Hip Hop and Garmin

We recently sent a Garmin Nuvi out on tour with hip hop artist Transit. Here is what he had to say...   My Garmin GPS has saved my career many times. As a touring musician I am always traveling to new cities and I am generally on a very tight schedule for interviews/performances. I've had other GPS devices before but always wound up frustrated, lost and sometimes late for my performance. Yet, my Garmin was a breeze! Special features such as photos of exit signs with arrows telling you which side of the exit to take are super helpful. Also, it doesn't take 10 minutes to connect to a signal like other devices I've used in the past.  Garmin is definitely a part of our road crew now. Too bad it can't learn an instrument or grow a beard.

on "Edge" in Victoria, Edmonton and Calgary

On "Edge" in Victoria, Edmonton and CalgaryReviews of the Edge 510, 800 and 810

On "Edge" in Victoria: The Garmin Edge 510
Written by Lynda of Victoria, BC

It was with no little trepidation that this decidedly non-technical writer agreed to ‘pilot’ the Edge 510 on my commuter bike. Ooooookay, I’ll try it, I said. In fact, I procrastinated at least a couple of weeks, unwilling to prove to myself yet again (and now the world) I am short of neurons in the technical area of my brain. Eventually I realized I was defeating myself before I’d even tried and after all, I had agreed to the task.

“Quick Start” guide in one hand and a glass of wine in the other (believe me, I thought I needed the fortification!), I sat down one evening not too long ago to see if I couldn’t overcome my own misgivings. I was assured that the instruction book would be helpful. Indeed, it has been, and still is.  It took me a couple of reads through and trials to get the Edge 510 mounted, but I succeeded. The process might have been facilitated by a diagram of each part listed; I am highly visual, okay?! Exhausted with these efforts, I packed it in for the evening to revisit the game the next day.
This stage required playing with the Edge to establish satellite connection (easy) and trying out all the functions (ponderous). Love the touch screen. Seemed okay, and I was reaching my stride. Tracking my route will be fun, calories burned – whoot! -  and… gulp… there seemed to be so much this tiny device can do. I thought some of the functions seemed excessive for my self-perceived needs. At any rate, it will take some further ‘playing’. The next step required setting the Edge on my bike and setting out on a ride: tomorrow.

Of course tomorrow always comes. You know the adage, never do today what you can put off until tomorrow?  You guessed it, I coined it. But people were counting on me, so off I went. At the basic levels the Edge was very simple to operate once on the correct screen: RIDE. Push the start button (took me a minute to find it), start pedalling. Note: try not to spend a lot of time looking at it while cycling on urban streets if you value your life. Bearing this in mind, I rode to my first destination, 2.4 km, and stopped to see how the Edge had tracked. Oh! Such glee to see the results: distance, elevation, calories. I carried on with my ride, resolved to analyze the data when I returned.
On return, I noticed I had lost the satellite connection for a while and wondered what that did to my tracking results. Also, after a restart, I wasn’t seeing my speed indicated anymore but a function called “Cals.-Fat” which, discouragingly, remained at “zero”. Hmm, some things to investigate. Being relatively easily frustrated, this is when I would have thrown in the towel, but I find myself strangely attracted to figuring out all its nuances. Back home, I began to see what the Edge can do and know that I will invest the time to investigate all the functions. For us non-technical types, it is an investment in time because it isn’t intuitive, at least not to me, not like falling off a bike, for example (oh, bad pun). All the same, I have committed to do just that and I have to say, I’m pretty stoked!

Several rides on, I’m a commuter remember, so it was only a matter of a couple of days, Edge 510 in action, I am now a committed user. It’s such fun and easy to do all this tracking, not that I don’t still have much to learn! For my weekend rides, I plan to get the heart monitor pads so I can see just how hard I’m working after the killer hill on West Saanich Road; it is important for a 54-year-old ‘wanna-be’ athlete to know these things. The scope for exploration (one can store data for several bikes, multiple routes, for instance) makes the use of the Garmin Edge 510 a real project for me. I’m looking forward to learning about all it can do and given enough time, I’m sure I will. If you are non-technical and want a little project, not too difficult, mind, the Edge 510 will fill the bill and add a terrific dimension to your cycling. For you technical folk, you’ll be up and at it in no time. Ride on!

On "Edge" in Edmonton: The Garmin Edge 800 
Written by David of Edmonton, AB

I’m an avid recreational road-cyclist and have been using Garmin’sEdge 800 for the past 2 years. The combination of a great bike computer with Garmin’s GPS navigation system has really made my longer rides fun and entertaining.

My most recent tour ride was a 3 day, 360km loop through the Rockies west of Banff. Day one was a 129km ride from Castle Mountain Junction to Invermere. It begins with an 8km 7% grade climb up Storm Mountain, which in past years I’ve practically gassed myself on with the excitement of starting the ride. This year I set the heart rate and cadence min/max alarms on my 800, and stayed within the pre-set ranges for the climb. I may have been a bit slower on the first climb of the day, but was a lot fresher for the big climbs towards the end! The navigation function came in very handy later on as I was able to program in the address of our hotel in Invermere, B.C., saving me and my tired legs several welcome minutes of painful searching!

Day two was a 100km long, flat ride up the Columbia River valley from Invermere to Golden, which we completed in record time, thanks to a tail-wind and a very strong leader of the peloton!

Day 3 was a super challenging 130km day from Golden to Castle Mountain. It started with a nasty 14km, 6% to 12% grade climb east out of Golden. Once again, the heart rate and cadence alarms were really useful in forcing me to conserve energy on the early climbs. Following a couple of false-summits, the road enters a bunch of new construction which did not show on the map of my 800. (Probably need to update). Towards the end of the day we did a series of sprint races amongst 5 of us for short distances and it was fun to see what our speeds and (in my case) max heart rate profiles look like – not as young as I used to be – at the end of the ride! We were also able to view and accurate elevation profile of each ride day, which explained why my average speed was so much higher on day 2 than on the other two days!

Overall, the Edge 800 is a wonderful piece of technology and I’d recommend it for anyone with a serious interest in cycling, particularly those that are cycling in unfamiliar territory and could use real time navigation.

On "Edge" in Calgary: The Garmin Edge 810 
Written by Chris of Calgary, AB

I currently own a Garmin Forerunner 301, and I love it. It has enabled me to track so many aspects of riding and running, but was never really the dream machine for my bike. The Garmin Edge 810 is almost everything you could ever want.

It’s difficult to cover all things I love about this cycle computer so I’ll start with the things it addresses that were on my wish list from the 301. First, the satellite acquiring time is amazing. Often on my 301 I was asking people to wait as my GPS couldn’t find enough satellites. This is never an issue anymore and I rode in fairly heavy cloud and drizzling rain. Second, the touch screen is amazing; I wear full-fingered gloves and never had any issues with navigation as opposed to the button functionality of the 301 that was rather clumsy while riding. The size and resolution of the screen is much better, there is often more clearly displayed information than my cycling brain can meaningfully process. Third while the 301 was limited to Garmin Training Center for analysis when it first came out Garmin Connect is a significant online analysis/riding community improvement, lots of courses to explore and inspire.

One wish I always had for my GPS was to include maps so your location actually meant something, in this respect Garmin has gone above and beyond, and yet slightly missed the mark. For training rides the map feature is amazing, functioning similar to that of your car GPS giving you directions. I found this feature really allowed me to explore some routes I had never taken before without worrying about sign watching; it really enabled that exploration of cycling I love (I planned out a couple of routes in the foothills, uploaded to the 810 and had a blast). In the city I tried to use the device for commuting purposes, which worked quite well in showing me exactly where I was and the regular cycle-computer information; however when I used the automated route mapping feature the 810 fell down a little bit. It looks like the device uses the regular Garmin route mapping software and chose some rather challenging (i.e. freeway/very fast/congested) routes *(Ed. note). I would have liked to see something like Google’s cycle mapping feature that takes into account bicycle paths and other designated cycling routes. I did find it very easy to nullify this issue by preplanning my routes using the online Garmin Connect. I could also see the features such as finding a restaurant and navigating a new neighborhood very handy with the way the device is currently set up.

One of my favourite new functions, even if I didn’t use it that much, is the Live Tracking feature. When heading out into the country on a long solo ride it is fantastic that someone at home can just log on to their computer and see where you are at any time during your ride, I like to pretend this is for my wife’s piece of mind, but I secretly enjoy the fact that if it starts to snow in August and wolves are chasing me she can take a look on the map and come and get me (or tell me to suck it up).

All in all a fantastic advancement from 5 years ago, definitely worth investing in for a cycling enthusiast; and indispensible for those who need a training analysis tool.

* The newly announced Edge Touring and Touring Plus will eliviate this problem

Geocaching with the Garmin eTrex 20 GPS

Geocaching with the Garmin eTrex 20 GPS
Written by Heather Roy of Calgary, AB

The eTrex 20 takes one of Garmin’s popular handheld GPS’ and makes it better. With an easy to use interface, paperless geocaching and expanded mapping capabilities this unit has undergone some significant improvements. 

This past weekend we sent some of our customers out with the eTrex 20 to test the improvements on some geocaching adventures and here is what they had to say…

The Ummard family had a chance to play and came to the following conclusions:
Melissa found the unit was fairly easy to work with in terms of figuring what all the buttons did and how to navigate around the screen. Garmin claims this unit is built to handle whatever Mother Nature can dish and so the Ummards let their preschooler and baby “test” out the eTrex and it passed the drool, drop and play test. As far as mapping goes the Ummards did not find the basemap particularly useful. They would have preferred more detail.  They did not feel like the basemap got specific enough to make their geocaching as successful as they had hoped.

If you are like the Ummards and feel like a more detailed map is what you are looking for I would recommend adding additional mapping to your eTrex 20. With its microSD™ card slot and 1.7 GB of internal memory eTrex 20 lets you load Canada Topo maps or Backroad GPS Maps  and hit the trail, plug in BlueChart® g2 preloaded cards for a great day on the water or City Navigator NT® map data for turn-by-turn routing on roads. eTrex 20 also supports BirdsEye™ Satellite Imagery (subscription required), that lets you download satellite images to your device and integrate them with your maps.

The Schuba Family also went out testing the eTrex 20 on a geocaching adventure. The mosquitoes got the best of them in the end but here is what Maria had to say about their experience:
We tried out the Garmin etrex 20 for our latest Geocache adventure. I'm not very 'techy' but it was easy for me to get started.  We plugged in the coordinates of the cache and the kids thought the map was very cool!  Even better was the beeping and announcement when we arrived at the cache.  This Garmin is a great tool for this awesome outdoor family activity!

The Schubas spend a fair bit of time in the outdoors. They regularly go hiking on mountain trails so the eTrex 20’s high-sensitivity, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver and HotFix® satellite prediction is a useful feature in locating their location quickly and precisely, even when under heavy cover.

I believe it is fair to say that the eTrex 20 will definitely enable you to take charge of your next adventure be it city or mountain caches.

APRS and Ham Operations with the Garmin Montana GPS

APRS and Ham Operations with the Garmin Montana GPS Written by Adrian Burg of Calgary, AB VE6TDX There is much to be considered with APRS  (Amateur Packet Reporting System)  operations and setup but most of all the  parts you need for mobile operations.  The best way to do this, is to sit down and  look what you are using your gps unit for.  To do the groundwork first is better than  to find out later that you have the wrong  part or the wrong system you like to use  and having to drive back and forth.  Especially with the cables you need and the  hardware. How you are intending to use the  system and where, is very important. There  are lots of ideas on the internet on the  setup and use of APRS, but if there is one  thing I have to stress, it's the safe operation in the mobile  vehicle. I see a lot of hamoperators that use the gps unit  only for letting other users know where they are. This is  only one function of the APRS system. There are more  things that you can do with APRS, like sending messages  and e-mails. Also you can use the whole system for ARES  (Amateur Radio Emergency Service), so you know where  every station is and can communicate with that station  without asking yourself where he is.My setup is very  simple and yet very effective in operation. I have a Garmin Montana 600 sitting in a  Garmin AMPS Rugged Mount But any gps unit that outputs  NMEA sentences (most handheld GPS units) will work  within the APRS system. This mount has all the cables  connected already and all you have to supply is the plug  for the power and the radio connector. The Kenwood D710,  which I use in the car, accepts a 2.5 mm 3-conductor plug.  The tip is to 'data in'on the gps, the centre is to 'data out'  on the gps. The top is the shield'to ground' on the gps  unit. For other radios you have to consult your radio  manual and the plug you have to use. For connecting the radio to a laptop or tablets  you also need a cable, depending on the radio and laptop or tablet you are using. In my case  I use the RT system cable, you can order those from RT systems in the States. I also use a special support system for the tablet I use for in the car. My support was for  the vehicle system 2006-Toyota Camry or the Vibe by Pontiac (RAM-VB-137-SW1). I use  this system when I drive the Pontiac Vibe. Everything in my car is sturdy and securely  fastened to the car for safety, and positioned so that it is very easy to operate. If in  doubt, you can always get other hams to help you on tips and setups and installation of  APRS. In my car and at home I use APRS-IS program for running APRS on both the  computer and the tablet. Just have a look at my setup here in this article image. Adrian is not the only one with this kind of setup. Check out Jerry's assembly! Jerry's (VE6AB) Assembly In this photo, I just finished  installing a new Garmin Montana  bi-directional device into my radio  stack, and with my newly made  up data cable, connecting the  Garmin Montana to my  Kenwood TM-D710, it was as simple  as making a couple of changes in the APRS menu of my Kenwood TM-D710, and one change to the menu of the Montana. and they shook hands, and were off and running. Needless to  say I was very pleased, as I couldn't  find any information on the Internet,  in pairing the two together, so I just  ran with it, and I am glad I did, as they are playing nice together. The Montana proving to be compatible with my Kenwood APRS TH-D72A, and my TM-D710A, provides GPS location information for my transmitted APRS beacons, and it shows the received APRS information on the map. You can set it to navigate to your favorite APRS mobile station and get rerouting instructions when the new position is reported! You also can watch APRS activity right on the screen. Static positions are indicated with a blue icon with the associated call sign, although you may assign a custom Icon for each station. The Montana provides fast and accurate fixes, and you get 2D, 3D and night views. You also get to enjoy turn-by-turn vocal instructions with street names, like on a Garmin Nuvi. With the Canadian Topo maps enabled, the driving experience is superb, as you have all the mapping as per normal in your driving of urban and rural roads, and highways, but you now have national, regional and local parks, forests and wilderness areas, including points of interest such as campgrounds, scenic lookouts, hiking trails and land contours shown with elevations, as well as your elevation tracks and more. I also am involved in Geochaching, so when I head out from my mobile, I grab my Montana and hit the trail with my trail maps enabled. The view that is shown on the Montana in this photo, shows the screen in night-view-mode, with a number of beaconing stations depicted. I also have assigned custom Icons to each station, or at least for the hams in my local area, allowing me to identify them at a glance. I also can change the size of the font for the callsign, allowing for easy reading of the information shown on the screen of the Montana. Another cool feature, is by touching any of the beaconing stations on the screen, all the pertinent information is high-lighted on the screen, and by touching notes, a keyboard comes into the view, and I am able to include notes for that station, that may be anything of importance to me, like maybe the name of the ham, or possibly his email address and phone number, or anything else I might want to add to his resume, that is saved under waypoint management in the menu. So to give you a heads up, I now have a view of the objects on the screen of my Montana, that can show repeater frequencies in the area, meetings, nets, events, hamfests, echolink and IRLP nodes and frequencies, traffic speeds, accidents, emergency situations and more. As well, the Montana can show the location of each of these events that are happening now. I am connected, and loving it!

Minelab Event

Alberta 2013 Fall Extravaganza

On September 7th, 2013; members of the Metal Detecting community from different areas of Alberta made their way to the tiny hamlet of Rochon Sands on Buffalo Lake for the second Annual EMDC/CMDC Fall Extravaganza Hunt.

Approximately 55 hunters took part in the hunt, and a few spouses and friends showed up to show support. Hunters arrived from all over the province, including Edson, Grande Prairie, Edmonton, Calgary, Sherwood Park, Bonnyville, St. Albert, Thorsby and Fort McMurray.

The fun began early on a rain-drenched Saturday morning, with members and volunteers getting together to seed the playing area with silver coins, prize tokens and silver jewellery donated by the clubs. The beach was liberally seeded with silver coins, Pre 1952 nickels, jewellery and a multitude of "hunt coins". Close to 1000 coins and prize-tokens were seeded in the beach for the hunters to find.

By 10:00 in the morning, eager Detectorists were arriving at the beach and looking forward to a day of fun and fine recoveries. Hunters were each provided with Minelab hats and totes (donated by GPS Central and Touchwood Detector Sales - local Alberta companies that are Minelab vendors). After a pre-hunt photo, the excitement was ready to start. At 10:30 the contest began, and for the next hour there was a frenzy of activity as each person looked for the seeded items. The weather was a bit damp, but it made for excellent conductivity.

 

After one hour, the seeded hunt concluded, and a BBQ hamburger lunch was provided - (out of the rain, in the Rochon Sands community hall). 

The 96 numbered tokens seeded on the beach were exchanged for great prizes - including beautiful handcrafted boxes, Calgary Stampede and detector related apparel, first aid kits, cinema tickets, silver and proof coins, water hunting gloves, treasure pouches and numerous detecting related hobby-items. Many of the token prizes were donated by CDMC and EMDC club members, and thanks go out to them. We also appreciate the numerous other items donated for token-prizes by the event sponsors mentioned in the previous paragraph.

There was a raffle of a 1935 silver dollar and a one ounce silver maple leaf - with profits (after coin purchase) donated to the community of Rochon Sands in appreciation for the use of the beach. After the lunch, drawn prizes, and token prize awarding - hunters exited the community hall into clearer and warmer weather and spent the rest of the day searching for treasures on the beach and in local parks. Unseeded area finds included George V coins, some jewellery, and toys. After a snack at 4pm, the event concluded.  

All in all - it was an excellent event - and plans for next year are already in the works. Check out www.abmdhunt.ca for more information on next year's event. Mark your calendars for September 20th, 2014!

"Grand Prize Winner at the 2013 Alberta Fall Extravaganza was Linda Moman. Linda is a recent New Member of the Edmonton Metal Detecting Club (EMDC) and considers herself to be a Novice Detectorist. Linda's big Prize was the Minelab XTerra-505 courtesy of RadioWorld (Minelab Canada) and GPS Central in Calgary. The XTerra-505 is the perfect mid-range  detector for Linda to move up to. Congratulations Linda! "

The Lat Long Life

Hello All,

Wow! Our first GPS Central blog post...what will you be able to find here? You can find product reviews, sales, contest updates on new products coming in...and so much more! We hope you enjoy our adventures!

Heather and the rest of the GPS Central Team