Colorado 400i Hands ON!

[CrazyViking]

Received my Garmin Colorado 400i S/N 18Y00xxxx on 3/13/08. This is my first GPS (and I have never opened the instruction manual), so bear with my newbie fopaws as I relate some of the initial findings. Fortunately, on the back of the unit there is a yellow sticker instructing to “Lift latch and slide rubber cover down to access batteries”. Thank You Garmin for the sticker…I had sent someone to get a small Phillips Screwdriver so that I could remove the two torx screws I thought were holding the battery compartment closed. You Do NOT remove any screws. Just release the latch and slide the back down.

 

I Installed 2 new Energizer standard alkaline batteries (Initial open circuit voltage 1.784V/1.785V) and turned the device on which displayed a Garmin logo on screen. It took 19.45 seconds after turn-on for a zoomed out satellite image of North America to appear. The rolling wheel/menu interface is substantially intuitive, so I went to “Setup” and selected “System” and verified battery type was set to Alkaline. Display was dim. I then went to “Display” to see if I could brighten the backlight and it was set to “Backlight Timeout 15 Seconds” and “Backlight Limiting On”, but no way to make it brighter. Software was V2.40/GPS Software V2.60. Profile was set to “Marine”, so I changed it to “Recreational” for testing. I then selected “Calibration” and set the altimeter to 958 feet for my area. Note that if you manually enter your area altitude, there are five significant figures used (I suppose for lucky people living in the mountains), so I had to back up and enter 2 leading zeros in front of the 958 feet. That being done I went outside to calibrate the compass. The screen is set up for about 30 degrees “down angle” so viewing is best if it is held level to the ground in front of you about waist high. On-screen instructions were to slowly turn to right in two circles so I did that taking 45 seconds per turn…and failed. On-screen there is a “progress bar” display which extends a bit each 90 degrees of rotation and I had evidently turned too slowly. So I again set up to recalibrate and turned two full circles in 44 seconds total with Success!.

 

Now that I had the unit calibrated I went back inside to experiment (There is still a foot of snow on the ground outside). I discovered that if you quickly press and release the “Power On” button, the screen which shows Date,Time,Battery Level, Signal Strength, and BACKLIGHT BRIGHTNESS comes up. My first and foremost recommendation to all who read this is to immediately after power up, click on the power button and rotate the scroll wheel clockwise. The backlight turns on to reveal a beautiful color display. I adjusted mine to 90% (10 percent per display bar).

 

On the N. America map a blue triangle was displayed in the middle of the image. I thought it was just a reference pointer for the map to the screen, so was not surprised when it stayed in the middle of the screen as I zoomed in on the satellite map image. After I zoomed in to an apparent zoom scale of 3 miles the background image was a recognizable low resolution satellite image of my area overlaid with highways. “How fortuitous I live in the center of the continent I thought”. To my amazement as I zoomed in to 0.3 mile view the satellite image got fuzzier, but was still recognizeable. Topo lines had appeared on a few nearby lakes. Any closer than 0.2 mile zoom level caused the satellite image to disappear, being replaced by a generic light tan background but with additional minor side roads showing up. It was exciting to keep zooming once I realized the blue triangle represented ME as I zoomed in on the map right to my house. Impressive.

 

I set “Waypoint 001” by pressing and holding the scrollwheel center button. I then zoomed out to the satellite image (3 mi setting) and panned over to a lake which had contour lines showing (This is really just a big pond, but in “the Land of 10,000 Lakes” the Realtors want to be able to advertise “lakefront property” and this way we have over 20K+ lakes here). To my surprise the contours were on 0.5 ft intervals. I checked some other deeper lakes and they were on 5 ft intervals so the contours are proportionate to the depth of the lake. I jumped in the car and drove to near the lake and then changed to “Automotive Profile”. A check on the “Trip Computer” screen gave all the salient info for the trip (but the trip computer display for the maximum speed read 1 mph lower than my car speedometer…I think my car was wrong). I drove back home and the trip displayed on the satellite image right down to showing the shape of the turn I made near the lake parking lot. It beeped at me at the nearest intersection to my house to let me know I was approaching Way point 001. Very impressive.

 

A review of the altimeter screen plotted over distance showed the dip of a drainage creek I passed over on the way to the lake. Nice. However, the altitude reading when I got back was 88 feet higher than I had initially calibrated it for. The Colorado is set up for “Automatic Calibration” and I suspect it was just correcting itself from the satellites since barometric pressure was actually rising at the time.

 

I put the unit back into “Recreational Profile” and noticed the path drawn on the map “scribbles” even though the GPS “knows” it is stationary (The “Stopped Time” on the trip computer is counting up, but my location on the map changes slightly.)

 

One word to the wise: Changing the GPS Profile from “Automotive” to “Recreational” does change a lot of the menus but it does not change the type of Trip Computer display. I had to separately change that to “Recreational” mode. (Actually it is nice to be able to independently customize the menus, it was just a little unexpected to have a secondary Recreational/Recreational mode for the trip computer).

 

Observation: The temperature readout on the recreational trip computer display is pretty useless since holding the unit in your hand dramatically changes the reading (mine read 90 degrees in a 73.4 degree room).

 

Now it is time to test the unit setting up a trip to an area 200 miles North that I am familiar with… “Engines at 104 percent, Okay for throttle up”. I zoomed out the display to 120 mile scale and navigated to the area of interest near Lake Superior. No contour lines for Lake Superior (Perhaps they appear on the 400c ??). So I zoomed in near Tetagouche State Park and the park boundaries showed up in green on the light flat surface. Sadly no satellite images for that area! I panned toward the Baptism River and tried to zoom out and…poof the map display was GONE! Oh No! Everything for the map was just a bright neutral color. The menus and map zoom scale indicator worked. I was able to verify with the trip computer etc. things were working. I could try to navigate to my waypoint 001. I could do anything except see any map display….and it would not come back. I tried changing to different profiles, I thought maybe I had panned off the edge of map data so I backed out to 500 mile zoom and panned down and sideways a number of times. I created a path back to waypoint 001 and found it was 1807 miles away!. I tried and tried, and almost cried. I worried I had wiped out my map and had not made a backup copy yet. But I could not see any map. **Sigh**

 

But then, “Duh Oh”, I turned the Colorado off and then back on. Hooray! The map was back and all was right in the world again. I’m sure my life was shortened by a few minutes, but otherwise nothing else was damaged. I went back to the area of the map where the “crash” occurred and panned/zoomed for half an hour with no difficulties. (I suspect it was just the display LCD hardware/display software configuration that got jazzed and stopped. I was just zooming and panning, no ESD zapping or cosmic rays as far as I could tell!).

 

Observation: When I turned the device back on, the backlight had reset all the way back to zero!. Had to manually brighten it up again.

 

Enough fun for one day. I turned the unit off for the night after 5.5 Hours being turned on with periodic use (I left it on during dinner etc). The battery meter indicated 2 or 3 of 4 bars remaining.

 

Next day: Observation: When I turned the device back on (14 seconds to map), the backlight had reset all the way back to zero again. Had to manually brighten it up again. First thing everyone should do after powering up is briefly press the power button again and rotate the wheel clockwise to bring the backlight brightness up!. After you do this you can enjoy a very colorful high resolution display. First thing Garmin should do is store this setting in nonvolatile memory and restore it at power up. (The default should be 100% to set their “best foot forward”, rather than presenting the dark display for first impressions).

 

After 2 hours use I noticed the “path” drawn around my Waypoint 001 had grown into a fuzzy ball of black lines with about 80 ft variation and a “spike” about 600 ft to the northwest. Reasoning that the “Spike” may have been due to a turn-on glitch I turned the Colorado off, then back on and sure enough another position “spike” was observed south about 120 ft.

 

Observation: Turn off/turn on causes an inaccurate momentary position shift (presumably while acquiring multiple satellites during turn-on.).

 

Twenty five minutes after cycling the power, the display suddenly dimmed to 50% brightness. The batteries were at 1.361V/1.344V with the backlight timed Off, 1.354V/1.342V with the backlight On 50%. (I know the display had been “limited” to 50% since it would no longer get brighter when trying to adjust above the 50% value, but it could be adjusted dimmer). That makes it just under 8 hours intermittent usage with 15 second backlight timeout to first indication of “di-lithium crystals melting” (ummm…not enough power..Scotty…Enterprise..does this date me?).

 

Observation: The compass readout is affected in close proximity to a laptop.

 

After leaving the unit turned on next to the laptop while I am writing this, the Colorado beeped and displayed a message that the batteries were too low to allow the backlight or beeping functions to work. The battery meter was a single red bar. Battery voltages were 1.321V/1.308V. Total run time on a new set of alkaline batteries to low warning 10Hr 40Min. (The unit was still operating, but I put in a fresh set of batteries because I’m not positive if my configuration changes are saved out to the nonvolatile memory.)

 

Test over:

 

Colorado 400i Summary Review:

 

First thing everyone should do after powering up is briefly press the power button again and rotate the wheel clockwise to bring the backlight brightness up!. After you do this you can enjoy a very colorful high resolution display.

 

The built-in map data varies in detail between areas. The contour lines are lake depth appropriate with the typical Minnesota lake on 5-10 ft intervals. One shallow pond near me has 0.5 ft intervals showing. (It also has shaded relief terrain showing around it!?). Satellite images -if present- are low resolution but useful from 3 mile to 0.3 mile zoom scale. From 0.2 miles down to 20 foot zoom scale no aerial photos were available in the base maps. All of the lakes I know about (and then some) appear as appropriately shaped blue graphics with the minority containing depth contour information. River route detail is extensive with all but the most temporary drainage ditches being shown. Islands in the Mississippi River were shown, but did not show up in most smaller rivers. River depth contours were not shown as far as I could find. Most major river falls were noted, rapids not indicated. Road details go to unpaved dirt roads. Based on recent construction in my area, the road and satellite images appear to have been digitized in the summer of 2006. Unfortunately the satellite detail below 5 mile zoom scaling is not complete. Starting at 3 mile zoom some blocks of counties revert to flat light tan background with lake/river/road graphics superimposed. This does make the roads/rivers easier to follow, but an aerial view option would be handy when hiking trails. (Guess this could be a great application for Google Earth pictures in the image viewer). The water features and roads are in impressively accurate detail. I was pleased with the water depth contour info, and pleasantly surprised at the great detail for landings and roads. Beware that some of the dirt roads shown are not actually passable having been abandoned 20 years ago, on private property, etc. Road mapping software may yet be in my future for more POI’s etal, but for now the Colorado base maps seem complete enough to get me to the fishing hole. I noted that I could not route to my actual destination in Automotive mode in some cases since there were “No roads near” the waypoint. (Probably a NooB problem).

 

Observation: The “Accuracy” display changes with the number of satellites tracked. I observed from 7 up to 11 satellites registering and GPS accuracy indicated from 10ft up to 32ft. The seven satellites reading was taken inside the house (I have aluminum siding, so I am suitably impressed by this reception capability).

 

Observation: When zooming in on some areas, there appears to be shaded relief information for the land (no topo lines though). On other areas only the flat colored background is shown. The amount of satellite image covered area diminishes at less than 3 mile zoom scaling.

 

Summary Thoughts:

 

Overall, the Colorado 400i far exceeded my expectations. Oddly, the inland lake data was only “Good”, but all the other bells and whistles make this device exceptional.

 

What a super navigation aid! The areas covered by the satellite images at around 1 mile zoom is close to a flyover (though lower resolution) so I’d definitely recommend one for any float plane pilot.

 

Battery life is respectable. Considering that I have flashlights with two AA cells that would not light up as long as I had the Colorado backlighted, it is more energy efficient than a paper map & light. (Be sure to have a couple spares tho…maybe take them out of your flashlight if you need to . Display is very clear and crisp in direct bright sunlight or with the backlight turned up. In overcast/indoor situations with no backlight the display is dim and difficult to read.

 

Menuing is mostly intuitive with a half dozen quirks that need to be memorized (e.g. anyone remember how to call up the temperature? hint:recreation)

 

It still has some bugs in the software (e.g. scary map disappearances). Most items worked as expected. Many more feature items available than expected.

 

Profile menu management and setup is a great feature. Very handy seamlessly changing from “Automotive” to “Recreational” to “Marine” operating modes.

 

I haven’t done more than scratch the surface on the capabilities of this baby. I’m sure it has tons of interesting bugs and features yet to be discovered . All-in-all it gets an A- grade. Recommended buy: YES

[+g-o-cashers]

Thanks for the review, yours is the first mention of a 400i I've seen. Certainly lots of 300 and 400t owners around here.

 

Have you connected it to your computer yet? If so, I'd like to know a few things about the memory and the maps on the 400i if you're willing!

 

GO$Rs

[CrazyViking]

Thanks for the review, yours is the first mention of a 400i I've seen. Certainly lots of 300 and 400t owners around here.

 

Have you connected it to your computer yet? If so, I'd like to know a few things about the memory and the maps on the 400i if you're willing!

 

GO$Rs

 

As of the writing, no I hadn’t hooked it up. But I did now to backup the files and this is what I found:

 

The 400i turned on automatically when plugged into a USB port. (WinXPsp2). Note the Backlight was ON! (Nice…wish it always did that). I copied and pasted “Garmin”, “Wherigo” directories and the autorun.inf file to a backup directory on the laptop. The Windows Copying…requester box indicated it would take 48 minutes to do it all.

 

The “Wherigo” directory has a “Wherigo Tutorial.gwc” file (836kb), and Wherigo.ver file (1kb), and a “Logs” directory with a zero length WherigoLog.log file in it. (Interestingly, the Date Modified on the Logs directory is 12/31/2014 6:00 PM….I guess Garmin is a bit ahead of their time )

 

The “Garmin” Directory had five subdirectories “GPX”, “Profiles”, “scrn”, “RemoteSW”, and “text” as well as five files: fs_image.ver (1kb), GarminDevice.xml (8kb), Garmintriangletm.ico (25kb), gmapprom.img (1,652,992kb), and gmapprom.sum (1kb).

 

The “GPX” directory has one subdirectory “Current” with one file in it Current.gpx (92kb).

The “Profiles” directory has 9 .jpg files (38kb to 84kb) 200x400 for background images, one “Profiles.ver” file (1kb), and 5 profile .gpf files (4kb) (Date Modified this morning )

The “scrn” directory has a single (282Kb) bitmap image file of the light tan background image but oddly enough also has the 3 mi zoom, DONE, N arrow and Blue triangle graphic on it.

The “RemoteSW” directory has a single (254kb) GCD File

The “txt” directory has sixteen .gtt files (144kb to 173kb) in various language labels.

 

Well….the file backup still has 20 minutes to go and it is still working on gmapprom.img, so I’ll post this response. Let me know if you need any other file info.

 

 

"Albert Einstein (Walter Matthau): Tell me Ed, do you think we will find intelligent life on other planets?

Ed Walters (Tim Robbins): I am still not sure there is intelligent life on this planet." - From the movie IQ

[+g-o-cashers]

Thanks, I was looking for the size of the gmapprom.img file. This file is the file which holds all of your maps -- you are smart to back it up.

 

As for the other files, many are covered in the FAQ linked in my signature.

 

One more thing. When it is attached to your PC can you select the Garmin drive letter, right click and select Properties and send the information from that screen about the size and capacity?

 

Thanks again,

GO$Rs

[CrazyViking]

Thanks, I was looking for the size of the gmapprom.img file. This file is the file which holds all of your maps -- you are smart to back it up.

 

As for the other files, many are covered in the FAQ linked in my signature.

 

One more thing. When it is attached to your PC can you select the Garmin drive letter, right click and select Properties and send the information from that screen about the size and capacity?

 

Thanks again,

GO$Rs

 

The “Garmin Colorado” drive is FAT32 1.85GB (1,989,275,648 bytes) with 1.58GB (1,697,361,920 bytes) used and 278MB (291,913,728 bytes) free.

 

I also just installed a 4GB UltraII Sandisk SDHC card. “SD ULTRAII” drive FAT32 capacity 3.78GB (4,063,141,888 bytes) with 4.00KB (4,096 bytes) used, 3.78GB (4,063,137,792 bytes) free.

 

By the way, the background images are 240x400 (not 200x400 in my previous post typo).

 

æpa heróp

[+g-o-cashers]

Interesting. Looks like the 400i has 2GB of internal memory. Yet another flavor of 400.

 

GO$Rs

[Lure]

Thanks for nice report on 400i. Can you publish some screenshots of satellite maps on different zoom levels, just to understand better how the satellite photos look like.

[CrazyViking]

Thanks for nice report on 400i. Can you publish some screenshots of satellite maps on different zoom levels, just to understand better how the satellite photos look like.

 

Sure can. I took some photos today but there are about 2 dozen pics so I'll upload them and start a new thread (I was pretty rambling in my initial adventures above, tedious read). Look for them in about an hour.

[+g-o-cashers]

Thanks for nice report on 400i. Can you publish some screenshots of satellite maps on different zoom levels, just to understand better how the satellite photos look like.

 

Sure can. I took some photos today but there are about 2 dozen pics so I'll upload them and start a new thread (I was pretty rambling in my initial adventures above, tedious read). Look for them in about an hour.

 

No need to take photos. Just press and hold the right soft key when you get to a screen you want to save. The screens shots get saved in [drive]:\Garmin\scrn as .bmp files. I think you ran across one yesterday...

 

GO$Rs

[CrazyViking]

Thanks for nice report on 400i. Can you publish some screenshots of satellite maps on different zoom levels, just to understand better how the satellite photos look like.

 

Sure can. I took some photos today but there are about 2 dozen pics so I'll upload them and start a new thread (I was pretty rambling in my initial adventures above, tedious read). Look for them in about an hour.

 

No need to take photos. Just press and hold the right soft key when you get to a screen you want to save. The screens shots get saved in [drive]:\Garmin\scrn as .bmp files. I think you ran across one yesterday...

 

GO$Rs

 

*()(*@%)*)& Well, there you have another NooB fopaw. I transferred the pictures (took forever plus 3 hours to upload) and you now have a post going up with INFERIOR SCREENSHOTS! Sincere apologies for my ignorance.

[+IvorBigun]

Thanks for nice report on 400i. Can you publish some screenshots of satellite maps on different zoom levels, just to understand better how the satellite photos look like.

 

Sure can. I took some photos today but there are about 2 dozen pics so I'll upload them and start a new thread (I was pretty rambling in my initial adventures above, tedious read). Look for them in about an hour.

 

No need to take photos. Just press and hold the right soft key when you get to a screen you want to save. The screens shots get saved in [drive]:\Garmin\scrn as .bmp files. I think you ran across one yesterday...

 

GO$Rs

Help please While trying to get Geocache to work on my Colarado I kept getting files in the waypoints not the Geocache folder

I finaly got it to work putting the geocache gpx files in my GPX folder on my unit

Unfortunatley after 2 days of solid trying I have deleted the folder by mistake

Can some one tell me where I can download a copy of the ORIGINAL GPX folder or the Original files that come with the unit

IF NOT can some one POST me by email the 2 or 3 files I have deleted please

*()(*@%)*)& Well, there you have another NooB fopaw. I transferred the pictures (took forever plus 3 hours to upload) and you now have a post going up with INFERIOR SCREENSHOTS! Sincere apologies for my ignorance.

[CrazyViking]

Received my Garmin Colorado 400i S/N 18Y00xxxx on 3/13/08. This is my first GPS (and I have never opened the instruction manual), so bear with my newbie fopaws as I relate some of the initial findings. ...

 

REALLY Pics zoomed 500mi to 20ft

 

Colorado 400i Screenshots

 

Apologies for poor quality screenshots! g-o-cashers posted a response message on the right way to take screen shots with the Colorado in my initial review notes, “No need to take photos. Just press and hold the right soft key when you get to a screen you want to save. The screens shots get saved in [drive]:\Garmin\scrn as .bmp files.” but I didn’t read it until I had uploaded all these files! Guess I better open the operators manual after all….

 

 

It occurred to me that g-o-cashers was right…I ran into a display image capture in my computer directory that I had accidentally snapped during my frenzied attempts to recover from the “Crash” described above. Thought someone might like to see what the crash actually looked like, so am posting now.

 

Also, I note that on the images thread topic I have labeled the images 500mi to 8mi zoom.

 

ZoomPhotos:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188151

 

Initial notes:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=188049

 

If someone was interested in screenshots looking at the forum while in “outline” mode, they might never realize I actually uploaded the complete series of zooming down to 20 foot scale in sequential 10 image replies to my message. For that reason I am posting this updated info in an outer thread rather than under g-o-cashers kind response. I am also cross referencing this message (via DOUBLE POST) between the initial write-up and the screen shots so a viewer can jump to the other thread if they want

 

 

<ediot: swapped the link labels>

Edited March 16, 2008 by CrazyViking

[+g-o-cashers]

I had the opportunity to look at the 400i maps today and my observations are similar to CrazyViking's.

 

The 400i maps are actually two different map sets visible in Options->Show Map:

 

Am Img Bm

Inland Detail Map

 

Am Img Bm is a very course aerial image (basemap) for the entire world. Some areas like the US seem to have a couple levels of detail. With map detail set to normal this map is used down to and including the 5m level. Zoomed in any further the images are useless.

 

Inland Detail Map seems to contain a very crude basemap for the US which is visible from about 120m down to the 5m level of detail (normally you don't see this layer when Am Img Bm is turned on). What happens after that depends on whether the particular region is part of the inland lakes data. If it is you will see more detailed aerial imagery and depth charts for the lakes down to .3m. From .2m down you will see only the depth charts.

 

If the area doesn't have inland water detail then when you go below 5m (in some cases below 3m) you just see a vector map with more detailed water body information (no depth) than say with topo. There seem to be more POIs and water related feature names as well.

 

I've also tried looking at details around lakes with both Topo and the inland lakes maps turned on but the shaded relief shading does not seem to come through on the aerial maps. It does seem to show on the vector maps which are part of the non-detailed area.

 

GO$Rs

[CrazyViking]

Thanks for the updated observations. It is nice to have someone experienced to comment on what is really going on!

 

Am Img Bm? I assume this is a contraction for American Image Basemap? (or Bitmap?)

 

Regardless,….I don’t see this as a map option. Options->Select Map I can select “US Inland Detail Map with Imagery” but I don’t see the other map you mention.

 

In Setup->Marine->Marine Chart Map Setup-> I can change colors, symbols etc. but no provisions for this sub-map? Perhaps it was a 400c you were looking at? Or is the Am Img Bm part of the Topo map? (Another name for “West DEM Basemap”?)

 

 

I had the opportunity to look at the 400i maps today and my observations are similar to CrazyViking's.

 

The 400i maps are actually two different map sets visible in Options->Show Map:

 

Am Img Bm

Inland Detail Map

 

Am Img Bm is a very course aerial image (basemap) for the entire world. Some areas like the US seem to have a couple levels of detail. With map detail set to normal this map is used down to and including the 5m level. Zoomed in any further the images are useless.

 

Inland Detail Map seems to contain a very crude basemap for the US which is visible from about 120m down to the 5m level of detail (normally you don't see this layer when Am Img Bm is turned on). What happens after that depends on whether the particular region is part of the inland lakes data. If it is you will see more detailed aerial imagery and depth charts for the lakes down to .3m. From .2m down you will see only the depth charts.

 

If the area doesn't have inland water detail then when you go below 5m (in some cases below 3m) you just see a vector map with more detailed water body information (no depth) than say with topo. There seem to be more POIs and water related feature names as well.

 

I've also tried looking at details around lakes with both Topo and the inland lakes maps turned on but the shaded relief shading does not seem to come through on the aerial maps. It does seem to show on the vector maps which are part of the non-detailed area.

 

GO$Rs