[OSM-talk] Good deal on Garmin GPS unit

[Nick Black]

On 7/5/06, Andy Armstrong <andy at hexten.net> wrote:
>
> On 5 Jul 2006, at 10:24, Dan Karran wrote:
> > - it's rather large compared to my eTrex (though it's relatively
> > light)
>
> Huge, innit? :)
>
> > - it didn't manage to get a lock on 3 satellites whilst walking to
> > work, whereas I think my eTrex does... I should really have waited to
> > let it get a lock before walking, but I was late already  :)
>
> Mine took nearly half an hour to get its head together - I thought it
> was faulty. Eventually it worked where everything was and now it gets
> a fix within < 1 min from power up and gets a +/- 4m 3d fix shortly
> thereafter.


GPS units can't actually locate themselves anywhere on the Earth.  They need
to know at least which quater-sphere they are in to be able to carry out the
regression necessery to determine their position.  That's why the first time
you use a unit (or if you turn it off, travel a significant distance and
turn it on again) it takes a while to sort itself out.  My Garmin GPS 60
took a good 15 mins to determine my position the first time I turned it on,
and I even told it I was in London.  Units with teh Sirf Star III chip
shouldn't have this problem as they using GSM cells to locate themselves as
well as GPS satellites.


> - it's nice to have the mapping, base data for europe and ability to
> > search for places
>
> Yup, good gazetteer - it's got places around here I've never heard
> of. It doesn't have all the local roads though (I'm in the middle of
> nowhere^h Cumbria in the UK).


So long as they don't upload to the OSM database - watch out for the classic
Garmin Tawain POI that most new units have built in!

nick


--
> Andy Armstrong, hexten.net
>
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