garmin 800 ,map options before/after purchase?

[buzby]

hi ,i see that there are various package options for the garmin 800,the basic package is about £270.Is it possible to add o/s maps after purchase or are you best off paying more money for a complete package that includes the maps?

[buzby]

just found a thread from Alan who recommends that you buy the trail bundle which includes the O/S ma ps
 

[Feanor]

It depends what maps you want.

The OS maps are nice for hill-walking and other off-road activities, but they are not generally regarded as optimal for cycling.

For on-road cycling, I'd choose the City Navigator maps or equivilant 3-rd party eg OSM mapping.

Personally, I bought an Edge 800 naked, and supplied my own mapping.

[buzby]

i want it for general Audax use,if buying the Garmin naked version ! ,that would bring it closer in price to the  Bryton but possibly a better option ?

[Feanor]

i want it for general Audax use,if buying the Garmin naked version ! ,that would bring it closer in price to the  Bryton but possibly a better option ?

For general Audax use, I'd say the OS mapping is probably not what you need, unless your audax takes you over serious off-road terrain!

Either use Garmin's City Navigator maps ( don't be fooled by the name it's the full road map ) or try the free OSM maps.

[buzby]

fantastic advice and keeps the price down!

[buzby]

Andy,i had been given similar advice from a mate of mine regarding buying the stripped down version and then using city navigatorIi am away in Belgium this weekend with a chap who knows the 800 inside out so no doubt i will be quizing him,i am still in two minds as which to buy though 
the bonus is i can borrow an 800 for the Wigginton 300 so it gives me a chance to experience before i decide

[Feanor]

One of the members here took the time to take screen-shots at various zoom levels to illustrate the point:

I've tried pretty much all the mapping options on an edge 800, from various versions the free open streetmap maps, to the OS Discoverer and City Navigator.
I've written a few blog posts which might help you out, especially the ones with screenshots at different zoom levels.
A few people have commented that they've been quite useful in helping people to decide which way to go - no pun intended!

http://www.scarletfire.co.uk/2012/03/maps-comparison-city-navigator-and-os-discoverer/

You can see how the raster tiles of the OS map don't zoom well beyond a certain size, and are less usefull in detailled navigational situations ( eg complicated junctions etc ).   Also, the wealth of other detail which is nice for other uses becomes just so much on-screen clutter for on-road navigation, particularly on the small screen.

[sbseven]

the bonus is i can borrow an 800 for the Wigginton 300 so it gives me a chance to experience before i decide

Unless you're fast, you could also need an external battery pack, as the 800's battery may not last for 300km...

[buzby]

oh flip  .i will just have to have a back up plan ie laminated map sections and hope i can tag on to some one who knows the score and is beeter prepared tham myself

[deadhead1971]

One of the members here took the time to take screen-shots at various zoom levels to illustrate the point:

I've tried pretty much all the mapping options on an edge 800, from various versions the free open streetmap maps, to the OS Discoverer and City Navigator.
I've written a few blog posts which might help you out, especially the ones with screenshots at different zoom levels.
A few people have commented that they've been quite useful in helping people to decide which way to go - no pun intended!

http://www.scarletfire.co.uk/2012/03/maps-comparison-city-navigator-and-os-discoverer/

You can see how the raster tiles of the OS map don't zoom well beyond a certain size, and are less usefull in detailled navigational situations ( eg complicated junctions etc ).   Also, the wealth of other detail which is nice for other uses becomes just so much on-screen clutter for on-road navigation, particularly on the small screen.

Thanks for posting a link to my blog showing the maps comparison screenshots.
I don't watch telly in the evenings, and you gotta fill the time somehow...   let me know your ideas for what would make a useful blog post or tutorial, and I'll see if i can help

http://www.scarletfire.co.uk/2012/03/maps-comparison-city-navigator-and-os-discoverer/

[henshaw11]

BTW, the 800 on it's own is 253 from handtec, dunno how the bundles compare...

[buzby]

such a wealth of product knowledge here and so glad i asked the questions beoofre diving in head forst and finding it does not do exactly as i wanted or expected,many thanks to all who have replied
 

[sbseven]

the bonus is i can borrow an 800 for the Wigginton 300 so it gives me a chance to experience before i decide

Unless you're fast, you could also need an external battery pack, as the 800's battery may not last for 300km...

I've not had mine long and have got around a few 200k with the battery lasting OK.

For the Dean 300 I connected it from the outset to a Technet 700mah USB backup battery. This is seven times the power of the internal battery so do the maths.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet%C2%AE-Dual-Port-Universal-Ericsson-Blackberry/dp/B000UH46YY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334823096&sr=8-2

...

7000mAh

such a wealth of product knowledge here and so glad i asked the questions beoofre diving in head forst and finding it does not do exactly as i wanted or expected,many thanks to all who have replied
 

buzby. You may also want to consider the eTrex 20/30. This avoids having to worry about external packs for long audaxes as it takes AA batteries.

I think your choice depends on what else you want to get out of this unit other than for Audax use. I use a Garmin Edge 705 (older version of 800) for training, so make use of virtual partner, interval training programs, heart rate bands, post-analysis etc.., so the 705 is good for me. I rarely ride 300km+ audaxes and therefore I'm happy with the compromise of using an external battery pack for those few events. If I regularly rode long audaxes and / or didn't really use the training functionality of the top end Garmin Edges, I'd probably have an eTrex instead. Certainly for long audax riding, taken in isolation, the eTrex is the right tool. It's also a bit cheaper too.

[zendo]

OK, I need some help here. I have just bought the Garmin 800 and am very pleased with it. For long rides I am going to need to add an external battery. I see posts relating to USB connected batteries. Please provide this non techie with some information.
Thanks

[Veloman]

Zendo

I am also a ‘non-techie’ and invested in an Edge 800 and have used it for the mapping/following routes on 400 and 600 audax events.  So my experience:

External power: forumites recommended a TechNet so I purchased a TechNet iEP387.  Had it running for 36.5 hrs to power 800 with no problems.  Of the 4 blue power lights I still had 3 left.  I used the 7000 mAh version (the 5000 mAh is a little cheaper).  Available at:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet%C2%AE-Dual-Port-Universal-Ericsson-Blackberry/dp/B000UH46YY/ref=pd_cp_ce_0

Using external power: I plug TechNet into Garmin via the 800 charging lead (the USB end into the TechNet).  Press the little blue button on the TechNet and then power up the 800 which tells me it is charging.  But, 800 already 100% charged so no charging takes place and it will run on external power until that dies and will then start using 800 battery.  So, top tip is to charge 800 to 100% and then plug in external power.  Otherwise, external power wants to charge 800.  After last weekend 600km my 800 still has 100% charge as I used the sequence above.

Maps: I got a nice deal with 800 performance bundle with OS maps and quickly realised they had too much information for audaxing so I purchased the City Navigator Europe which works very well IMO.  I also got it on a micro sd which is also useful to save routes on sd card you plan yourself (see below)

800 failures: Quite a few people had 800 failures (white screen of death) during the BC400, me too.  It was back to the old route sheet in the night and the whole point of getting an 800 (or similiar was because my reading is not good at night!)  This forum informed me of the factory reset that also results in a loss of information.  However, I found out later that I had been saving my route to sd card which a factory reboot will not delete.  History etc all deleted but at least I still have the route to continue.  Last weekend at somewher over 400km the same thing happened (and to someone else on the ride as well).  This time I knew about the reboot and my routes would be safe, so just rebooted with no great worries apart from losing all my ride data (grrrrrr!)  800 failure after about 400km of data logging appears to be a problem.  Not sure whether rhis is a time factor as my 400 time last weekend was fater than my 400 time when it failed; so is it distance/data or time/data, or just data!  Next time I will save each leg of the ride to see what happens.

[frankly frankie]

Of the 4 blue power lights I still had 3 left.  I used the 7000 mAh version (the 5000 mAh is a little cheaper).

And lighter, presumably.  Sounds like 7000mAh is overkill, for a 600.  Obviously you might find this capacity useful for other things, of course.

[Veloman]

Of the 4 blue power lights I still had 3 left.  I used the 7000 mAh version (the 5000 mAh is a little cheaper).

And lighter, presumably.  Sounds like 7000mAh is overkill, for a 600.  Obviously you might find this capacity useful for other things, of course.

5000 mAh is 154g and 11 x 1.5 x 7.2cm
7000 mHh is 172g and 11.8 x 1.6 x 7.2cm

Weight difference of 18g is negligible. Dimensions are not that different to make fitting into my top tube bag all that easier as other users said even the 5000 does not fit well in the bag I have.  Price difference is £4.97.

Overkill for 600 agreed.  Overkill for all the other things I like/need when I’m touring in the middle of nowhere?  Think not.  Obviously!

[Feanor]

Regarding the 400k White Screen of Death issue when the track log ( 'current activity' ) exceeds about 400k:

I had this happen to me on the BCM600 also, but I managed to get it working again.
I had powered the unit down at the YHA for a sleep-stop, approx 400k in.
Upon re-starting it 5 hours later, I chose not to press-and-hold to re-set the timer, because I wanted a continuous track log.
Within 100m, it had crashed with the White Screen of Death.
No amount of re-booting would help, it always crashed part-way theough the 'loading maps' stage of the boot.

The advice I've seen is to factory-reset the device, which will delete the corrupted tracklog, but that will also delete all your user waypoints, routes, and tracks which are stored on the device.   Which makes the device useless.

If you have stored your waypoints, tracks, and routes on the SD card, then you're OK, as these don't get deleted.
But I had my waypoints, routes ( 1 per stage ) and a track (  whole ride, just on-display for reference ) stored on the device, not the SD card.
The SD card contained only the maps.

So what to do?

Manual navigation to next control, where I had time to discover this:
Removing the SD card allowed a partial boot: as far as an error message complaining it could not find the maps required for the routes.   The boot seemed halted at this point: it obviously loads the routes early on, before attempting to open the corrupted 'Current Activity' tracklog.   This enforced halt in the boot before the crash allowed me to press-and-hold to reset the (corrupted) current activity!   Power down, re-insert SD card, and it boots normally!   All my routes and tracks etc still there.

All I've lost is a continuous tracklog.

--
Ron

[Reg.T]

^ Good to know, having had this happen to me near the end of Brevet Cymru a couple of weeks ago. Will still try to reset at circa 300k in future though, as a precaution.

Cheers

[PAC]

Mine did the same at 2am yesterday morning on the Midhurst 600...I carrying on to Gloucester, turned it back on a few times due to it turning itself off, then tried holding the reset button just after switching it back on again for the 8th time(!).....good news is, this worked, stored the previous track and gave it a fresh start for the remaining 220K.

In summary, I've concluded that the best bet is to reset after the 300-350k mark and join the tracks when you get home.

[Feanor]

OK, I need some help here. I have just bought the Garmin 800 and am very pleased with it. For long rides I am going to need to add an external battery. I see posts relating to USB connected batteries. Please provide this non techie with some information.
Thanks

OK, I have a newish edge 800.

For me, it managed a 9 hour 200k fine, but it was very low on battery at the end.
It might have managed 10 hours at a push.

It might depend on what page you are looking at; it's possible the map page takes more CPU to render than the trip computer page.   I've not done a comparison.   It can run mostly in 'trip computer' page, and then automagically switch to map page with navigation instructions as you approach instruction points.   That's how I tend to use it, except in complicated laney navigation sections.

I have an 11000mAh external battery, which I had in my rear pack connected via a USB cable ty-wrapped along the top tube.   That was overkill for a 600k with the unit running for about 31 hours, the 11000mAh pack hardly noticed the drain.

[thesloth]

I've encountered the "Edge 800 crash after 400km" three times. After the first two times I returned the unit to Garmin and they replaced it.
The new unit had the same issue. After a bit a research I found that a number of other people had experienced the same issue.
There are a few entries on the Garmin forums eg:
https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?t=17002

Until Garmin confirm a definite fix for the issue a way round this problem is to reset your activity at a "safe" distance of say 300km and then merge the multiple activities into one.
I tried a few different ways of doing this:

Garmin Basecamp - Can join activities, but only a basic track. You loose other info like heart rate and cadence.

TCX Converter - Can join two activities, but seems to consistently corrupt very long rides, placing random points several thousand km away. It also can't deal with activities spaning two or more days.

CombineActivities.jar - This works in so much that it successfully joins the two activities. The problem is that you need to copy and paste the result from the program into a text file. Most computer operating systems can't cope with this, due to the size. I found that Windows 7 and Mac OSX couldn't deal with 2x200km, Ubuntu Linux could. Even Linux couldn't cope with 2x300km

Ascent - I've successfully used the free trial version of this software to join two 300km .fit files. Unfortunately this software is only available for Max OSX.

Training Peaks - I read somewhere that you could do this on the desktop version of this product. They now seem to have a web based version. I've not tried it.

If anybody knows any other methods other than Ascent please share.

[sbseven]

Of the 4 blue power lights I still had 3 left.  I used the 7000 mAh version (the 5000 mAh is a little cheaper).

And lighter, presumably.  Sounds like 7000mAh is overkill, for a 600.  Obviously you might find this capacity useful for other things, of course.

5000 mAh is 154g and 11 x 1.5 x 7.2cm
7000 mHh is 172g and 11.8 x 1.6 x 7.2cm

Weight difference of 18g is negligible. Dimensions are not that different to make fitting into my top tube bag all that easier as other users said even the 5000 does not fit well in the bag I have.  Price difference is £4.97.

Overkill for 600 agreed.  Overkill for all the other things I like/need when I’m touring in the middle of nowhere?  Think not.  Obviously!

3000-3500mAh is enough for a 600 if you want to optimise size. My (now obsolete) one is 3600mAh and 8.5 x 1.1 x 7.5 cm and fits nicely with lead in a small tri-bag. I just powered an Edge 705 for 30.5hrs and it was still on external battery at the end. 

[Glover Fan]

Does the white screen of death affect edge 705 models as well? Or just the 800. I only ask as ive just bought the 705.