Hand held gps

[captainmurph]

I might be misunderstanding what you said, but I do remember this about the Garmin cable.

There is no power supply to the DB9 serial cable - only the two data and a ground.

Check here for confirmation: http://www.syz.com/gps/gpsinfo.pdf

Hope this helps.

[St Anna]

Oma,
Forgive me if I am 'preaching to the converted'.
I have the same cable. It came with a 9 pin serial port which at the time suited me well. Now the new ones only come with USB. I cant power the unit from the serial port on the computer - needs seperate 12V.

I have another one without the serial port. I wired (soldered) the red and black wires in and it works fine. I left the data wires at a dead end. It sounds like you must have a dud.

[johnnyandjebus]

Another vote for the garmin 60 series. Mine has taken a beating off road as well and continues to deliver. My only complaint is that the 12 volt power supply cable has a bad habit of falling out. It is a push pin fit with no way to lock it in place. Less of a problem on my boat than on my bike

[Dirtboy]

Originally Posted by johnnyandjebus

Another vote for the garmin 60 series. Mine has taken a beating off road as well and continues to deliver. My only complaint is that the 12 volt power supply cable has a bad habit of falling out. It is a push pin fit with no way to lock it in place. Less of a problem on my boat than on my bike

Nice trail. If you're anywhere near the south check out dixiedualsport.com we have fun and a good forum.

I've got the touratech mount that holds the power cable in place. Once I figured out how the mount works it's been great. Survived some big spills. I've sported a GPS shaped bruise a time or two.

DB

[RhythmDoctor]

The Garmin Oregon 400c has once again gone on sale at WestMarine for $299. Not sure if it's just for President's Day weekend, or a longer sale price. But I'm considering heading out to snatch one up tomorrow.

I don't even have my boat yet, but I will have one by spring. I think a full-fledged chartplotter would be overkill for my daysailing. I'm looking at a 25' boat with outboard, so I won't have a huge alternator/battery setup to drive a lot of power hungry accessories. I expect that I will quickly become familiar with the waters nearby and not even need a GPS after not too long. If I need a chartplotter to get into/out of an unmarked creek (as I expect to need on my maiden voyage, since the daymarkers will not be in place yet in March) I have a nice netbook with extremely bright display (good in daylight) with Delorme puck and Seaclear/OpenCPN software that should suffice for that occasional need. So basically I want the handheld for emergency backup use, especially if I'm in an unmarked creek and the netbook goes out. I believe it could also replace the puck and interface with my chartplotter software.

I also want something portable and self-contained that I can carry onto charter boats, since we plan to supplement our daysailing with chartering on the Chesapeake. Since bareboat charters may have a variety of different GPSs that may or may not work, I want something that I'm familiar with to have as a backup.

So I guess I have two questions:

• Is the Oregon 400c good for the use I've described?
• Is the price good enough that I should grab it while I can?
• Are there any hidden costs with this device (need to purchase overpriced proprietary charts for Delaware River/Chesapeake Bay) or is all that included in this model?
• Are there other models/brands we should look at? I'm not sure how much I want touchscreen, but the Garmin 76CSx series have much lower resolution, which I expect makes them even tougher to read than the 400c.

[sailingdog]

Andre—

On the power/data cable, the garmin uses the 12 VDC ground as the Signal ground as well. So, if you haven't connected the power ground to the signal ground pin, you won't get it to work.

Originally Posted by Omatako

I bought a combination power/data cable from Garmin and it comes with no plug on the computer end and four wires sticking out. Included is a "wiring diagram" that identifies the two power wires and the two data wires. Real complicated stuff.

So I checked the relative positions on the data-only cable I have and wired the thing into a serial plug exactly the same. Connected the power wires correctly. Plugged it in. Nothing.

Got a friend who is a computer techie to check my connections - he verified that they are correct, checked continuity in the cable to ensure that the cable is not faulty, plugged it back in - nix.

Plugged in the data only cable - perfect. Combination cable - nothing.

We tried really hard to find something wrong in a laughably simple setup and can't but the damned thing won't work. I've given up on it and just keep a healthy stock of rechargeable NiMh batteries handy.

[sailingdog]

Originally Posted by RhythmDoctor

The Garmin Oregon 400c has once again gone on sale at WestMarine for $299. Not sure if it's just for President's Day weekend, or a longer sale price. But I'm considering heading out to snatch one up tomorrow.

I don't even have my boat yet, but I will have one by spring. I think a full-fledged chartplotter would be overkill for my daysailing. I'm looking at a 25' boat with outboard, so I won't have a huge alternator/battery setup to drive a lot of power hungry accessories. I expect that I will quickly become familiar with the waters nearby and not even need a GPS after not too long. If I need a chartplotter to get into/out of an unmarked creek (as I expect to need on my maiden voyage, since the daymarkers will not be in place yet in March) I have a nice netbook with extremely bright display (good in daylight) with Delorme puck and Seaclear/OpenCPN software that should suffice for that occasional need. So basically I want the handheld for emergency backup use, especially if I'm in an unmarked creek and the netbook goes out. I believe it could also replace the puck and interface with my chartplotter software.

So I guess I have two questions:

• Is the Oregon 400c good for the use I've described?
• Is the price good enough that I should grab it while I can?
• Are there any hidden costs with this device (need to purchase overpriced proprietary charts for Delaware River/Chesapeake Bay) or is all that included in this model?

Yes, yes and no. IIRC, the 400c has the coastal US Charts pre-loaded and probably has the charts you need already loaded.

[RhythmDoctor]

Does a Nuvi 500 series device with add-on BlueChart provide better (bigger) screen display? Or is that just cost prohibitive compared to the Oregon 400c at $299? Is the Nuvi actually bigger than Oregon? Higher resolution? Better color depth? Quicker fixing? Would Navimatics or other 3rd party charts make this a more cost effective option?

I'm very naive about this stuff. Only GPS I've ever used is my Blackberry with Garmin app (that works a lot like a Nuvi, but much smaller).

[sailingdog]

I wouldn't recommend using a Nuvi on a boat. It isn't waterproof like the Oregon, Colorado, GPSMAP 60 or 76 series.

AFAIK, only Garmin charts will work on the Garmin chartplotters and GPS units.

Originally Posted by RhythmDoctor

Does a Nuvi 500 series device with add-on BlueChart provide better (bigger) screen display? Or is that just cost prohibitive compared to the Oregon 400c at $299? Is the Nuvi actually bigger than Oregon? Higher resolution? Better color depth? Quicker fixing? Would Navimatics or other 3rd party charts make this a more cost effective option?

I'm very naive about this stuff. Only GPS I've ever used is my Blackberry with Garmin app (that works a lot like a Nuvi, but much smaller).

[RhythmDoctor]

Originally Posted by sailingdog

I wouldn't recommend using a Nuvi on a boat. It isn't waterproof like the Oregon, Colorado, GPSMAP 60 or 76 series.

AFAIK, only Garmin charts will work on the Garmin chartplotters and GPS units.

Nuvi 500 is waterproof - the other Nuvi models are not. Charts are supposed to be available for it, but appear to be recalled due to errors in Sweden or somewhere like that. Has anyone heard when they would be available again?

I'm probably going to go for the Oregon 400c, since it is designed to do exactly what I want to do. But just wondering if anyone has experience with a pimped-out Nuvi.