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Earthmate PN40 recommendations


Toivul

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A good friend of mine purchased a Delorme Earthmate PN40 a few years ago and him not being very proficient with technology promptly stuffed it in a closet until now. He's asked me to get it updated and teach him how to use it but now that Garmin owns Delorme it seems there is no support for this GPS. This being one of the few forums with information regarding the PN series I come to you fine folks with my questions.

 

First and foremost is it even worth messing with this unit? The thing is brand new even has the plastic on the screen and I would hate to have to go back to my buddy and tell him he has to buy a new gps.

 

I've been having an issue with it not connecting to the satellites. I did a search and found a post on here of an individual having the same issue with PN-20 but no replies so rather than resurrect his old post I'll post the same question. When I power it up and on the screen where is shows the satellites, there are no Red, Green bars. I didn't drop it. I did a Reset and still nothing. If I leave it on for about a half hour I get one bar that shows it's connecting. Then it takes a very long time before it's actually usable.

 

Thanks,

 

Craig

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As you are aware, Garmin has discontinued the PN Series of GPSR’s. So, your friends GPS is stuck at its original software level, unless you can find an update on line. You have precut maps with the unit thanks to Delorme, so that is not too big an issue. You may need to find if the current operating systems still work with the PN40. If your friend previously had “technology” issues it is going to be even harder going forward. Sounds like a suggestion for your friend would be to list the “like-new” GPS on an auction site. He can then use the money towards a current GPS with far fewer challenges and readily available help. We would like him/her to enjoy the GPS enough that they decide to join the caching community. Recommend reputable sites like Bass Pro, REI, West Marine, Cabela’s, etc. Watch for sales, I think Bass Pro has one 17Feb-5Mar. Regards, Peoria Bill :>)

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The PN-40's kinda old, but it's a nice stout device. I use the newer model, the PN-60, which is functionally pretty much the same, and I am quite happy with it. The PN-40's kinda slow and it's not the most energy efficient unit, but if the plan is to do casual geocaching for a couple hours a day, it will work fine.

 

As mentioned, definitely upgrade the firmware to 2.8 at least. You can get it from the garmin support site. Team CowboyPapa mentioned the CDs, and that is important particularly for the maps since they are not preloaded on the unit and there's no other way to get them that I know of. (The "good news" is that DeLorme never updated the map CDs after the PN-40 release, so you almost certainly have the "newest" maps which are something like 8 years old by now.)

 

If the box is intact, you should have the special PN-40 USB cable. If you don't, the unit is useless. I don't know if you can get a replacement from Garmin, although you can probably find one on ebay.

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The PN-40 should not be "useless" solely because it lacks a proprietary cable, but it will require a firmware upgrade to 2.8 or 2.9 (deprecated Mac support) version by SDHC card for limited geocaching purposes. The recent 2017 Java deprecation may have further impacted option of loading caches by wire though. Be aware that adding a "gpx" folder on the SD card may permit importing both waypoints and tracks from Garmin combo files in one operation.

 

PN-40 road/trail routes created on the computer cannot be transferred without a cable.

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I'll defer to the others that actually geocache with these on the exact version numbers, but you really really want to upgrade the firmware to the version where it shows up on your computer like a mass storage device and you just copy pocket queries to it. Delorme's communication protocol was, uuuh, sub-awesome. I actually removed it from the last couple versions of GPSBabel with nobody noticing. (I think I was about the only one to ever support delbin....)

 

If you use your fone for picking hotels and places to eat and your PN-40 for actual hunting in the woods, you should be fine. Mountains change less than hotels.

 

The use of a proprietary cable was unwise when they did it. They're unlikely plentiful these days. It's worth a mention that their cables were well known to be sub-awesome. Three new cables from a box would often fail in different ways. There was a "slug" that plugged into the back that came out into a Micro-B that was WAY more reliable.

 

The kindest thing I can say for the PN-40 was that it was less terrible than the PN-20. I would not go to great lengths to recover an investment in that device, though. A contemporary $200 eTrex can save you from lots of rounts of Delorme Trivial Pursuit if you're in a position to spend money over time.

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Point(s) taken on the nearly ten year old PN-40. FWIW though, the slug adapter for the two piece PN-PN20/40 cable was a mini, not micro, USB connector design.

 

As to active geocaching and use of this forum, it is time for me to put something in the tip jar again, even if I only intend to use the new Garmin 64s with 250,000 zipped caches once just to see how well it works. I did notice that the G64s device may support 36 characters per field header instead of the 31 of the old Delorme devices. Cache name field length truncation of long cache names was a big issue for some long winded "Event caching" naming styles. West Virginia_yadayadayada... 'Club" comes to mind. Issue was fixed after Delorme switched firmware to manage and filter waypoints with on-device gpx file saving.

 

Cheers.

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You are, indeed, correct. It was a Mini B and not a Micro B. (My day job was USB for many years, so that's just embarrassing.)

 

Unique shortname collisions are something I solved in the Meridian Plat era in GPSBabel. Not losing 'This is my supercool caching series #43" was an early 2000's project for me. (I can point you to the code that tries to retain the last numeric digits in favor of just making one up to keep it unique within device restrictions if you're into that kind of thing...) That code WAY predates the Delorme units,

 

Delorme giving up on their troubled protocol and presenting USB mass storage and parsing GPX was much welcomed - much like the purchasers of what was left of their business did years before.

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