Field experiences w/Garmin's SiRF-based GPS units?

[NewBie]

I went on a hike on Saturday with my new 60csX.
It was deep in the woods, though there arent really any leaves out yet.
But I was waaay down in a STEEP valley,
my old 60cs would generally keep a lock, but would loose the lock a few times during these hikes,
the 60csX never lost lock once, and was doing at LEAST 30 ft accuracy,
this was with is clipped to to my chest.

A++++ on the new SiRF chip, couldnt be happier.

~John

Did you happen to do a review?


I used mine on the way to work, and wow wow wow!

This puppy keeps kicking derriere.


Before there were a number of overpasses, where I'd loose lock, when I passed under, but this unit just blinked for a moment in time, were with my other engines I'd loose lock for a good period of time afterwards, if I was in continous motion, usually resulting in having to stop for a few minutes while the GPS units "re-found" themselves. Not so with this puppy, the worst I saw was a skip in output, and in the worst case, I lost 3D lock for about 3 seconds. Amazing!

 

[jtice]

No Sorry Jar,
Still havent had time to do a review
Doubt mine would be better than the other comparison reviews out there.

Mainly, the signal strength is at least double,
it does everything faster, from locking on, to booting up, responding to user input, auto routing.
I think the display is alittle brighter backlit also.

I have noticed that battery life is a good bit less though, alittle over half what I was getting out of the 60cs.
This is a small price to pay for the added performance.
I can still get a couple good days of use out of a set of nimhs.

~John

 

[EVAN_TAD]

Is the mini SD the same as the micro SD?

 

[Fitz]

No- The Micro SD is about the size of your little fingernail. Fortunately, they come with a full sized SD adapter card for use in card readers, etc. They're also called "Transflash" cards.

 

[NewBie]

You just gotta love these SiRFstarIII chips!

I drove 200 miles in the woods/mountains today without a single loss of 3D lock, or even comming close.

With various older technology engines, I'd get frequent loss of any sort of lock at all.

Amazing!

 

[dfred]

FYI:

New, non-beta firmware 2.70 posted today for the 60*x and 76*x models.


Changes made from version 2.60 to 2.70:

* Improve path nighttime color for map Topo Great Britain v2.
* Enhance layout and functionality of tide station chart information.
* Add new time zones for major cities in the U.S. and Europe.
* Improve By-Name city search to use all available maps.
* Improve layout of airport information display.
* Improve reset function of timer lap distance.
* Improve route calculation performance by setting recalculation distance farther ahead.
* Fix issue where extremely high or low altitude readings could occur when baro auto-calibration was enabled.
* Prevent Poor Satellite Reception popup from repeatedly occurring when GPS is off.
* Add GPRMB sentence to the NMEA output.
* Improve stability when using Lithium Ion Battery.
* Fix track log time stamps.
* Improve Custom POI banner display on map preview page.
* Fix issue where total ascent and total descent were incorrectly computed.


So far no problems reported by folks over at groundspeak forum. Most of the anecdotal reports are positive and it appears at least a few significant bugs have been fixed. Though not on the list, it also looks like some improvements (or at least changes) have been made to WAAS behavior.

I haven't had any trouble with it, but remember it's a very new release; let the upgrader beware...

http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/products.html#mapping

 

[jtice]

Thanks for the update ! :thumbsup:

 

[PEU]

I have one doubt, The other day I was comparing my Garmin 48 gps (yes its old ) with the new ones sirf and no sirf enabled and one doubt came to mind:

Do the benefits of sirf technology are related to waas?

I mean after reading in the Garmin site that there are no waas stations in south america (I live in Argentina) I wondered if this affects somewhat the performance of the new sirf chips, and if yes, how it compares to the old 12 channels gps units.

Thanks


Pablo

 

[dfred]

As I understand it (and I'm not an expert) the SiRF star III chipset has significantly more processing power and perhaps special algorithms that allow it to recover very weak GPS signals and reject noise and reflected (multipath) signals.

In perfect signal conditions they are probably not much more or less accurate than any reasonable GPS receiver. However in less than ideal conditions (forest, mountains, inside "light" buildings, etc.) the SiRF units seem to give much more accurate positions. This is likely because they are fixing their positions with more satellites and better/cleaner signals than older GPSes that are computing positions based on only a few weak or intermittent signals.

So I don't think the SiRF units are necessarily intrinsically more accurate, but in many real-world situations they do give better fixes. This behavior is independent of WAAS.

 

[jtice]

No matter where you are, the SiRF chip is gonna help.
Theres only one WAAS sat that I can pickup here, and I barely ever get it.
But all the other sat signals are WAY bette than my older unit.

It also processes everything faster also.

Only drawback, it eats batts alot faster.
My 60csX gets alittle over half the runtime my old 60cs did

~John

 

[PEU]

I will wait for the low end sirf models (meaning cheap) the 60csx is too much for my occasional use.


Pablo

 

[NewBie]

I have one doubt, The other day I was comparing my Garmin 48 gps (yes its old ) with the new ones sirf and no sirf enabled and one doubt came to mind:

Do the benefits of sirf technology are related to waas?

I mean after reading in the Garmin site that there are no waas stations in south america (I live in Argentina) I wondered if this affects somewhat the performance of the new sirf chips, and if yes, how it compares to the old 12 channels gps units.

Thanks


Pablo

With my module, I have utilities to turn off the WAAS and set up various things. I find the performance doesn't change much, with or without WAAS. I do see accuracy improvements when I enable WAAS.

The SiRF has the equivalent of over 200,000 correlators, instead of just 8, 12, or 13 (some of the current competing modern engines have a few hundred or thousand correlators) . This allows for it to look for matches in signals that would be considered un-useable in the older ones with only a few correlators. It also allows the unit to lock in sats much quicker.

If the software can handle it, the SiRF will act as a 20 channel GPS engine.

The SiRFIII adds special fast acquisition engines, satellite signal tracking engines, and multipath mitigation hardware.

The multipath mitigation helps alot in areas where the sattelite signals can be reflected, causing problems for previous generation engines.

The SiRFIII adds hardware which makes time to the first fix, very rapid, around 1 second from what I can tell. Even with weak signals to start with.

The SiRFIII also added extra sensitivity, as compared to previous generations, working with signals as low as -159 dBm.

The engine itself also supports EGNOS as well as WAAS.

Adding this stuff together, allows it to work well in foliage, urban canyons, and in many cases, indoors.

The engine is also fast enough to manage position updates at 10 times a second, unlike older engines that can only handle 1 a second. Though alot of software can't handle these rapid updates.

The engine itself uses very little power, once locked, and set for updates at once a second, it only consumes 75 mW.

There are various software modules that vendors can add internally to the engine, such as Foliage Lock and various other abilities.

 

[nutz_about_lights]

Good to hear all these remarks about Garmin's ''x'' series. I too am planning to get my 60CX next week. Trust reception would be more than excellent!

 

[KevinL]

Sounds like a dream come true. I'm stuck out on the wrong end of the world and my GPS takes forever to acquire. 1-second-to-first-fix would be heaven sent... hell I get lucky for ten minutes to first fix some days.

 

[NewBie]

Sounds like a dream come true. I'm stuck out on the wrong end of the world and my GPS takes forever to acquire. 1-second-to-first-fix would be heaven sent... hell I get lucky for ten minutes to first fix some days.

You'd really love the new Garmin SiRF based GPS units then!

I recently used it all over the Redwood Forest, Avenue of the Giants, Yosemite, King's Canyon, Sequoia National Park, Sequoia National Forest, Trail of 100 Giants, Death Valley, the Sierrias, Owens Valley, Bristlecone National Forrest, Owyhee Mountain range, Steens Mountain range, the Cascades, and everything worked flawlessly- to my amazement.

 

[dfred]

Just thought I'd post a little update here. There've been some significant software releases from Garmin for the GPSMAP 60Cx/60CSx/76Cx/76CSx units... The version numbers are 3.00 for the unit software and 2.70 for the GPS SW (aka SiRF firmware).

The updates fix a number of problems, including the reaquisition of signal after tunnels as well as fixing WAAS for (at least) North American users. I've been using the new firmwares for a few days and haven't had any trouble. There are also a number of threads on groundspeak.com which indicate these updates are fairly safe but of course YMMV, caveat upgrader, etc....


http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/products.html#mapping

 

[LowBat]

What is the height of the unit if you exclude the antenna? I'm thinking of getting a GPS60CSx if I can find a good holster for it.

 

[NewBie]

There is a Doctor who is in charge of the Oregon State Arthropod Collection, who took this unit to the other end of the planet looking for odd specimens, and he had some great stories of guys getting rather upset at their older GPS systems, where the 60CSx had no issues.

He also had a lot of praise, as for some areas, the unit had more information then their maps actually had.

It is great to see new technologies that actually make a big difference.

BTW, the 60CSx is also a lot faster than the older units.

 

[PEU]

I will wait for the low end sirf models (meaning cheap) the 60csx is too much for my occasional use.


Pablo

And I should eat my words... I ended purchasing a 60csx... and let me tell you, its the best GPS I´ve seen so far!


Pablo

 

[Chronos]

I've been using a 60CSX for around 9 months now and love it. I use it a lot when hiking and geocaching (I never leave on a hike without it) and use it in my car for those times when I need a little guidance to find an address.