available here.
Story and picture courtesy of OUTDOORSmagic.com [Via UK Gadgeteer].
We’ve finally released our Garmin maps, and would like to thank our beta testers for all their help. Although we’re still working on providing more information on how to use these maps, it’s key we let everyone know they are now available.
Our Free maps will be updated on a regular basis, most likely every 3 months.
Probably the most important point is that we are releasing both normal Garmin OSM Maps, and also the Garmin OSM Cycle Map (which highlights cycle routes more than normal roads) today.
Head over to our new download page for more information…
