Garmin 2610 GPS Problem January 05, 2005, 03:12:39 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48744I recently bought the 2610 model primarily due to the good posts on this forum. I then bought a 2GB Sandisk card and downloaded all the maps. I have had a chance to use the unit several times and I am very impressed with its capabilities and love using it, but I am having a small problem. It seems to be off about 300-400 feet. When it says "arriving at designation" I am already past it. The turn instructions are also off the same way and has cause a couple of miscues. I have calibrated the touchscreen a couple of times but it has not helped. Has anyone else had this problem and is there another way to calibrate it? Thanks for your help.Gary Gemberling 2001 30TB
Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #1 – January 05, 2005, 04:50:15 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48751"It seems to be off about 300-400 feet." That's WAY off! With a normal signal, error should be less than 30 feet. You might want to flip to the screen that lets you check satellite reception. If you were in a box canyon (or perhaps downtown Manhattan), and only had a couple or three GPS satellites in view, your accuracy could be degraded--though it's hard to imagine it being that bad and still working at all. Check that you have good reception from a number of birds. (The manual will give you more details about what constitutes good reception). If so, and if the unit is consistently off by the amounts you describe, I'd suggest talking to Garmin.Andy Baird
Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #2 – January 05, 2005, 09:30:41 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48774Andy and all,I think the problem is not with the GPS engine itself, but rather with the database information. There are numerous areas
Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #3 – January 06, 2005, 07:07:45 am Yahoo Message Number: 48788Quote I recently bought the 2610 model primarily due to the good posts on this forum. I then bought a 2GB Sandisk card and downloaded all the maps. I have had a chance to use the unit several times and I am very impressed with its capabilities and love using it, but I am having a small problem. It seems to be off about 300-400 feet. When it says "arriving at designation" I am already past it. The turn instructions are also off the same way and has cause a couple of miscues. I have calibrated the touchscreen a couple of times but it has not helped. Has anyone else had this problem and is there another way to calibrate it? Thanks for your help.Gary Gemberling 2001 30TB Gary, As Andy suggested, check your GPS Info and see what your accuracy is. With a good supply of satellites it should be down to 8-9 feet. If that's the case the problem is in the map database. I've noted several discrepancies (the latest being a Flagler Beach, FL Food Lion that Angel announced as " Arriving at destination on right"). Well, on the right was a lot of trees and the Food Lion was on the left, across a divided highway. With 5,000,000 database entries I'm not surprised that some are a bit off. That said, your street maps should be much more accurate. Visit Garmin.com's techinical support and describe your situation. I've found they are very good at returning with answers within 24 hours.NH Paul
Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #4 – January 06, 2005, 09:36:49 am Yahoo Message Number: 48796"My Garmin thinks my house is a block away from where it is." So far I've run into only one case like that--a local business that's shown as being half a mile from where it really is--but I'm sure there are more; no database with five million points of interest can 100% correct. (Of course the same is true--in spades!--of paper maps and atlases, which are not only vulnerable to errors, but unlike a GPS navigator, have no mechanism for correcting them.) But the problem Gary described in message #48744 appeared to be a 300-400 foot error *throughout* the route. (Gary perhaps you could provide more details on this.) This is not normal, and if it's a consistent problem then there may be a defect in Gary's unit. As for your Garmin mislocating your house, it's easy enough to fix that: just create a waypoint (push the "Mark" button) when you're parked at your house, and name it "HOME". I routinely create waypoints for places I expect to return to, just for the convenience of being able to label them.Andy Baird
Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #5 – January 06, 2005, 10:22:13 am Yahoo Message Number: 48799Quote With 5,000,000 database entries I'm not surprised that some are a bit off. That said, your street maps should be much more accurate. Visit Garmin.com's techinical support and describe your situation. I've found they are very good at returning with answers within 24 hours.NH Paul Interestingly, at the north end of Minden, NV, and then again about 5 miles to the S/W at the base of Job's Peak (were I live), just south of Lake Tahoe in the Carson Valley, *all* the streets are offset by about 500' or so to the north. Enough so that the Garmin will ask me to turn a block before I get to my house. In most other areas I've traveled and zoomed in to check, the street DB has been far more accurate.I'm not using a DB that's anywhere near as new as you guys though, City Select v5, so you probably have less errors than me.bumper
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #6 – January 06, 2005, 10:40:53 am Yahoo Message Number: 48803I have had a Streetpilot III for almost 4 years now and I can tell you that almost all addresses are off by (2) house addresses
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #7 – January 06, 2005, 02:32:14 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48816In my case, it does seem to be consistently off by the 300-400 feet. I just received the unit at Christmas and just downloaded the whole Mapsource software into the 2GB card about a week ago and all the testing has been local. Still, I do think the unit is fantastic and I am just amazed at its capabilities. I think I will make an inquiry to Garmin tech support and I will let all of you know the response.Gary Gemberling 2001 30TBAndy Baird andybaird@...> wrote:But the problem Gary described in message #48744 appeared to be a 300-400 foot error *throughout* the route. (Gary perhaps you could provide more details on this.) This is not normal, and if it's a consistent problem then there may be a defect in Gary's unit.[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #8 – January 06, 2005, 03:08:28 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48817"I have had a Streetpilot III for almost 4 years now and I can tell you that almost all addresses are off by (2) house addresses in any neighborhood." A couple of things could account for that, Craig. First, the old StreetPilot III (even the Deluxe model) is very slow compared with the StreetPilot 2600 series. Published reviews indicate the 2610/2620 units are roughly five times faster, and when I demonstrated my 2610 to a friend with a SP III Deluxe, his jaw literally dropped at the speed of the 2610. He said that in many cases if he missed a turn, by the time his SP III Deluxe realized it was off route and calculated a new route, he would have passed the new recommended turn...in other words, sometimes it just couldn't keep up. In the case of street addresses, the SP III might very well lag behind where you actually are for this reason. But there's a more fundfamental issue. As I understand it, the MapSource database doesn't have stored lat/long coordinates for every street address...in fact, from my observations while driving along, I'd guess that maybe 10% of residential street addresses are stored. What it appears to do most of the time is to generate an on-the-fly estimate: if it knows that you are in the 1200 block of State Street and knows that you are 20% of the way down that block, it's going to guess that you are opposite number 1220. Since houses are not always evenly spaced, this estimate is not always right on the nose. There's probably more to it than that, but the gist is that any StreetPilot doesn't know the exact geographical coordinates of every house in the country. That would probably be unrealistic even with today's technology. My feeling, though, is that if it can get me within two houses of where I want to be in a completely unfamiliar city thousands of miles away, I'm delighted with that performance! Parking and walking two houses down the street is something I can easily handle. :-) Incidentally, my friend went home and put his StreetPilot III Deluxe up for sale on eBay that same night. He's buying a StreetPilot 2620--he says there's no comparison.Andy Baird
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #9 – January 06, 2005, 04:28:38 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48823I have a 1939 Nagavator and believe me she cost more than a $1,000 but worth ever penny. She's very good at telling me where to go. I would be lost without her. Robert
[Life With A Lazy Daze RV] Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #10 – January 06, 2005, 04:35:49 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48824QuoteIn my case, it does seem to be consistently off by the 300-400 feet. I just received the unit at Christmas and just downloaded the whole Mapsource software into the 2GB card about a week ago and all the testing has been local. Still, I do think the unit is fantastic and I am just amazed at its capabilities. I think I will make an inquiry to Garmin tech support and I will let all of you know the response.Quote Gary Gemberling 2001 30TB Hi gangIn my case, with a Street Pilot III, I have noted errors which I attribute not to the GPS, but to the maps loaded. Before GPS, mapping was done with precision instruments which measured a navigation star's exact elevation and the time. To get a good horizon, they measured the star's reflection in a pool of mercury. Unfortunately, the reading was only as good as the local vertical (down does not always point to the middle of the earth). In the International Geophysical Year (I think it was about 1958) they adjusted all datums to the Greenich one, even though that was still arbitrary based on where down was in Greenich. But at least it aligned all the world to one datum. I recall the Soviet Union was off by 7 miles or so and the US off by about 3/4 of a mile. In any event, until an absolute navigational system like GPS came along, all our maps had slight errors, and what we read as a "GPS error" is actually an error in the map.Make sense?Gus Weber
Re: [Life With A Lazy Daze RV] Re: Garmin 2610 GPS Problem Reply #11 – January 07, 2005, 12:28:02 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48884I did make an inquiry to Garmin. They said there is no other calibrations to be made to the unit but did suggest downloading the latest operating system update from the Garm
Re: navigators Reply #12 РJanuary 07, 2005, 08:23:07 pm Yahoo Message Number: 48902"I have a 1939 Nagavator and believe me she cost more than a $1,000 but worth ever penny." Touch̩, Robert! Unfortunately, I'm solo, so I have to get by with electronic assistance. ;-)Andy Baird
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