etrex vista -tracks ending

[Euan Uzami]

At the weekend my garmin misbehaved in a fairly worrying way. I was basically following a track and all of a sudden it just ended. It  was as if I'd only put it in up to that point, or I'd exceeded the 500 trackpoint limit, but I definitely hadn't - I'd reduced all the tracks by using 'filter' on mapsource and then transferred them using mapsource. There were no warnings or errors when I transferred them.

Is there some "total" trackpoint limit or other limit that I could have exceeded that would cause it to do that?

I'm really hoping, and trying to see, how it could have been user error, and that's my only guess as to how it could be... the first track I followed I didn't experience that but I switched the whole thing off before the end so I wouldn't have known, it might have happened on that one as well.
The last one also ran through to the end but by that point i'd deleted the previous ones in an attempt to free up any limits I may have exceeded. Which also annoyingly means I may have destroyed evidence which might help to determine what went wrong.
Although what leads me to believe it's not due to a limit being exceeded is it happened to two different tracks, the start of both of which was fine.

The other common denominator is that I transferred them using mapsource, not bikehike -and this has happened on another, different track (at a different time, when there weren't as many tracks in total on the device) that was also transferred using mapsource, and filtered using mapsource (although other tracks filtered and transferred using mapsource have been fine).

Anybody else seen this issue?

[plum]

The trackpoint and routepoint limits are global, not per track or route. You can upload several tracks/routes but once you hit the global limit anything else will be truncated.

[Euan Uzami]

The trackpoint and routepoint limits are global, not per track or route. You can upload several tracks/routes but once you hit the global limit anything else will be truncated.

hmm... yes, but any total trackpoint limit that there is must be more than 500. YOu say "the" trackpoint limit, but the global one can't be the same as the per track one, as there is a per-track one of 500, but you must be able to have more than 500 globally, as my first track had nearly 500 on its own, and it displayed a lot more than that.
And why did it truncate a bit of the 2nd track, a bit of the 3rd, and none of the 4th and 1st? and why doesn't it have a warning that you've exceeded it?!
And is it a limit on what it can show, or what it can store?
i.e. was it me deleting the 2nd and 3rd track allow the 4th, which had just shy of 500 points, to display in its entirety?


And do track logs (i.e. the active log that it records, rather than that I send to it) count towards this global limit??!!

[plum]

Here's a pretty definitive explanation

http://www.gpsfaqs.org/faqs/garmin/xseries/gvistahcx/tracks.html

Probably not your problem, I only mentioned it for completeness. Although this line sounds a possibility

'Saved tracks are created manually by the user from the keypad. Saved tracks are 'compressed' by the unit to have under 500 trackpoints and have neither elevation nor timestamps and have fewer stored trackpoints.'

I'm not used to navigating using tracks, I always use routes.

[frankly frankie]

The trackpoint and routepoint limits are global, not per track or route. You can upload several tracks/routes but once you hit the global limit anything else will be truncated.

I'm sorry, but this is incorrect and the page you linked to above also gives incorrect information.

The Etrex C series (including such as the Vista HCx) can store up to 10,000 'active route' trackpoints plus up to 20 'saved' tracks of up to 500 points each, ie another possible 10,000 points in total, stored internally.  See pic below.  The 20 'saved' tracks can be any combination of tracks uploaded to the GPS and recorded tracks saved on the GPS, but each one cannot exceed 500 points.  This is all regardless of anything that may be archived to the SD card.

I can't help with the OP though - looks very strange.  It is true that if you upload a Track to the Garmin that is over 500 points - you won't see any error message.  The first you'll know about it is when you fall off the end of the Track.  So my guess is this is most likely what happened, despite you thought you'd filtered everything.

[edit to add -

Screendump from a 'full' Legend C - ie an older and more limited model - much less storage ability than the Vista HCx.
The red bar shows a full Active Log of 10,000 points.
The list shows the last few of 20 additional stored Tracks.  See the scrollbar to the right shows this is a longer list.
Trust me, there are 20 of them (which is why 'Save' is greyed out - it's full), and each contains 500 points.