Wireless sharing between Oregon 600 and 650

[+BlackRose67]

Posting this here since the Garmin forums do not seem to have a section for Outdoor GPS devices

 

Last weekend while attending a Mega event, there were caches in the general area that my caching buddy with an Oregon 650 had on his GPS that I did not have on mine.

I had one cache on my GPS that he did not have on his.

 

Both GPS's had the latest firmware installed, version 4.60.

 

Every time that my Oregon 600 received a geocache from his Oregon 650, my GPS would indicate that it was still receiving (or occasionally would say lost connection/reconnecting), while my friends Oregon 650 would indicate that the transfer was complete.

 

My Oregon 600 would eventually indicate that the transfer was complete; not sure how long it took, but it seemed like about 1 minute.

This happened every time my GPS received a geocache transfer from his GPS.

 

When it came time to send a geocache from my Oregon 600 to his Oregon 650, the same thing happened; my Oregon 600 said the transfer was complete, while the Oregon 650 appeared to have taken a nap while it received and processed the geocache transfer.

 

I've seen videos on Youtube where the transfers between Oregon 6x0 units complete almost due to using bluetooth for the transfers, so the results we experienced were rather surprising to us.

 

In the past we transferred caches between his Oregon 450 and my GPSMAP 62s a lot faster than between the Oregon 6x0 GPSs.

 

Anyone else experience similar results between bluetooth capable GARMIN GPS devices?

[+Mausebiber]

Which Garmin GPS is bluetooth capable?

[+Walts Hunting]

The Oregon 600 series does.

[+larryc43230]

The Oregon 600 series does.

I could be misreading the specs, but I think the Bluetooth capability only works between a unit and BaseCamp Mobile, which only runs on iPhones and iPads and stuff. Unit-to-unit transfers use the much slower ANT+ protocol.

 

Oregon 600 Wiki

 

--Larry

Edited August 29, 2015 by larryc43230

[+BlackRose67]

Interesting, I was under the impression that compatible devices (i.e. Oregon 6x0 series, GPSMAP 64 series, eTrex Touch) would use Bluetooth for unit-to-unit transfers.

 

The video I saw shows the transfers were slower on non-bluetooth devices (Oregon 450 and Montana) compared to Oregon 6x0 devices.

 

I'm guessing that the post-receive slowness is the GPS adding the new geocache to the index.

[+Red90]

The Oregon 600 series does.

I could be misreading the specs, but I think the Bluetooth capability only works between a unit and BaseCamp Mobile, which only runs on iPhones and iPads and stuff. Unit-to-unit transfers use the much slower ANT+ protocol.

 

Oregon 600 Wiki

 

--Larry

 

Unless I misread things, ANT runs at the same transfer rates as BT. http://electronicdesign.com/mobile/what-s-difference-between-bluetooth-low-energy-and-ant

[+Mineral2]

Bluetooth is faster than ANT+. If two units have BT capability, they will transfer data over BT. For small items such as waypoints, you won't notice much of a difference in speed. For larger items such as routes and tracks, the BT is much faster. BT capable devices can also send custom maps to one another, which can' be done over ANT+.

[+larryc43230]

The Oregon 600 series does.

I could be misreading the specs, but I think the Bluetooth capability only works between a unit and BaseCamp Mobile, which only runs on iPhones and iPads and stuff. Unit-to-unit transfers use the much slower ANT+ protocol.

 

Oregon 600 Wiki

 

--Larry

 

Unless I misread things, ANT runs at the same transfer rates as BT. http://electronicdes...-energy-and-ant

I've never used Bluetooth with my Oregon 650, and I've rarely used ANT+, so I can't really speak to the actual experience. I based my comment on the Garmin Wiki page linked in my earlier post:

 

Bluetooth

Now you can wirelessly share larger files such as photos, geocaches, adventures, routes and Custom Maps between Oregon 6xx series devices and Garmin BaseCamp Mobile. Bluetooth technology allows your routes, waypoints and tracks to be transferred up to 50 times faster than previously possible with ANT+.

This seems to claim that Bluetooth is much faster than ANT+, at least as implemented by Garmin, but I can't be sure from the wording. I'm also not sure whether unit-to-unit transfers are possible using Bluetooth as opposed to ANT+.

 

The spiel on Garmin's Web page for the 650 is even more vague:

 

Wireless Capable: Bluetooth

^®

and ANT

Now you can wirelessly transfer large files such as photos, geocaches, adventures, routes and Custom Maps between Oregon 600-series devices (or with

Garmin Basecamp Mobile

). Plus, new technology allows your routes, waypoints and tracks to transfer up to 50 times faster. Oregon is also ANT+ wireless compatible for heart rate, cadence,

chirp

^™

and

tempe

^™

sensors.

From this, maybe ANT+ is now only used for "heart rate, cadence, chirp, and tempe sensors."

 

--Larry

[+fpb]

Interesting, I was under the impression that compatible devices (i.e. Oregon 6x0 series, GPSMAP 64 series, eTrex Touch) would use Bluetooth for unit-to-unit transfers.

 

The video I saw shows the transfers were slower on non-bluetooth devices (Oregon 450 and Montana) compared to Oregon 6x0 devices.

 

I'm guessing that the post-receive slowness is the GPS adding the new geocache to the index.

 

Did you ever find out what was the problem? The same thing happens to me, I need to wait a lot of time before the unit finishes whatever it is doing after the transfer. I have a similar problem while recording the current track or a portion of it... It takes forever to recover after saving it.

 

This last issue disappears if I remove my geocaches .ggz file or if there is only a small number of them. I usually have around 30k geocaches loaded as a single .ggz file. I tried splitting the caches into several .ggz files but it takes more than 15 minutes to load them when they change...

 

Frustrating!

[+Khoda]

My caching friends and I experience many problems transferring caches using the wireless communication on the Oregon 600. Lockups, lost communication, and most confusing the files transfers but won't display. Investigating this last problem, I have found as many as 3 copies of the gpx and it won't display. A gpx copy for each attempt to transfer.

When the GPS freezes up or fails to complete the transfer, we remove the batteries (reboot) and start over.

 

We seldom experience problems when an older GPS (non-Oregon) is use to initiate the transfer.