I nearly bought another 730 as the replacement but thinking about the minor gripes I had with the device I thought that the 740 may resolve most of them.

1. 730 silver cap and rear scratched very easily making it look shabby. The 740 doesn’t have the nice rubberized coating, but its black plastic doesn’t seem to scratch as easily and certainly doesn’t show the scratches as much. You can get a 730 in black, which I did consider.
2. On/off slider switch could be accidentally knocked on the 730, but a really firm two second hold is required on the large rubberized 740 button.
3. The waypoint logging button was always getting fired in my pocket on the 730, so I had to edit out the waypoints in notepad++. Again the 740 button needs a good firm press and hold, this time for just one second.

Canmore GT-740FL Sport Log Book

I believe that when you strip away the case and buttons the two devices are identical except that the 740 has a G-sensor. This means that if the unit is stationary for 5 minutes it will stop logging your position thus saving power tracking satellites and writing to memory. It only takes the slightest movement for it to wake and start logging again and this process is almost instantaneous. If you left the 740 on a table overnight it would hardly drain the battery at all, hopefully leaving you plenty of juice for the next day, whereas the 730 would have been recording the same position all night and may now be drained just when you need it. The 740 claims to be able to run in standby mode for 1500 hours when fully charged.

I’ve just left the same drivers and Canway software on my PC as they are clearly the same files for the 730 and 740. On first power up after traveling thousands of miles to the UK from Taiwan via Germany there was a satellite fix (whilst indoors) within just a few seconds. The truth is that I switched it on, went to redirect my phone, turned round and it already had a fix. Each time I have subsequently turned the device on the fix has been made in less than 5 seconds.

The cap is very hard to remove, though this is probably a major contributor to it being  IPX-6 waterproof. I was concerned that the 370 cap would get lost one day as it comes off pretty easily. It seems very unlikely with the 740.

While the 740 comes with an armband there is no means of attaching a lanyard. The device is marketed as a Sport Log Book, which is a bit silly really. As I have said, it is really the same device as the 730, which is not marketed in this way.

As with the 730 I ordered from digital-paradies (they also sell via Amazon now for a fraction more) and was a bit disappointed that the postage was £7.05 when the same company charges £4.99 to deliver the 730. Units and boxes are the same size and weight.

Standby Test added 9/3/2015

In response to Stratos’ post on the GT-730 topic I decided to conduct a test to see how long the device would run when used for a period each day and left it to go into standby mode.

I put the receiver in my car on 28/1/2015 after fully recharging it. It was configured to record location once every second. The car was being used generally twice a day for short trips (4-8 miles) and 4 or 5 longer ones (25-35 miles). It recorded for around 10 hours over a period of 15 days before the battery finally ran out.

I thought this was pretty good, though you could always charge the device from a portable charger or from your car cigarette lighter. Many newer cars even carry USB ports these days which you can charge from.

Why I chose the GT-730FL-S

I looked at several devices, most coming from the far east. The idea of returns and import duty was a concern and the lack of reviews available on the Internet didn’t convince me that the items wouldn’t need returning. Canmore is a Taiwan based company, but their  products are sold in Canada and Europe. I did find a UK seller, but their older model used the Venus 6 chipset, whereas I wanted the SiRF star IV model. I don’t understand why they have the same model number. You may think the -S stands for SiRF, but it actually stands for silver (the device colour).  CanadaGPS have a useful chipset comparison here. The only real contender for me was the Canmore GT-740FL-s, which is very similar, but has a G-sensor to detect when the device is stationary so it can send the GPSr into standby mode. It is also IPX-6 waterproof, but this seemed pointless on an item that would sit in a dry pocket or rucksack. I wanted to keep my costs down, so the choice was made. It cost me £40 including £5 postage from Germany in January 2014.

The package arrived from Digital-paradies (lol) in 6 days. In the box there was also a Canmore lanyard and mini CD with drivers, software and very minimal instructions, though to be honest it’s pretty straight forward. The unit was charged in 30 mins and made it’s first fix on a window ledge in about 2 mins.

Here are the key features of the product:

• 48 channels
• SIRF-IV chipset has very low power consumption (claims 17/56 hours per charge)
• 2.5m CEP accuracy
• Supports SAGPS function giving very fast satellite fix
• SBAS (WAAS, EGNOS) support
• Configurable logging data interval by time or distance

There’s a small slider switch on the side to turn the device on and off. The switch is reasonably firm so should not be too easily moved in your pocket. There’s a large circular button to mark your current location with a waypoint.
The LEDs surround the button lighting blue when powered on, changing to a slowly flashing blue light when the device is talking to the satellites. A few fast flashes confirm a waypoint has been marked. There are smaller LEDs to indicate charging (yellow) and low battery (red), though I’ve not seen the latter on yet. The unit (including cap) is 70mm in length.

 Battery test

After a few uses I charged the battery fully then switched the device on and left it on a window ledge until it ran out of battery life.

The 5 second interval test was the first one I did and the battery life improved noticeably after this, even when logging more frequently. Re-chargeable batteries often perform better after a couple of full discharges/re-charges.

Performance test

I took out the four devices I currently own for a performance review.

1. Canmore GT-730FL-S SiRF star IV
2. Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx Original had SiRF star III, but I’m not sure about this 2010 model
3. HTC EVO 3D Android smartphone Qualcomm
4. Magellan eXplorist 710 SiRF star III

I tested the units on a 3 mile walk on a very cloudy day. The terrain was hilly. The east side of the route is enclosed in a steep, thick part coniferous/part broadleaved forest in winter. Nearly all of the route is on small roads so I could see the roads on the map. All units were placed in my pockets. I started at the most easterly point.

The above overview shows all units performed well, though the HTC was understandably less accurate than the others. The Canmore was less accurate at the start of the anti-clockwise journey, but it had been switched on just before I started the route (the others had been on for a few minutes) so it may have fixed on fewer satellites than it later achieved. After this section it was very accurate.

Typically the Canmore performed very well

 Here you can see the Canmore performed perfectly, as did the Magellan which is hidden underneath it. The Garmin was good too and the HTC was some way behind. I have since used the device on a number of outings and it has performed without issue. Time taken for first fix is generally 1 minute or under. It has been as little as 10 seconds.

Extracting data and Canway software

I imagine that data is stored in a raw format, which is economical on processing and storage, but means you can only extract your data via the supplied Canway software. Canway is supplied for PC and NOT for Mac as some sources suggest. Plug the device in, switch it on (it does not appear as a USB device) and click download trip in Canway. Tracks held on the device can be easily selected via tick boxes. The download is very quick. Even the 16 hour (5 second interval) log I created took just a second or two, but the log containing 24% of the device’s memory took about 30 seconds to download. This is a huge amount of data though to be fair. Once you have the data in Canway you can view it on a map (Google, Bing etc), view elevation/speed metrics, geotag photos and a host of other things. All I am really interested in is exporting the data, as then I can choose which software I want to analyse the track and waypoints. You can export in CSV, NMEA Text, KML, KMZ and the all important GPX. If you need other formats you should easily be able to create them from one of these formats with a tool like GpsBabel.

GPX is the format I will be using mostly, so I have tested this well and csv to a lesser extent and both worked as expected. I did have a problem importing the track with a marked waypoint into Garmin Mapsource. I edited the waypoint out of the file with notepad and it was fine. I will look into this further.

Elevation data is added to the exports, presumably from map data within Canway, as the specification doesn’t indicate there is a barometric altimeter of that the data is generated from GPS satellites.

CSV extract sample. Last two columns appear to be elevation(m) and speed.

You can download the four tracks used in this test from here if you wish to see them in more detail.

Using the data logger as a USB dongle

I plugged the GT-730FL-S into my Windows 8 PC and ran up Memory Map. I selected NMEA on COM4: with Baud rate 38400 (8 data bits, 1 stop bit and no parity) and it worked immediately. I’ve had less success on my Android tablet which has a powered OTG port, but I’ll update when I’ve had a chance to investigate this further.

Geo-tagging

Many recent compact digital cameras contain a GPS receiver and will geo-tag your photos, but there is a down-side to this approach. The GPS receivers that camera manufacturers use are often inaccurate, take a long time to get a fix when you just want to take a photo and run the camera battery down very quickly. I’ve seen loads of comments where people say they turn the GPSr off because it gobbles the battery. A data logger is the perfect solution to this problem. Just put it in your pocket (switched on) at the start of the day and when you download your photos to your PC use an application to extract the location from your track log that corresponds with the time on the photo. It’s really easy. Canway will do this, but I prefer to use GeoSetter, which is also free. Apart from all of the above advantages (accuracy, speed of readiness, battery preservation) you can also concentrate on buying the camera you really want, when you upgrade you’ve still got your data logged to use on the new camera and you’ll save fair a few quid too.

Conclusion

The Canmore GT-730FL-S is  a really handy device for those purely wanting to log where they’ve been or wanting to geo-tag photos. It’s small, accurate and records a lot of data, while the battery charges very quickly and lasts much longer than my other GPS receivers. Marking waypoints couldn’t be easier, though I usually prefer to take a photo to mark a point, so I can easily remember why I’ve marked that point.
I record every walk I do, but often don’t want to carry a fully fledged GPSr when I’m in familiar territory. The data logger is also much quicker at getting a satellite fix, so I can just pick it up and go. I also can’t resist toys.

Comments after six months of use (8/8/2014)

I trim up my exported GPX files in Garmin’s MapSource, but it won’t open the file if there are any waypoints in it. I’ve not got round to looking at what’s wrong with the format, but I just open the gpx file in notepad, go to the end of the file (waypoints are always at the end) and delete everything between <wpt> and </wpt> and save the file. Sorted. My own mapRoute web app reads the waypoints fine btw.

The waypoint button sometimes gets fired unintentionally whilst in my pocket.

The black rubberized surface is excellent, but the silver is rubbish and gets scuffed and scratched very easily.

I had some issues geotagging photos correctly once we moved to BST, but I’ve also changed my camera, so it may be the camera that’s the cause. I can easily get round it by time-shifting anyway.

On the odd occasion it takes the device a good 30 minutes to pick up a fix but usually it’s ready in a few minutes.

On a single occasion the track log went a bit crazy diverting a mile (over a river) to somewhere I had not gone.

Everything else is great and I’m very happy with the device.

Update March 2016.

After a period of using my GT-740FL I came back to the GT-730FL-S only to find it has died. The blue light illuminates (battery OK), but never flashes (doesn’t get a fix).

So why do people still buy dedicated handheld units? It’s simple. There are a few critical issues with smartphones:

• GPS antenna / chipset does not provide as good and accurate positioning
• Non-rugged hardware means the units can damage easily
• Non-waterproof hardware
• Battery life is poor

Garmin are about to release the Android based Monterra to bridge this gap, but what does it really bring to the party. The items on my list are simple hardware issues. Phone manufactures won’t address these issues because they add cost, are not mainstream requirements and may make their devices considerably larger and therefore less desirable. GPSr users are used to carrying around large clunky devices, so getting around power issues (and Android really does guzzle power) is easily solved by adding a large housing that takes three AA batteries or a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Garmin claim 22hrs on the rechargeable battery, but we all know to take these specifications with a pinch of salt. Sadly, what Garmin have done is to remove many of the benefits of an Android phone. There is no phone, no data (3G/4G). So we now need to carry a separate phone and we can’t interact with the data that is so central to geocaching whilst outdoors. Wi-fi is still available, but that’s not much use if like me you are generally out on the hills. While the device can record 1080p video (I don’t know how good it is though) it can only display a paltry 272 x 480 pixels. That means the HTC One has 16 times more detail on the screen. I believe this is part of the power saving exercise.

The Google Play Store is available on the device, and this could be Garmin’s downfall IMHO. Sure, if it wasn’t available some users would soon find a way around that, but by opening up the Play Store you can put any Android app on you want. This also means that the Garmin software becomes pretty much redundant (there are always people prepared to write this stuff for free and it’s usually better that the bundled software) and more importantly they will no longer get revenue from selling maps. It’s good news for the user. Personally I hate that if I buy a Garmin device I am tied down to some pretty poor maps and at a large cost. Now you can just install your favourite Android mapping application and associated off-line maps. If you don’t have a better Android (or other smartphone) device you could also install an offline sat nav app, though these are not free of course. WhereYouGo (the Android replacement for Wherigo), Munzee and a host of other GPS related apps could also be installed.

All it takes is for an electronics giant to see a profit and they will make an rugged Android phone with a good antenna/chipset and a large battery option and it’s bye-bye Garmin. No expensive software development or support is required. While they’re at it they will add in the phone and data connectivity and Garmin’s effort will be kicked into touch. The arguement for no phone appears to be battery conservation, but turning the phone (and data) on/off  on Android couldn’t be any easier. The final nail in the coffin is the cost. The Monterra is retailing for a whopping £600 (minus 1p). This comes with the totally useless base map and the only slightly more useful recreational map of Europe. There are also no details on Android version, processor, RAM, how speakers deal with being IPX-7 waterproof etc.

Of course dedicated GPS receivers also come with 3-axis compasses, barometric altimeters and the Monterra even has a UV meter (though it didn’t work in the review I saw), but these are much less important. Personally I’ve never seen much difference in practical terms between the 2-axis and 3-axis compass and all barometric altimeters on these devices are pretty much useless (and they drink batteries).

The release date has been put back several times now, but I’m sure that Garmin will make sure it’s out in time for Christmas regardless of whether it works or not. Garmin have a poor record in recent years when it comes to releasing new products as they have been full of bugs, but unlike Magellan they do at least address the issues and try to fix them. Santa can relax though, because I won’t be asking for a Monterra this Christmas.

There were two problems with geonames. Firstly it was relatively slow (it’s a web service) and secondly, there are limits to how many requests you are allowed to make. This isn’t a problem for this site, but it was for mapRoute.

SRTM data has data for pretty much the surface of the planet taken at 90 metre intervals. This should be enough for my purposes. There is some OS data that’s also freely available that details the UKs elevation at 50m intervals, but it requires the location to be sent in British Grid Reference format, which I haven’t got round to looking at yet and from brief research I know it won’t be easy. (Update: I have since implemented British Grid Ref. conversion in mapRoute, but to the OS elevation data).

The issue with map related elevation data often arises when you are walking at an angle to a very steep incline, say along a cliff top. The GPS measurement only needs to be a few feet out and it will report you as being at the bottom of the cliff, then the top etc. In fact, if you have elevation data for every 90m only you could still see this problem even with an accurate GPS track log. I walk a lot in the hills, so this is a significant issue for me.

Historically I have reduced my track log points to just 100 before uploading to this site as I didn’t want too much data slowing down the process. Imagine the situation when you’re walking along a concave cliff top or ridge. In reducing the track points a straight line between two separated points now has you down at the bottom of a cliff given the above example.

Another issue occurred when two points were at a similar elevation, but somewhere between them the elevation changed considerably. Imagine walking over the top of a hill, but the only elevations recorded were at the base of the hill on either side. This scenario would report no ascent being made. The code provided by osola allows for creating intermediate points every 3″ (seconds) of a degree, which equates to approximately 90m. This too makes the resulting elevation profile too jumpy for my purposes, so I added an option to alternatively display at 6″ intervals. There’s no precise science to this. It’s not always the same interval that works best for a route, hence leaving the option to the user.

Integrating the data into a graph meant I needed to return the distance of each point from the start of the route as each section is not of equal length. I would then plot a scatter graph and join the points, so it looks like a line graph. This is where the process fell down when I originally looked at it using GPSr elevation data. Then the graph looked great, but was not accurate. For instance, the peak of a hill may not appear to be the same distance into the route on the graph and on the map. The only point locations you could guarantee were the first and the last. Returning the distance for each point gets around this issue. Alternatively you could return points at fixed intervals only.

Along the way I Ajax-ified the returning of the data and returned the data as JSON. This led on to adding Ajax to much of the site (particularly the walk page). Then I noticed how all my pages were built on HTML tables. This is considered bad practice these days, so I then went about replacing them with DIVs and CSS. Finally, I unified my buttons and made may waypoints display on all relevant routes, not just the one they had been created against.

All of the above was a great learning process, which meant I could then plug in very similar code to mapRoute. The returning of data was so quick that I was even able to return the cursor location elevation as the user moves it across the map. Note: This is turned off for basic users. I only downloaded the data for the UK (344MB), but apart from disk space and download effort there’s no reason why you couldn’t get data for any location.

Starting out

One morning I woke up with an idea. Wouldn’t it be great to have a web application that allowed me and other walkers/hikers to plan routes. mapRoute was born. There are a few similar apps, but they are all pretty limited. I wanted better mapping (UK Ordnance Survey 1:25K), ability to create and edit routes easily, then store them on the server and download them at will so I can load them onto my GPS receiver. As the project progressed my requirements grew and grew, but this was the starting point. The project is about to go live, so I thought I would share the experience over the next few posts.

At the start I had to do some reading and quickly discovered that my minimum requirements would be an understanding of the following:

HTML

A few years ago this was all most web sites had. It’s just a markup language that allows you to create a simply formatted document on the web. I’d used this for years and there’s really not much to it. You can’t create a web app with HTML, but you do need it as a starting point. HTML5 is now available, which provides much more functionality than past versions.

JavaScript

This scripting language runs in your browser and brings a web app to life. JavaScript can interface to databases APIs, variable data and the Document Object Model (DOM), which is really the HTML. I knew a tiny bit of JavaScript, but I would have to learn much more. This was to be my steepest learning curve. Fortunately I saw my brother-in-law the weekend I started and he gave me a recent JavaScript book thick enough to club a bunch of 70′s DJs to death.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets allow you to format web pages while separating formatting from content. You can do much more than you’d think with it, so it was important that I got to grips with CSS quickly.

AJAX

Ajax is cool. It allows you to communicate with a data source (database, API, web site) without reloading the page. Remember how you used to fill out a form, press submit and the page would re-load. This was the only way to pass data. Now think of when you type something into the Google search engine. After each character the page shows matches with what you’ve typed so far. Ever wondered how it does this? It’s Ajax. Each time a key is pressed Ajax sends the string back to the server, which returns a set of results… all without a submit key or a page re-load. The search button is now superfluous on that page. Another example relevant to my project is Bing maps. As you move the map more tiles automatically load. It’s not magic, it’s Ajax.

PHP

(PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a pretty straightforward server-side language. All of my Ajax calls PHP code. The PHP code makes database calls, gets elevation data or makes calls to APIs. I needed to write some proxy code to allow calls to be make to external domains. As session variables are server-side I also use PHP to deal with these. When I started this site I originally used Perl as my server-side language. Personally I find PHP is much easier and have converted all Perl to PHP on this site now too.

mySQL

This is an open source database manager that is supported by many web hosts, including mine. As I am a SQL Server DBA, this should be a piece of cake for me. At last, an easy bit.

JSON

I am very familiar with XML due to my job, but all GPS users should know some xml, as gpx files are really XML data. It’s a method of representing data in text form, so it’s ideal for passing between applications. JSON is a lightweight and simple substitute for XML. It tends to be more popular for API and web services. It is pretty straight forward to pick up.

APIs and other stuff

Bing Maps 7.0 was chosen because of it’s ability to provide 1:25K OS maps, something that the Ordnance Survey themselves couldn’t do. Geocaching Live API was used to provide calls directly into the geocaching database, currently holding over 2M active geocaches worldwide (150K in UK alone).

There would also be various libraries to provide graphs, date entry and even a little jQuery to enhance the user experience, but I decided to keep this to a minimum.

OS 1:25K

Domestic maps used by most UK walkers come in 1:50,000 scale and 1:25,000 scale, but most GPSr manufacturers only sell the less detailed 1:50K version, usually for around £200 for the entire UK. Those that sell 1:25K mapping usually only have national parks available and they tend to cost about £100 for each map covering a single park. To get the whole UK (if possible) would cost thousands of pounds. Add to this that Garmin Discoverer maps are of pretty poor image quality. If you zoom in too much they become become blurred because the image resolution is too low. Another disadvantage is that Garmin and Magellan license these maps to a single device and you can’t backup and restore the maps to another microSD card. If you lose / break the device or the SD card you need to buy new maps. “Rip off”, I hear you say. You are indeed correct.

All you need is free MOBAC (MOBile Atlas Creator) 1.9 beta or earlier. It’s not hard to find. Torrents are a good source if you are familiar with them. It’s perfectly legal. The reason you need an old version is that the developer removed many of the data sources after this version including the Ordnance Survey data source. They can be added manually, but this is the easiest way. That’s it, there’s no other software required.

Install Mobac and run it. If you select Ordnance Survey Explorer Maps (UK), you should see something like this.

Click sample for full image

Play with the zoom (near top of map). Each map source has different zoom levels available to it. The OS maps here are available from 12 to 16. You can only zoom out to 12, so you can’t see a huge area. Note where 1:50K maps turn to 1:25K maps (red paths to green paths etc). Select the Bing Maps map source. Bing Maps has maps for levels 1 to 19 so you can zoom in or out much more. Of course the map detail doesn’t compare to the OS maps.

Raster maps are basically calibrated images (your paper OS map
in digital form), whereas vector maps are just a bunch of numbers
that can be interpreted by your device to display digital maps. 
Vector maps are required by sat nav so that a route can be 
calculated. With a raster map the device will not know what is 
road, sea or field. It's all just pixels to the them.
A secondary advantage of vector maps is that you can hide data
when you zoom out to avoid clutter. Raster maps get round this 
issue by having separate maps for each zoom levels. Raster maps 
are generally much more detail and prettier too. They are what we
walkers need. We generally don't care about routing on roads.

OS 1:50K

RMP maps can consist of one or more zoom levels. The device is clever enough to use the map level that corresponds to how far you are zoomed in regardless of whether the levels are in the same file or in multiple files. I chose to generally use a separate RMP file for each level rather than incorporate all maps for an area into a single file. This means a low level map can cover a huge area and smaller areas are covered by maps with higher zoom levels as they contain more detail.

We will use Bing Maps to manually select the area for our 1:50K map (as it will allow the whole area to display on the screen) before switching to OS maps before we grab the data. If you choose only level 14 like I did you will be able to divide the UK into Wales, England (SW, SE, Central, E, N) and Scotland (Lowlands, Central, NW, NE). See how I divided it here.

To make a level 14 OS map of Wales:

• Select map source Bing Maps and zoom out so you can see the whole of Wales.
• Left click mouse to select a corner of the rectangle enveloping Wales.
• Keep the button pressed and release when the cursor is at the opposite corner of the required rectangle. Your selected area will be pink.
• Once you are happy you have the area you want selected do NOT click on the map again as the coordinates will be lost. You can right click to move the map though.
• Change map source to OS Explorer Maps (UK) and select the tickbox for zoom level 14.
• Click New in Atlas Content and select Magellan (RMP) to specify the output map format
• Click Add selection (underneath Atlas Content) to add the selected levels to the map.
• Click on the Create Atlas button. This small map should typically take about 5 minutes to download and create, but it obviously depends on your data pipe and PC performance.
• When completed rename the file to a standard. i.e OS 1-50K Wales.rmp or similar.
• Finally move it to where you plan to keep your maps.

OS on sat nav. You also need the Magellan vector map (comes with eX710) for this to work

You can test the map out on the device by copying to the Maps folder on either the internal memory or on your SD card. Don’t forget to select the map in the eXplorist map menu. Of course you will have to zoom to an appropriate level to see it too.
To view it in VantagePoint select Maps and click Add (plus sign) and select the file. I found this process susceptible to crashing the application. If it does, just do it again. After loading 3 or 4 maps I close/re-open VP so I don’t lose the changes. You can see an example of my 1:50K map in VantagePoint here. Notice how much of the map is visible, unlike Garmin applications that restrict your viewing area to a tiny window.

 If you’re happy with the map you need to complete the other level 14 maps for the rest of the UK ensuring there is a slight overlap between maps. In my example the Scottish Lowlands are not really required.

Before we do the more complicated 1:25K maps lets quickly cover off the lower scale maps.

UK divided roughly into 0.8° “squares”

Level 12 was covered by two OS maps, one of England and Wales and the other covered Scotland. None of my maps cover Northern Ireland as a) I don’t want these maps and b) the OS don’t cover N. Ireland. I also made an overview map (mostly for VP). This covers the whole of the UK using Bing Maps levels 4, 6, 8 and 10.

If you want to get maps for a large area, like the whole of the UK, you need to plan how you will divide your maps up. Each map can not be larger than 2GB. Most of mine were 500-600MB and they perform perfectly on the device with no slow downs at all. I got a map of the UK and drew a grid over it spacing the lines 0.8° on the horizontal and vertical (they don’t appear square because we are a fair distance from the equator) and then juggled some boundaries along the coastline where it made sense. I then numbered each square sequentially. This was the basis for my 1:25K maps. I would then build the map using just level 16 OS maps. Using the Selection Coordinates (top left in Mobac) you can precisely select the desired map square. Use Bing map source to view it

Garmin Discoverer gets blurred when zoomed in and it’s only 1:50K

first before changing to the OS map source. Name the files to a standard again, like OS 1-25K 01 Penzance.rmp and OS 1-25K 59 Loch Ness.rmp. If you have a large enough microSD card you could carry around all of your maps on the eX710, though I would tend to just carry the ones I am likely to use and copy others over on rare visits to Scotland and the like.

Note that all Magellan screen shots are oversized, so images will appear even clearer on the device. All Magellan shots have map orientation configured with track up (as opposed to north up), so the map is automatically rotated so you are always heading towards the top of the screen. This is silky smooth and is more demanding on the graphical capabilities, but is also handled well.

Google Earth is good for spotting tracks in forests

I have also made simple Bing maps of France and have selected level 18 Google Earth satellite imagery maps which works beautifully in conjunction with the OS maps. Level 18 comes in when you have a zoom scale of 100′ or less on the unit. I wouldn’t want to make these for the whole of the UK though as the data volumes would be huge. My test map was about 12 miles square as was 1GB in size.

All of these maps can also be theoretically made for Garmin devices too (not RMP format though), the big difference is that Magellan allow a free reign while Garmin impose tight restrictions and provide poor rendering performance. Garmin only allow 100 jpegs (Montana allows 500) and each jpeg can be (wait for it..) a maximum of 3K. This makes Garmin pretty much useless in the custom map department. Read here about how Garmin users report map rendering of tiny image files to be very slow and jerky. I made some KMZ custom maps before I returned my Garmin Oregon. They were very disappointing. It’s all good news if you are an eXplorist owner though, so have fun!

The Good.

• The custom maps are awesome. I will cover this is a separate post. It makes Garmin Discoverer look very poor, and custom maps are free.
• The device is super accurate. It is at least on a par with the CSx (slightly better in wooded areas) and way, way more accurate than the Oregon and similar models.
• VantagePoint allows you full screen and printable access to all of your maps, including the custom maps. This is awesome.
• Geocaching Live functionality in VantagePoint means that the area shown on the screen is immediately populated with active caches. You need premium membership at Geocaching.com to make this happen.
• The electronic compass is very reliable, but I have chosen to turn it off for hiking. I don’t like the fact that there is no quick way to turn it off. Despite having it set to only come on when travelling less than 1.5mph if I stop for lunch it will drain then.
• The 710 has true sat nav with voice and turn-by-turn instructions. This is supported by the City Streets map that comes with the device. It could be added to the 610, but cost is probably prohibitive.
• Pocket Queries can be loaded directly into VP from GC.com.
• All tracks, routes, waypoints, media and maps are managed through VP.
• Media is geo-tagged and can appear on the map where it was created.
• Tracks can display different colours for different walking speeds. This is called Legend for some reason.
• Did I mention the maps? This is huge!

The bad

• There is just no information available and Magellan don’t seem interested in their devices. The user base is also tiny.
• You can’t add custom POI.
• I’m not convinced by simple stats like average speed, time at rest, total ascent etc.
• The barometer is useless and GPS calculated altitude is no better. You can use map elevation (the 710 includes a topo map with this data) which works well. Why put in hardware without ensuring it is of some use?
• Distance to End is rubbish. It seems that the device can’t pick up where you are on a route unless you pass the start point of the route.
• The POI on the Magellan maps are useless unless you want to know where golf courses are etc. Why there are not trigpoints and hill peaks on there is anybody’s guess. I wouldn’t even mention this if I could add custom POI.
• There is no Mac version of VantagePoint. As a PC user I couldn’t care less about this, but you may.
• Can’t import waypoints into a folder in VP even though folders are allowed.
• Can’t customize icons and they are very small on the device. This is good in some respects, but bad when you miss a Geocache.
• VP crashes now and again when importing maps. About every forth one, but not that predictable. Seems Ok with other use though.
• While you can create routes in VP, the functionality is poor. You can’t move a point on a route for instance. This make it almost useless for creating routes for me.
• Audio files are amr format, so you need to install QuickTime. VP runs QuickTime outside of the app. This is just a bit messy, but not a show stopper.
• While video uses the more standard mp4 format, it calls your default mp4 app and more importantly it has no audio. Possibly a codec issue, but I don’t intend to use video on the device anyway.
• Track and route lines are very thick and not configurable.
• Track legend has to be painstakingly configured separately for each track.

After using on about 8 trips I have found many more annoyances, mostly with VantagePoint, but on the whole the important stuff is done very well.

Tips

• Always use the Alkaline battery profile regardless of the battery type you are using. Apparently the rechargeable and  lithium profiles are not set up correctly.
• I’m not sure that the photos are as good on this device as they were on the 610. I believe that there was a hardware upgrade to the camera and this device may pre-date it.
• I’m finding it hard to get to grips with saving tracks. On the Garmin devices no manual process was required. The eXplorist have a save and a start track. It’s not totally clear exactly what they do apart from the obvious.
• I set the GPSr to write a track point every second. The main track on the internal memory was missing half the trip as it maxed out at 10,000 points. There was a full gpx file on the microSD card, though VantagePoint can’t sync this. It can be imported easily enough, but it’s messy.

The screen is well recessed into the body of the unit, which provides some protection. I found the screen to be much more legible and bright than the OR. I also found it much more responsive to touch. I had been concerned about this from other reviews, but this unit scrolled and responded to taps with ease. The menu system is a triumph on the whole. Touch the map and an icon appears in each corner of the screen while the map remain visible. The dashboard shows data or compasses, one touch menu is a screen of your favourite shortcuts (application of location), the main menu is self explanatory and the option menu gives access to functionality related to the screen you are on. The whole thing is very customizable. In addition there are two physical buttons that are again fully customizable. I have camera on one and trip stats on the other. Some may prefer add waypoint for example.

Playing around with it at home I had been horrified at how it had drained a fully charged pair of 2500mAh batteries in two hours, but in practise it lasted all day without any problem on a less than charged pair of batteries. One reason was most likely that I had set the 3-axis compass to activate at less than 2mph. Sitting at a desk meant it was on continuously. I also turned the barometer off and set the battery type to alkaline (even though I was using rechargeable batteries) as I understand that the other battery profiles are faulty. As the device was new I spent much more time playing with it than I normally would too, taking photographs and doing a few geocaches too.

The touch screen eXplorist ranges comprises the 510, 610 and 710. They are all very similar with the main differences being the maps installed and the internal memory capacity. The 510 doesn’t have the 3-axis compass or the barometer (I think). As the pre-installed UK maps are nigh on useless this means that there is little difference between all three device, although the compass is important to me, hence I could not entertain the 510. All three have a built-in 3.2mp camera, voice recorder, video recorder, take microSD cards and have the all important SiRFstar III chip set. All three are waterproof to the IPX-7 standard.

OS maps on the Garmin (Discoverer series) are really poor in image quality. They clearly are not saved with a high enough resolution. There’s no such problem here, but it gets even better. I messed with the custom maps on the Garmin, but the restrictions were so great that it was totally impractical. You don’t get any of that with the eX, so you can make excellent maps (rmp) via various methods. Mobac seems to be the easier and versions prior to 19.2 give access to 1:25K OS mapping as well as a host of other popular maps from around the world. If you have a routable map the device will also provide proper audio instruction, again unlike Garmin handheld devices. The only thing I didn’t like is that if you buy Ordnance Survey maps (on a microSD card) you can’t move them to a different card as they are linked to the card and device. This is the same as Garmin do. I don’t like because a) if the card becomes faulty you are stuffed and b) the card has little available space on it, so I would want to move it to a larger card.

While Garmin have Basecamp as their PC based management tool Magellan have Vantage Point. I have never got on with Basecamp and have stuck mostly with Mapsource and Memory Map. While Vantage Point does a lot, it does it with a lot of crashes. Copy your maps to the PC and you never need to buy Memory Map. Make your own maps (see previous paragraph) and view them using VP. There are no restrictions on the map window size or on printing unlike the Garmin products I have used. Even if you’re not a Magellan user that’s got to be worth a go. VP manages your maps, media, routes, tracks, waypoints and geocaches. It even has an interface to Geocaching Live. Media is geotagged of course, so it appears in it’s geographical location too.

After breakfast I dropped a gpx route file onto the device and off we went. The first thing I noticed was how the blue flag issue from the Garmin didn’t exist. This is where every point along the route is represented by a large blue flag that obscures the map. The flags on the Magellan were tiny and didn’t get in the way. You need to reset the trip time and trip odometer separately. Magellan could learn from Garmin here where a reset lists several options with a tick-box next to each. These options are remembered so you can easily reset several counters in one go. The eXplorists have a standby mode which continues to log your track whilst turning everything else off. I tried it a few times, but found the wake up time to be too long, so gave up on this. It would be useful if you didn’t need to look at the device much though, say walking up Ben Nevis where you just follow a the path.

Passing through Piercefield Park I took the opportunity to hide in the grotto. It’s not dissimilar to a lime kiln. I held the receiver right against the back wall, but reception was not an issue at all. Back at home I compared the track log to my CSx which was in my pocket, and it was almost identical to the CSx, something that the ORcame nowhere close to. As well as the tracks being spot on the OS marched tracks there was less spidering on the eX when we were stationary.

We reached Chepstow and decided to do a couple of geocaches. The one feature that I miss from the Oregon is the compass that displays on the map page showing the nearest cache. The eX has other useful features like the proximity alarm which you can set to go off when you are within a set distance of a cache. One of the many details I liked on this device was the vibrate feature, so that even in a blizzard you would know when you were being notified. The cache icons were very small. This was also an issue on the Garmin, but replacing the icons was child’s play. I will have to see if the same can be done here. Touch the cache icon and a header comes up with the main cache details. Touch the header and you are into the cache details. One more press to navigate to the cache. The listing are much clearer than on the OR. Cache page photos can also be displayed, although I didn’t use this feature. I really didn’t like scrolling through logs on the OR, but it’s much easier on the Magellan.

We found the caches, registered them as found and moved on. Some people like to record their logs on the device (probably because most people do 20+ a day these days), but we don’t. This is probably just as well, as the alphabetic keyboard is spread over two pages. Yuck! You can download your logs to geocaching.com also. What we found more useful was the ability to record a message, photo or video and attach it to the cache (or a waypoint, track, route or POI). You know the sort of thing. “Another lame nano in a car park when there’s a stunning castle in a park on the other side of the wall”. The compass is excellent. Not only do you not need to keep turning it on and off (see above), but it was very steady, quick and accurate. Again far superior to the Garmins. There is also a Smart Compass, which changes gradually from green when you are pointing it towards your destination, to red as you go off route. Yet another great feature was the off-route alarm, which you set to activate when you stray by more than a certain distance from your route. It did appear that this only alarmed when you were more than the said distance from a waypoint along the route, which isn’t so good, but I need to investigate more. A quick workaround would be to add frequent waypoints.

The device can hold 2,000 waypoints, 200 routes and a whopping 10,000 geocaches. If that’s not enough caches (for example) you could copy several gpx files to a holding folder on the internal memory or microSD card. You can move these files around on the standalone device, swapping out one set of 10,000 caches for another one. Fantastic. Boot up time didn’t seem to be too affected by the amount of data on the device either, unlike the OR.

Everything was going swimmingly then I found a bug. You can see the details here. It was getting pretty dark by the time we finished our walk and the camera couldn’t cope with this at all, but to be fair I didn’t expect it to. You can see some snaps I took along the way at the bottom.

In summary I loved this device. It was so much better than any current Garmin for accuracy, functionality and usability. I keep discovering little things like there is an in-built magnifier when you hold you finger on the map. Despite all the good news the eX is certainly not perfect. The first concern is that there are so few users that there is little information available, though there are a couple of excellent user forums. Secondly Magellan support is notoriously woeful. They’re owned by MiTac (remember the Mio PDAs?) and they seem to think that a device costing several hundred pounds is not worthy of support. There are also a lot of small bugs that should have long since been resolved and even more small improvements that would have taken little effort. It is a mystery to me why so many users, particularly geocachers, stay loyal to Garmin when their products are so inferior.

After this test I had to return the device as the OS maps had not been created properly and were missing large areas of detail all over the country. I’m now playing a waiting game for a newish device, either with or without OS maps. I just wish I had had a chance to test custom maps on the device before I sent it back rather than just in Vantage Point.

This was the best photographic result I had on the eX610. I certainly took better photos than my HTC Evo 3D, even if it can’t do 3D.

Satmap Active 10 Plus

• Needs to come with 1:50K GB OS maps as these are expensive to buy separately.
• Really old technology (Windows Mobile CE).
• Known to lock up periodically.
• A bit big and clunky, but a nice big screen.
• Poor battery life, mostly solved by included battery pack introduced with plus model.
• Reported good CS from Satmap.
• Expensive additional 1:25K GB maps available.
• No routing, though this is not an issue for me as I can use other devices.
• Weatherproof rather than IPX7 waterproof.

Garmin GPSMAP 62st

• I’m not sure if the accuracy is any better than the Oregon, I know it’s not as good as the CSx.
• Looks similar to CSx, poorer accuracy, same low resolution, small screen and big device.
• IPX7 waterproof, like almost all proper handheld GPSrs.
• Garmin list this as “top of the line”, but what does that mean? If you compare it to the Oregon 450 on their site it beats it on nothing, but loses on a few things.
• 3-axis compass. Oregon 450 also has this and it didn’t impress me over the old 2-axis compass on the CSx.
• Reads custom maps (and Discoverer maps).
• I know I can get an almost new one for just over £200 with a little luck. Should be easy after Christmas.

Garmin Fēnix

• Cool, wristwatch GPSr.
• Brand new release.
• No maps, but represents a trail and can follow a route.
• £350.
• Looks promising, but needs a while to mature yet. Not for me just yet.

Let me know if you know of any good reviews of these items. I want something like Patrick Roeder‘s excellent CSx review from all those years ago.

What I liked.

1. The time to establish a fix (lock on to satellites) was normally a minute or so on the 450 as opposed to 5-10 minutes on my CSx generally. The reviews I had read said it would establish a lock during boot time, but this proved to be untrue.
2. I loved the way I could navigate a route and still see where the nearest geocache was thanks to a dashboard (compass widget) I could configure on the map screen. I would have expected to press the compass to see the cache details and (most importantly) the hint, but no. You had to go through various screens to get this information, then all the way back to follow the route again, thus negating any benefit you got.
3. Discoverer OS maps was a step up from the much over-maligned Garmin Topo GB (though not always). I still can’t believe that Garmin won’t let you move the license to a new device if you damage or lose you GPSr. What a rip off! The downside of Discoverer was that you only got 1:50K, the map images were very low resolution so images were not sharp and downright blurred when you zoomed in and I found it very difficult to see the pointer on the screen. The OS map seemed to camouflage it. Processing power is still low, so re-drawing maps is not as fast as it should be.
4. Custom homemade maps are possible on this model, though in reality you have to use pretty small tiles before you run into the same blurring issue that you get with the Discoverer maps. It’s quite a painful process too.
5. Touch screen. I thought this would be an advantage, but compared to a modern capacitive screen this resistive screen was horrible to use. At least it sort of works with gloves on though.
6. Profiles. I created a profile for Hiking, Geocaching and Car. I then configured usage for each type. i.e. For Car, route along roads, show 3D map, display current speed etc. The downside here was that once the 450 totally lost all profile configuration, which took quite a while to set up again from scratch.
7. Paperless caching. I always carry a phone, so have tended to use this as a backup to POI GSAK macro on the CSx. Implementation on the 450 is pretty poor. Font size is fixed (for those of us that are at that age that we need reading glasses), some code causes lock-ups and the look is pretty naff.

Now for what I didn’t like.

1. The first time I took the Oregon out it reported the distance walked as being about 20 miles further than we’d been. When I looked at the track on the PC it had spikes of several miles where we had sheltered by some relatively small overhanging rocks. Later on a trip to Llangattock we had a similar issue with the total distance walked being massively out, but this time there were no spikes.
2. The screen. This is apparently a huge improvement on the earlier 400 model, but it is still rubbish. You need the backlight on full to have a chance of reading anything.
3. Battery life is very short. I imagine that much of this is due to the screen needing so much illumination.
4. While I don’t get the carabiner attachment (it just leaves the device dangling) I did try this from a rucksack. It just ended up getting damaged when I put my rucky down. I like to attach a short lanyard (the one supplied with the CSx) to my belt and put the GPSr in my pocket with the screen turned inwards for protection. While it was really annoying that it kept on beeping as it touched my thigh it more importantly kept the screen awake, thus running the batteries down. This is basic poor design. The screen lock doesn’t even help this scenario.
5. The device locked up on several occasions most importantly when I wasn’t even interacting with the device, so I wasn’t even aware that my track log was not being updated until some time later. Trying to open a cache listing from the map screen caused a reproducible lock up. Pulling the batteries was the only solution.
6. There are two main benefits these days of a dedicated hand held unit over a good phone. Ruggedness and battery life. These are only better on battery life because they are so huge. If my phone had batteries this size it would easily last as long.
7. Sat nav is a joke. For example, my trip to Llangattock there is a simple dual carriageway route almost door to door, but it was as if Garmin were doing their best to avoid this and take all the back lanes which doubled the distance and quadrupled the time. Device configuration was not the issue. Other experiments proved equally as ridiculous. It is possible that this may be a Discoverer issue rather than an Oregon issue.
8. Probably the most annoying thing of all was the downgrade in accuracy from my 6+ years old device. Sure, the early CSxs had the SirfStarIII chipset, which is still to be rivaled, but when walking a linear route with the Oregon and then walking back to the start point I was shocked at how much the two tracks along the same path strayed from each other. They were often 200′ apart. The CSx always had them within a few feet of each other.

I really tried to get on with this device, but it was truely hopeless. After a week or two I picked up my CSx from the sunny windowsill and it worked. The only problem was that the USB connector no longer worked which meant I couldn’t upload routes to it, but as POI are held on the removable microSD card I could still use these rather than waypoints. I had found myself using the Oregon only for recording my track, which the CSx was now more than capable of (and it did a much better job too). I was navigating using my HTC Android phone. I thought I would chance my luck and try to return the device despite the scratches on the case where the silly carabiner had dropped it several times. Garmin were less than helpful. To paraphrase their response it said, “Try resetting the device (like that thought had never occurred to me!) and if that doesn’t work then go away.” I had previously contacted them about obtaining replacement screws. They wouldn’t even reply. I decided to contact the retailer, which was met with a request to post the device to them, so I did along with a letter explaining all of the issues and the following working day I received the following email.

“We are sorry that you have had a problem with this item. Faults with items are rare and we hope that it hasn’t detracted from your enjoyment in the use of this product. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

You have been refunded to your original payment method.”

The full amount was refunded along with the cost of returning the item. The only thing I lost was the cost of the InvisibleShield screen protector (a rip off £14, my HTC InvisibleShield is much bigger and cost £10), but I was very happy. I would certainly recommend Wiggle, if not Garmin.

I don’t believe the device was any more faulty than any other Oregon after all the issues I have read and heard about, it’s just a rubbish device. Garmin should concentrate on the basics rather than messing around with silly frivolities like Chirp, cameras and wireless device to device transmit.