[aprssig] Anyone got any contacts at garmin?

Wes Johnston aprs at kd4rdb.com
Wed Feb 22 21:04:22 EST 2006


Yikes, I upgraded my GPS276c to their latest 3.92 firmware from 3.7, and
the waypoints that are created by the kenwood radio just got practically
unusable.

In 3.7, any waypoint that I edited (ie altered the assigned icon) got a
duplicate created the next time the kenwood pushed another waypoint down
the serial line.  If I didn't edit the waypoint's icon, then it would
simply move around the map like it was supposed to... granted with a
grey square for an icon, but it was liveable.

In 3.92, every time a waypoint comes in from the kenwood, an entirely
new waypoint is created.  I watched kc4pl-9 drive home today and he
created over a dozen waypoints on my screen.  Sure, it made a neat
looking trail of waypoints showing where he'd been, but it is for all
practical terms, useless for use with a kenwood radio with this firmware.

Does anyone know any one at garmin that we can bring this to their
attention?  I'd written them email with the 3.7 firmware quirk, and I've
just written them tonight with the 3.92 total blunder.  So far they have
not responded to an email sent 4 days ago.  My hope is that this can be
corrected before they commit 3.92 firmware out of beta.

I can downgrade to 3.7 firmware to make this liveable again, but
eventaully, I'm certain they will come out with some whiz bang feature
that I'll need to have and I'll end up with this waypoint problem
again.  This firmware literally makes this gps a deal breaker.  

On a side note, serveral years ago, I bought a street pilot 1 gps which
said it accepted GPWPL on the serial port, but didn't (the manual was in
error).  I sold that unit and bought a non-auto routing GPS, the GPS162
which was wonderful except that it didn't do street routing for me.  So
finally, I sold the gps162 to upgrade to the 276c and now find this
problem.... I'm beginnig to wonder if the gods don't want me to have an
auto routing gps for some reason!  ;-)

Wes






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