Comparison between Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx and 62s

Posted on 2010-08-22 by Jeroen

I bought a new Garmin GPSMAP 62s (currently running firmware 2.40). I already own a Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx so I will use that device as a reference for my evaluation of the 62s. I hereby post my findings with the device and silently hope that they will help improve the 62-serie so it can become the generally acknowledged follow-up to the 60-series.

Why I choose the 62s (and not the 62 or 62st)
There are three types of 62-serie devices: the 62, 62s and 62st. I chose the 62s instead of the 62 because I want a barometric altitude meter and a 3-axis tilt-compensated compass which the 62 lacks. Furthermore I choose the 62s above the 62st because the 62st (European model) has a ‘built-in’ topographic map of Western Europe scale 1:100.000, where I strongly prefer the 1:50.000 scaled maps. Besides I like to have the in-device memory of 1,7 GB at my own disposal (which is only 400MB for the 62st with Western Europe map).

Tracks archive
The 62-serie devices allows you to keep your tracks on the device, and load them back when you want. I like this feature because it would allow me to put all my tracks on the device so I can always get them back and-rewalk a route, or at least that’s what I would think. So when I copied all my walking tracks (more then 100 files) to the device’ \Garmin\GPX\Archive folder, it froze indefinitely (on/off button not working any more).
I almost submitted my device for RMA, but luckily I found a working solution on this forum (Dutch).

Since that moment I placed my tracks on the external SD-card (in the \Garmin\GPX\Archive folder), so if it failed loading, I could easily remove the card and continue to use the GPS. This idea worked, but the result was not very satisfying. Because, when looking at the tracks menu, it showed me all the tracks from all the GPX files I put on the card, but all my track names (formatted as “YYYYMMDD”) and the GPX files on the filesystem named likewise, were in a random order. Besides, the folder structure I use (a folder for each type of activity and a subfolder for each year) was not honored and browsing through the long list of tracks is very slow (page up/down would have been nice). And on top of that, when I archive a file located on the external SD-card, it is automatically moved to the internal memory? Why Garmin?

Switch to USB-transfer mode
If your 62-device won’t boot any more just like mine did, you can enter usb-mass-storage-device-mode by pressing the “arrow down”-key before connection the usb-cable (which is connected to a running computer). After holding the button for approximately 30-seconds the internal memory becomes visible as drive and you can modify it again.

BirdsEye™ satellite imagery
After registering my device and entering my device’ serial number (and not the unit ID, common mistake), I was able to subscribe for a one-year subscription to BirdsEye for only € 25. After payment by creditcard Garmin Basecamp immediately allowed me to download imagery.
I found out the image quality (I selected high) was indeed very high, but downloading the imagery was very slow. I understand the servers with the imagery are located in the US, and I’m in the Netherlands, but still its too slow for a service you have to pay money for!

Another problem is the proces you need to go through to download large sums of imagery that are nicely connected to each other. What I want is to be able to specify a block of any size, which is then downloaded with high speed. After downloading I would like to select in one action what part of the image I want to send to the GPS. This is not possible. When selecting multiple blocks for download, I could not easily align them to each other.

Also, Garmin BaseCamp forces you to use their wizard which starts of by checking your subscription which of course can by just as well done once when the application is started. Besides, a block of imagery you can select to download is limited to only 75 MB per block!
Why not make it more friendly Garmin?

Comparing tracks
Another interesting comparison experiment would be turning the devices on at them same time, move them around together and compare the resulting GPX-files. I have to admin it wasn’t the most professional comparison, but it does show some unexpected differences. I used Garmin’s MapSource to calculate the properties. I did no calibration when I turned the devices on.

	60CSx	62s
Firmware version	4.00	2.40
GPX tracklog-file	tracklog_60csx.gpx	tracklog_62s.gpx
GPX filesize (bytes)	173.141	256.228
Record method	Auto	Auto
Record interval	Most Often	Most Often
Auto calibration	On	On
Barometer mode	Variable Elevation	Variable Elevation
Recorded trackpoints	1085	1591
Distance	8.1 Km	7.6 Km
Start time	2010-09-04 15:57:32	2010-09-04 15:57:27
Moving time	4:00:59	4:00:54
Avg speed (km/h)	2	2
Area (sq km)	1.7	1.7
Height graph

What really makes me wonder what went wrong here is the difference in measured distance and the spikes en holes in the height graph for the 62s. I really can’t explain it, expect for the fact that the 62s is giving me results that scare me. Did I cause this with a setting? Or is it already fixed with 2.44 beta that says it “Fixed issues with inconsistent altimeter readings”? I just hope this is buggy firmware and not some buggy hardware, so it can be fixed by Garmin.

Heart rate monitor and cadence sensor
According to its manual the Garmin 62s is capable of connecting to a heart rate monitor and cadence sensor. I recently bought the Speed/Cadence Bike Sensor and a Heart Rate Monitor.

What I want with these sensors is simple: log my heart rate and cadence together with time, location and elevation data, so I can keep track of my progress with cycling. Sadly, Garmin doesn’t make it that simple. Garmin has its Garmin Training Center which is well suited for analysing all the data captured with my 62s. Getting the data there is not very easy.

In short, these are my findings:

Mounting the cadence sensor to my bike was quite easy.
Pairing the heart rate monitor and the cadence sensor with the 62s was also very easy.
The first 10 minutes after turning my 62s on, my heart rate was around 254 bpm. After 10 minutes the heart rate became stable and seemed to work quite flawlesly for the rest of the logging period, except for two spikes at 42 and 45 minutes that were probably too high:
Garmin Training Center running on Windows 7 64-bit cannot read from my 62s directly, giving me this error:
Garmin Connect fails at reading data directly from the 62s using Google Chrome.
The only way I could get a GPX file containing the heartrate and cadence sensor values was by manually copying the Current.gpx file from the device.
Garmin MapSource and Garmin Basecamp do not read the heart rate and cadence values from the 62s. I was however able to upload the Current.gpx file manually to Garmin Connect and analyse it.

Pros compared to GPSMAP 60 CSx:

Quicker fix due to the ‘HotFix® satellite prediction’ (though not thoroughly tested)
Maps look better and render a lot faster.
Map groups can now be individually enabled or disabled.
BirdsEye™ Satellite imagery can now be loaded onto the device
Support for heart rate and cadance sensors (buy as seperate accessories, already ordered them).
The ‘Trip computer’ page has a dashboard view, that can include for example an elevation graph.
The elevation plot of each (archived) track can now be viewed on the device itself.
The external MicroSD card can be more then 2GB (up to 16GB has been tested), however I have not verified that myself. There are forum posts about using these memory cards (Dutch). It seems that bigger sized MicroSD (SDHC?) cards did already function in the 60CSx, but Garmin has never officially confirmed that and I did not verify it.

Cons:

The device squeaks as can be seen in this YouTube video. They say the device is robust, but it doesn’t feel that way.
Special mount needed for bicyle (different from 60-series).
A different clipping system used for mounting the device onto something or someone.
When switching page, there is a 1-second delay before the selected page is opened. You can force the opening of a page by pressing ‘enter’, but that implies 2 actions. Not funny when you want to quickly switch pages as I prefer.
Browsing tracks is not very flexible and friendly. Scrolling through long pages with only tracknames (why not the GPX filenames?) without the possibility to quickly page through the tracklists. Furthermore no directory-based track-browsing.
No datafield for temperature. The device has a temperate sensor (which can be read when in a special diagnostic mode), but you are not allowed to add it to the ‘Trip computer’.
The sunset/sunrise time at DST changing dates bug is still present.
Cannot connect in the ‘Garmin Training Center’ application because the 62st ‘does not have the necessary capabilities’. Why is that? The device supports a cadence and heart rate sensor!
There are no more games on the device! I miss IRL snake!
The device is prone to crashing when you add too much files to the GPX folder.
Custom maps created as kmz files saved to an external SD-card as explained here does not seem to work.
BirdsEye™ Satellite imagery downloading is slow (measured with high speed broadband ISP-connection from the Netherlands) and the proces for selecting and downloading imagery with Garmin BaseCamp can definitely be improved.
The resulting GPX files read with Garmin’ MapSource have some scary differences that I cannot yet explain. 62s has buggy firmware?
I find it to be a bug that I cannot seem to reset my odometer (distance meter) to zero using the tripmeter’ ‘reset’-menu.
Readings from the heart rate monitor are always wrong (too high) the first 5-10 minutes after connecting to the 62s.
Getting the heart rate and cadence sensor readings from the device is possible, but not too friendly.

Conclusion
Looking at the long list of cons you might think I feel sorry for buying the device. Though I find some issues need to be addressed to increase my user experience with the 62s, I am still happy with the device. Nevertheless, most issues I have with the device are hopefully within the software and therefore the current firmware needs improvements before the 62-serie devices can be seen as a good replacement to the very successful 60-series.

Update:

Thanks to a comment from ’60CSx con 62s’ I omitted an error in the article claiming the 62s has better GPS reception then the 60Csx. What I wanted to say is that it can get a quicker fix.
According to user comments from ’60CSx con 62s’ “16GB Cards are also possible on the 60CSx (V4.00)“.
Added my experience with BirdsEye™ imagery.
Added a GPX-comparison to the article.
Added my experience with the heart rate monitor and cadence sensor.

Hiking in Norway’s Jotunheimen and Hardangervidda

Posted on 2009-08-31 by Jeroen

If you like hiking you should definitely go to Norway. I’ve been walking in Jotunheimen and the Hardangervidda with Martin in the last week of August 2009. The environment is truly beautiful and pure, though you should be prepared for the Scandinavian weather, even in summer time.

When hiking in Norway (and probably hiking in general), there is some advice that I can give you:

Make sure you follow this guide (English and German), provided by the Norwegian Trekking Association (DNT). It includes a nice packing list as well.
Good shoes are very important, especially in wet environments with slippery rocks and swamped area’s like the Hardangervidda.
Be well prepared for both sunny and bad weather (take suncream and clothes that protect you against cold and rain).
Always take a 1:50.000 map of the environment. You can buy those in shops and some of the larger huts in the area. Make sure it is protected against rain as well.
A GPS in addition to a map can be useful, especially when it contains Garmin’s topo map of Norway. These topo maps contain most of the trails that are also on the physical map.
Be sure to check if the huts you want to spend the night are opened (especially with staffed huts). Some of the huts we’ve been to would be closed at the first of September.

Jotunheimen (“The home of the giants”)

When you are at Jotunheimen you probably want to visit Besseggen, Norway’s most famous walking trail. We walked from Gjendesheim to Memurubu, but most people first take the boat from Gjendesheim to Memurubu and then walk back from Memurubu to Gjendesheim.

Walking the famous Peer-Gynt trail takes about 6 hours excluding time to rest and relax. Memurubu even has its own weather forecast, so be sure to check that out as well. The following images should give you an idea of the trail:

[Show as slideshow]

The route from Gjendesheim to Memurubu, including a height and speed profile should give you some more information about the route, that you can download below as well:

Download as GPX

Hardangervidda

The Hardangervidda is – compared to the Jotunheimen – flatter when it comes to height differences and has more swamped area’s. The west side of the Hardangervidda has the most height differences and is also the side we explored a little. It can be reached by car from Øvre Eidfjord (checkout the CAR waypoint below). It’s a steep small road going up a few hundred meters (passing a beautiful waterfall that is not considered that special because it is not on the 1:50000 map), ending with two parking places with close to each other with ( – when you are lucky -) some crazy sheep.

We intended to walk to hut Vivelid from our car. When we arrived at hut Vivelid we decided to walk on to hut Hedlo, because the people running hut Vivelid where quite unfriendly (sadly that happens). The people running the private hut Hedlo on the contrary were very friendly, with good food, but are also pretty expensive. The walk is certainly doable in a day, though the route avoiding the waterfall Valursfossen, which we took on our way back, is a little quicker.

Checkout some pictures:

[Show as slideshow]

This is the route from the car to Hedlo, passing the beautiful Valursfossen and then via Vivelid to Hedlo.

Download as GPX

‘I see Dutch people, they are everywhere’

Something else we learned is that people from the Netherlands seem to like visiting Norway. On the road from Øvre Eidfjord to the Hardangervidda, were we parked our car at the first parking place, there was room for around eight cars, of which six were taken by people from the Netherlands. Yeah, we have that a lot.

GPSMAP 60 Daylight Saving Time (DST) sunset time bug

Posted on 2009-04-15 by Jeroen

Garmin 60 'Sun and Moon' screen

I’ve discovered an issue with my Garmin GPS 60 CSx that I currently cannot find described anywhere else. It’s about the ‘Sun and Moon’ screen that shows you the sunrise and sunset information for a certain date and and a certain location on earth, on a day where DST changes the time at night.
The problem seems to be that the DST is not taken into account when the GPS calculates the sunset and sunrise time for that day. The local time that is shown on the GPS device however is displayed correctly, so the DST change by itself seems to be working correctly.

Let me explain by giving an example…
We set the date to Sunday 29-MAR-09 which is the day that Western Europe switches from winter-time to summer-time at Sunday night from 2 AM to 3 AM (01:59:59 to 03:00:00 to be exact). At Saturday 28th, at any time, the sunset for that day is given at 19:04, which is correct. At Sunday 29th the sunset indicated on the GPS at 03:00 should be 20:06, but it’s not.
The next table should give an overview.

Location	Date/Time	Expected sunset time	Actual sunset according to GPS
Amsterdam	Friday 27-MAR-2009 12:00	19:03	19:03
Amsterdam	Saturday 28-MAR-2009 12:00	19:04	19:04
Amsterdam	Saturday 28-MAR-2009 23:59	19:04	19:04
Amsterdam	Sunday 29-MAR-2009 00:00	19:06	19:06
Amsterdam	Sunday 29-MAR-2009 01:59	19:06	19:06
Amsterdam	Sunday 29-MAR-2009 03:00	20:06	19:06
Amsterdam	Sunday 29-MAR-2009 16:00	20:06	19:06
Amsterdam	Monday 30-MAR-2009 00:00	20:08	20:08

It seems that the current time is not taken into account when the GPS calculates the sunset and sunrise times, but only the date. This is OK, but not for dates where the time changes.

Report the bug
Does anyone now how tot get a bug like this fixed with Garmin? I don’t want to explicitly contact their support because it is just a minor issue, though I think it would be nice if it would be fixed.

Conclusion
So if you happen to be trusting your GPS to tell you when the sun rises and set’s like I do, beware that the time may be one our off on days where the clock is set back or forward (mostly Sunday), depending on whether you use DST. I’ve seen this issue with the Garmin GPS 60CSx running the currently latest firmware (3.70).

Update 2009-05-24:
I submitted the bug with Garmin and got a response:
Thanks for your email I will be happy to help. This is a bug that we have come across before from another customer. It only seems to appear when the time zone on the unit is set for Amsterdam. If the unit is set to the London time zone the Sunset error doesn’t appear. We will pass your comments onto our software team in the USA as his is something that could be fixed in a future software update but I cant promise you that it will be.

Seems like there is a chance that it will be fixed!

Using multiple GPS tracklogs to create artistic views in Google Earth

Posted on 2009-02-20 by Jeroen

Since June 2005, I’ve been collecting tracklog data using my Garmin GPS 60 (CSx). This means that every time I go cycle racing, walking, sailing, ice skating or even flying, I bring my Garmin, turn it on and (automatically) log the track.

After the track is completed for that activity, I archive it at home, as a GPX file, using Garmin’s MapSource.
I initially bought the GPS for tracklogging and navigational purposes for my bike trip from Arnhem (Netherlands) to Paris, but keeping all tracklogs did give me some other cool opportunity that I didn’t think of back then.
One example of that is gathering statistics about my cycleracing and mountainbiking trips, thereby motivating me to break new records and discover new terrain. Another cool purpose for all my tracklogs, and what this blog is about, is that I can visualize them (all at once) on Google Earth!

With Google Earth and converting tools like GPSBabel at our disposal, it’s possible to create a (big) Google Earth file of all tracklogs combined. When I try to combine, for example, the activities for which I have the most tracklogs available (cycle racing, mountainbiking, walking, cycling on my hybrid bike and sailing), I assign them a color so I can differentiate between different types of activities and create really cool and insightful maps, like this:

Combined tracklog view of the southern Veluwezoom area

In this picture, the red colored line stands for mountainbiking, purple stands for cycling with my hybrid bike, blue is used for cycle racing and green is for walking. If you look carefully, you can also guess where I must live somewhere

This map might look not very organized or useful to other people, but for me, there are many, many stories and new ideas hidden in it.

There are a lot of interesting views possible, seen my pretty large collection of tracklogs. This one for example is from my holiday last September in and around Cassis (south France):

Combined tracklog from holiday in Cassis, France; viewed in Google Earth

The pink line show a sailing trip we’ve taken. The green line shows the walk we took to Calanque d’En-vau and the blue line shows a cycle racing trip over the Route du Crête. If you ever want to visit this area, it’s a good thing idea to take my tracklogs, put them on your GPS and do the activities while you are in the area, so you don’t miss the ‘must-have-done’s’.

This whole thing looks somewhat like everytrail.com, where one can create some sort of “trackblog”, including photo’s that can be linked to the track. But an overview, loadable in Google Earth is not one of the options they offer (yet). But maybe they add it in the future, so, if you start uploading your tracks at everytrail.com now, an easy total view in Google Earth might not be so far away at all

Luckily you can create such a combined track yourself as well, however it requires some scripting knowledge. To combine the (GPX) files you can use gpsbabel, remove all but the track-information from the tracklog, for each of the tracklogs from a certain category, and output them to a kml or kmz file, a command that looks like this on unix:

/usr/local/bin/gpsbabel -i gpx -f "Tracklogs Varen/20080611_Drangey_Sauðárkrókur.gpx" -x nuketypes,waypoints,routes -i gpx -f "Tracklogs Varen/20080611_Sauðárkrókur_Drangey.gpx" -x nuketypes,waypoints,routes -i gpx -f "Tracklogs Varen/20080824_RoelofarendsveenLeiden.gpx" -x nuketypes,waypoints,routes -i gpx -f "Tracklogs Varen/20080908_CalanqueDePortMiou.gpx" -x nuketypes,waypoints,routes -o kml,floating=0,labels=1,trackdata=1,line_color=FF00FF00,points=0,line_width=2 -F "combined_varen.kml"

After that I load each kml file in Google Earth separately and assign it a unique color. By moving the track to the same folder in Google Earth, I can combine them to one track, with multiple colors per category. That’s all it takes.

The most actual version of all my tracks in the categories cycleracing, ‘Cycleracing with hybrid bike’, sailing, mountainbiking, walking, ice skating and flying can be found in this automatically updated Kml file.

Some more screenshots that I’ve taken are available here: http://public.hendricksen.eu/GpsArt/

I hope I can inspire people to do the same, or at least motivate them to start collecting and archiving their own tracklogs, so at some point, they can create some cool maps just like I did with my tracklogs, and who knows, maybe start comparing those tracks.

Update 2009-12-03:
The latest combined tracks file (automatically updated) with all my cycling, walking, sailing and skating tracklogs are available here.

The world from a bird’s eye view

Posted on 2008-10-26 by Jeroen

Did you ever wanted to be able to have a bird’s eye view of an area? Now you can!, when simply using Microsoft’s bird eye view available from Live Maps. The quality of the images is pretty detailed and you (currently) have a four-angle view at your disposal. Isn’t that just cool?

Kasteel Rozendaal, VELP GLD, Netherlands

The technique behind this is from a company called Pictometry International. The images are taken at a 40 degree angle from low-flying airplanes and each spot in the picture is overlapped in as many as 12 to 30 images of the same location. Luckily, storage space gets cheaper every day, but still.

So, it’s not that Microsoft gets the credits for this, but at least they are making it publicly available to the common people, and not only limiting this data to the IRS’es and CTU’s, for which i am grateful.

However, as an inhabitant of the Netherlands and a frequent visitor of the Veluwe, i wonder how far the Dutch (and European governments in general) are with technique’s like these, because, for example i believe they cannot yet handle emergency calls in which you give your location by a GPS coordinate, or am i wrong about that?

So while Google is busy mapping streets with their StreetView project, the team behind Microsoft Live Maps did something cool as well. Though they still have a lot of area’s to cover, it will sooner or later be the future of our maps, available anyplace, anywhere and anytime.
I wonder how long will it take before we have near-live “pictometry-images”. It will happen, but the question is when. 2020? 2030? or maybe as fast as 2015? The least i hope is that I’ll still be here to be excited about it.

Jeroen's weblog

Category Archives: GPS