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GPS Accuracy and Performance


K4kman

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Hi All,

 

As like most of you looking though here I'm looking for a new GPS. Currently I have the Garmin GPSMAP62 got it back in 2011 and it's done me well. But have been having lots of problems with it recently.

That's not why I'm here what I want to know is what is the best GPS like everyone, but I'm only looking on the bases of Performance and accuracy

 

I read about this antenna being better then that one and so on.

What I have noticed with current one on cloudy day and or dense forest it looks like it working but has me walking over here over there all the time saying I'm xx away from the cache then I have to do. recently this has started happening on sunny days out in the open. maybe this is just normal for everyone. but now I can't even do a calibration for the compass.

 

Of course currently I'm looking at the GPSMAP64 or the Oregon 700 Series... I'm very open to others thoughts but again I'm looking for Performance and Accuracy. What hopping they would come out with a map66 yet it looks like they have moved on to inReach that has lots I don't need mind you it's going to be around the same price as Oregon.

 

I would like to hear form people that have had two together or been out with others and noticed wow that one is so much better or are they all so close that it really does not matter

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The Inreach is a separate product. I'm sure there will be a new version of the GPSMAP series within the next year. Hopefully with a decent resolution increase. I would not expect any difference in GPS performance.

 

A 62 should be as good as anything. There is really not much difference between models these days. The 64 does have Glonass, which may or may not help is challenging conditions. Do you have WAAS enabled? I would suggest making sure firmware is up to date and possibly do a master reset.

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The Inreach is a separate product. I'm sure there will be a new version of the GPSMAP series within the next year. Hopefully with a decent resolution increase. I would not expect any difference in GPS performance.

 

A 62 should be as good as anything. There is really not much difference between models these days. The 64 does have Glonass, which may or may not help is challenging conditions. Do you have WAAS enabled? I would suggest making sure firmware is up to date and possibly do a master reset.

 

Thanks yes I just noticed a new firmware is out so will try and update that I'm sure WAAS is enabled already but will double check after I update the firmware.

Yes it does seem like if they are going to release a new unit in the GPSMAP handheld series it would be sometime this year.

Guess I will see how it goes.

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With the WAAS, go to the Satellite page and make sure it has locked on a WAAS satellite before heading out. It can sometimes be challenging in Canada getting the first lock as they are lowish on the southern horizon. You need a good view to the south for 5 minutes to get it connected. The bars will have a little "D" in them once WAAS is working.

 

garmin_gpsmap62_page-satellites_en.jpg

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I'm in the basement, with a floor and roof above me, under a couple of 80+ ft tall trees, with overcast/rain. the smartphone I'm using is a waterproof/rugged Samsung rugby pro, that is about five years old now. here is the result:

Screenshot_2017_02_21_15_45_58.png

 

I'm always surprised to see much more expensive standalone units requiring full sky with several minutes to calculate their location, where this cheap old phone does it before the app loads.

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I'm in the basement, with a floor and roof above me, under a couple of 80+ ft tall trees, with overcast/rain. the smartphone I'm using is a waterproof/rugged Samsung rugby pro, that is about five years old now. here is the result:

Screenshot_2017_02_21_15_45_58.png

 

I'm always surprised to see much more expensive standalone units requiring full sky with several minutes to calculate their location, where this cheap old phone does it before the app loads.

 

The phone may be getting some location assist from the cell towers that a standalone GPS does not have. But being in the basement, I'm surprised you're getting any GPS lock at all on any device.

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I'm in the basement, with a floor and roof above me, under a couple of 80+ ft tall trees, with overcast/rain. the smartphone I'm using is a waterproof/rugged Samsung rugby pro, that is about five years old now. here is the result:

Screenshot_2017_02_21_15_45_58.png

 

I'm always surprised to see much more expensive standalone units requiring full sky with several minutes to calculate their location, where this cheap old phone does it before the app loads.

 

I'll bet you're equally surprised to see all modern Garmins locking on to sats before the boot-up process is fully complete. Usually within seconds. Yes, even inside the house.

 

I've done those in-the-house tests side-by-side with a Garmin 64sc and an Oregon 750 (I have a new Moto Droid Z). The phone never picks up as many satellites, ever. I know this doesn't mean anything in most cases since the number of sats in a location equation has diminishing returns, but it does speak to those instances in challenging environs where your straddling that line.

 

Smartphones have existed mainly to sell you stuff. Google just wants to know if you're at Cheapy-Mart or the Burger Queen across the street. A major financial motivation to tweak and refine hardware and software to provide the user with high levels of GPS accuracy just doesn't exist. Every tracklog, waypoint, geocache, and any other measure of comparison has given me all the evidence I need.

Edited by yogazoo
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Hi All,

 

As like most of you looking though here I'm looking for a new GPS. Currently I have the Garmin GPSMAP62 got it back in 2011 and it's done me well. But have been having lots of problems with it recently.

That's not why I'm here what I want to know is what is the best GPS like everyone, but I'm only looking on the bases of Performance and accuracy

 

I read about this antenna being better then that one and so on.

What I have noticed with current one on cloudy day and or dense forest it looks like it working but has me walking over here over there all the time saying I'm xx away from the cache then I have to do. recently this has started happening on sunny days out in the open. maybe this is just normal for everyone. but now I can't even do a calibration for the compass.

 

Of course currently I'm looking at the GPSMAP64 or the Oregon 700 Series... I'm very open to others thoughts but again I'm looking for Performance and Accuracy. What hopping they would come out with a map66 yet it looks like they have moved on to inReach that has lots I don't need mind you it's going to be around the same price as Oregon.

 

I would like to hear form people that have had two together or been out with others and noticed wow that one is so much better or are they all so close that it really does not matter

 

Get a Garmin with Glonass...my wife has the Oregon 700... it's been a great unit... rugged as heck... I've seen Utube videos were they thru the Oregon to the ground a few times and still was solid....receives excellent signals all day just hanging off the pack in trees mountain ravines,etc.... same for my Montana 680...big difference over pre-glonass Montana is a. bit bigger but a few ounces don't phase me.. easier on my ole eyes..

Edited by capt caper
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I'm in the basement, with a floor and roof above me, under a couple of 80+ ft tall trees, with overcast/rain. the smartphone I'm using is a waterproof/rugged Samsung rugby pro, that is about five years old now. here is the result:

Screenshot_2017_02_21_15_45_58.png

 

I'm always surprised to see much more expensive standalone units requiring full sky with several minutes to calculate their location, where this cheap old phone does it before the app loads.

 

1 The phone may be getting some location assist from the cell towers that a standalone GPS does not have. 2 But being in the basement, I'm surprised you're getting any GPS lock at all on any device.

 

Great points !

1- i've tried this with old "drawer phones" that haven't been on in over a month, without wifi or a sim card, and gotten the same results. even went so far as to take one of those drawer phones on a 200+ mile trip, and started it in the new location under heavy tree canopy and no cellular/wifi services. same results.

2- yep, i'm always surprised there is reception down there myself.

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And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

 

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

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I'm in the basement, with a floor and roof above me, under a couple of 80+ ft tall trees, with overcast/rain. the smartphone I'm using is a waterproof/rugged Samsung rugby pro, that is about five years old now. here is the result:

Screenshot_2017_02_21_15_45_58.png

 

I'm always surprised to see much more expensive standalone units requiring full sky with several minutes to calculate their location, where this cheap old phone does it before the app loads.

 

1- I'll bet you're equally surprised to see all modern Garmins locking on to sats before the boot-up process is fully complete. Usually within seconds. Yes, even inside the house.

 

2- I've done those in-the-house tests side-by-side with a Garmin 64sc and an Oregon 750 (I have a new Moto Droid Z). The phone never picks up as many satellites, ever. I know this doesn't mean anything in most cases since the number of sats in a location equation has diminishing returns, but it does speak to those instances in challenging environs where your straddling that line.

 

3- Smartphones have existed mainly to sell you stuff.

4- Google just wants to know if you're at Cheapy-Mart or the Burger Queen across the street.

5- A major financial motivation to tweak and refine hardware and software to provide the user with high levels of GPS accuracy just doesn't exist.

6- Every tracklog, waypoint, geocache, and any other measure of comparison has given me all the evidence I need.

 

1- that would be surprising, i've seen 595lm, montanas, oregons, and similar devices take a pretty long time to calculate position. i don't know if they are modern or not.

2- great job ! i wish more people would test instead of assume.

3- smartphones have failed then. i haven't bought a subscription to gs.

4- totally agreed. turning off google location services defeats this.

5- i keep looking over the shoulder of people using garmins for those tweaks to be shown off, but they have the same positional data that i do.

6- i have a few thousand tracklogs and waypoints myself.

 

great points, thanks !

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Get a Garmin with Glonass...my wife has the Oregon 700... it's been a great unit... rugged as heck... I've seen Utube videos were they thru the Oregon to the ground a few times and still was solid....receives excellent signals all day just hanging off the pack in trees mountain ravines,etc.... same for my Montana 680...big difference over pre-glonass Montana is a. bit bigger but a few ounces don't phase me.. easier on my ole eyes..

 

if you need a larger screen, here's a youtube video of a fairly tough testing session on a much larger screen:

 

it's $150.

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And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

 

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

 

It makes a huge difference. I've been geocaching for many many years. I've used a dozen different standalone devices, I've used a dozen smartphones. I run a mapping project where I receive a thousand tracklogs a year. The difference in accuracy of location finding is substantial with WAAS on compared to off.

Link to comment

And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

 

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

 

It makes a huge difference. I've been geocaching for many many years. I've used a dozen different standalone devices, I've used a dozen smartphones. I run a mapping project where I receive a thousand tracklogs a year. The difference in accuracy of location finding is substantial with WAAS on compared to off.

 

how many caches do you walk right up to while following the cords ?

 

I'd be very surprised to learn that anyone is using averaging, let alone waas, to place caches given how many I've seen that had really bad coordinates.

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And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

Where in that thread do the posters realize that waas wasn't much more than a sales pitch? Not sure how that conclusion could be reached based on the thread you linked. One of the cachers that said they didn't have better coords was in the EU, where WAAS doesn't matter, so his opinion is not a valid data point in evaluating WAAS.

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

I'd be very surprised to learn that anyone is using averaging, let alone waas, to place caches given how many I've seen that had really bad coordinates.

Are you determining that the cache hiders had bad coords because the cache's posted coords didn't match what your phone showed when you were at the cache's hiding place? Your phone is not the gold standard.

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And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

 

1) where in that thread do the posters realize that waas wasn't much more than a sales pitch? Not sure how that conclusion could be reached based on the thread you linked. One of the cachers that said they didn't have better coords was in the EU, where WAAS doesn't matter, so his opinion is not a valid data point in evaluating WAAS.

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

I'd be very surprised to learn that anyone is using averaging, let alone waas, to place caches given how many I've seen that had really bad coordinates.

 

2)Are you determining that the cache hiders had bad coords because the cache's posted coords didn't match what your phone showed when you were at the cache's hiding place?

 

3) Your phone is not the gold standard.

 

1- did you read the thread ? as early on as reply #4 sums it up nicely, the last part of which i just about plagiarised, without realising it.

 

2) obviously that's the first clue a person would likely noticed, yes. smartphone, standalone, map, whatever, when the logs are compared and other people say they also had problems with cords, it's fairly obvious averaging and/or waas, or surveyors masts with $60,000 rigs probably were not used during placement.

 

3) lol, i didn't realize an old $40 smartphone intimidated the gold standards of cache placing ! please offer my apologies to the standards folks, we're just playing a game here. it would be awesome if they published what devices , averaging methods, and wether waas was employed , for those gold standards during cache placement. if it happened more often , even better. :-) if you happen to have one of those gold standard devices, please post cords updates/reminders to cache placers who obviously did not, it will make it a lot easier for my old smartphone to get me closer. :-)

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1) where in that thread do the posters realize that waas wasn't much more than a sales pitch? Not sure how that conclusion could be reached based on the thread you linked. One of the cachers that said they didn't have better coords was in the EU, where WAAS doesn't matter, so his opinion is not a valid data point in evaluating WAAS.

1- did you read the thread ? as early on as reply #4 sums it up nicely, the last part of which i just about plagiarised, without realising it.

Yes - I did read the thread. The cacher in post #4 is in the EU, where WAAS doesn't function, which is why he doesn't see improvement when it's on. See follow-up to his #4 comment in posts #36-37, where it's acknowledged that WAAS is irrelevant in his region.

 

2)Are you determining that the cache hiders had bad coords because the cache's posted coords didn't match what your phone showed when you were at the cache's hiding place?

2) obviously that's the first clue a person would likely noticed, yes. smartphone, standalone, map, whatever, when the logs are compared and other people say they also had problems with cords, it's fairly obvious averaging and/or waas, or surveyors masts with $60,000 rigs probably were not used during placement.

Wouldn't it also depend on what those cachers, the ones saying there are coord problems, are using in their search? If the cache was placed using coords from a phone, but the cache searchers are using GPSr's then maybe the problem is that the GPSr's are not getting good coords. Of course, there are times when coords are way off, like being in the middle of someone's house instead of in the park across the street. I concur that waypoint averaging was probably not used for such hides. If you're seeing a lot of caches hidden with such bad coords, then adding updated coords to your logs would be helpful.

 

3) Your phone is not the gold standard.

3) lol, i didn't realize an old $40 smartphone intimidated the gold standards of cache placing ! please offer my apologies to the standards folks, we're just playing a game here. it would be awesome if they published what devices , averaging methods, and wether waas was employed , for those gold standards during cache placement. if it happened more often , even better. :-) if you happen to have one of those gold standard devices, please post cords updates/reminders to cache placers who obviously did not, it will make it a lot easier for my old smartphone to get me closer. :-)

If you take the gold standard sentence in the context it was intended, which is as a follow-up to the sentence preceding it, then you might comprehend my point better. My saying that your phone is not the gold standard is not the same as saying that a GPSr is a gold standard. Neither is a gold standard.

 

If someone with a GPSr made the same statements ("...positional fix..." & "...really bad coordinates"), then I would still ask the same question ("are you determining...") and my 2nd sentence would've been "Your GPSr is not the gold standard".

 

-------

With regard to waypoint averaging. My guess would be that people using GPSr's are more likely to use waypoint averaging than people using smartphones. Merely because the function is already available on the GPSr and doesn't require finding a separate app on the phone. It depends on how familiar the hider is with the device they're using to take coords.

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And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

 

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

 

It makes a huge difference. I've been geocaching for many many years. I've used a dozen different standalone devices, I've used a dozen smartphones. I run a mapping project where I receive a thousand tracklogs a year. The difference in accuracy of location finding is substantial with WAAS on compared to off.

 

I agree... Waas was developed for Aviation.. and is more accurate used right.. at least for me in the USA..I use my units now with Glonass and Waas on at the same time.. and find exceptional accuracy with it compared to other many other gpsr's and Garmins with non Waas..that I've owned over the years..since 1996 actually..

Edited by capt caper
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If you take the gold standard sentence in the context it was intended, which is as a follow-up to the sentence preceding it, then you might comprehend my point better. My saying that your phone is not the gold standard is not the same as saying that a GPSr is a gold standard.

 

1) Neither is a gold standard.

 

If someone with a GPSr made the same statements ("...positional fix..." & "...really bad coordinates"), then I would still ask the same question ("are you determining...") and my 2nd sentence would've been "Your GPSr is not the gold standard".

 

-------

With regard to waypoint averaging.

 

2) My guess would be that people using GPSr's are more likely to use waypoint averaging than people using smartphones.

 

3) Merely because the function is already available on the GPSr and doesn't require finding a separate app on the phone.

 

4) It depends on how familiar the hider is with the device they're using to take coords.

 

1) sorry, i thought you had a device in mind that was the gold standard, since mine wasn't it. :-)

 

2) ... guessing ...

 

3) i run " GPS averaging " in the background, so when i stop and drop a waypoint is a pretty good cord. i don't know if everyones standalone does that while they are using other gps functions like navigation, i would only be guessing.

 

4) OK, i completely agree with that.

 

:-)

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And no WAAS, so accuracy for geocaching is substantially reduced.

 

i'm reallllly not concerned about waas. apparently a few other people have already realized why waas was a great sales pitch, but not much more.

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=328303

 

keep in mind 'accuracy' is only going to matter if the person who placed the cache had a decent positional fix. i've found a LOT of them do not.

 

It makes a huge difference. I've been geocaching for many many years. I've used a dozen different standalone devices, I've used a dozen smartphones. I run a mapping project where I receive a thousand tracklogs a year. The difference in accuracy of location finding is substantial with WAAS on compared to off.

 

I agree... Waas was developed for Aviation.. and is more accurate used right.. at least for me in the USA..I use my units now with Glonass and Waas on at the same time.. and find exceptional accuracy with it compared to other many other gpsr's and Garmins with non Waas..that I've owned over the years..since 1996 actually..

 

thank you for using that added accuracy and updating cache cords! it helps a ton!

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I have 3-62S and a newer 64S. My 62's are always dead on and I haven't noticed the 64S being any better.

I just got a 78S ( I always get the unit with a 3 axis compass ) and highly recommend it.....if you liked the 62 when it was preforming you will love the 78S, it is a 62S in a better case and as accurate as any I've ever used.

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