Garmin Vista HCx logging (the one with baramoter)

[Bianchi Boy]

A friend of mine has an old Garmin Vista and wants to know how the logs are archived.
From memory there is no control and when full, daily or turned off.

I cannot find an option for it in the menus.

Anybody know.

Sent from my H8216 using Tapatalk

[Kim]

IIRC there's a what-to-do-when-the-current-track-memory-is-full setting, which can either wrap or truncate.  If set to wrap, it acts a circular buffer, deleting the oldest trackpoint to make room for the new one.  If set to truncate, it just stops recording.

Crucially, writing a tracklog directly to the SD card is independent of the current track memory, but still stops if the recording is stopped by the truncate setting.  Therefore, the safest option is to enable wrapping when full, and for longer rides use the file from the card, which isn't limited to a number of trackpoints.

I think it starts a new file on the SD card at midnight each day.

[LittleWheelsandBig]

frankly frankie has a guide that specifies which archive option and how to achieve it. Can't remember the web address off the top of my head though.

[Pingu]

http://www.aukadia.net/gps/lwg_0.htm

[andrew_s]

menu --> menu --> tracks --> setup --> data card setup --> log track to data card

The active log gets written to a gpx file on the card at the same time as it's being written into internal storage, with a new file being started at midnight UTC, and different power on/power off spells being recorded as multiple tracks in the same file.

I found that you can sometimes get a corrupt track file, which, when I've gone into the editor to fix it, has usually turned out to be a chunk of random old data inserted into the middle of the saved gpx.
My Vista HCx is still working, apart from the minor detail that it can't see any satellites any more
Good for checking what the menu structure is though.

Tracks on the card aren't usable on the device itself. Only tracks saved in internal storage are usable for following on screen.

[frankly frankie]

For a complete solution, 3 settings (one of which is the factory default anyway, if that means anything on a 10-year-old device):

1. Menu->Menu->Tracks->Setup

Tick 'Wrap when full' (this is the default anyway)
'Full' is 10,000 points (depends on setting [3] below) so if you want to log 24+h rides (400s, 600s etc), perhaps keep 'Interval' at 'Normal' which can equate to around 1800 points per 100km at cycling speeds - though with midnight falling partway through a long ride forcing a new logged track, there's almost never a problem. 
'More Often' logs around 50% more points - which could be a problem on a sub-24h 400km which doesn't span midnight - pretty rare occurence - anything less extreme than that, it's fine, and generally a better setting.

on to
2. Menu->Menu->Tracks->Setup->Data Card Setup

Tick 'Log Track to Data card' (this is OFF by default - but you can set it once then forget it).  These logged tracks are also subject to the 10,000 limit see above.

and elsewhere
3. Menu->Menu->Setup->Map->Page 2(Tracks)

Set Track Points to 10000 (the default is a much lower figure - again, set it and forget it, but review after any firmware upgrade)

[fuaran]

on to
2. Menu->Menu->Tracks->Setup->Data Card Setup

Tick 'Log Track to Data card' (this is OFF by default - but you can set it once then forget it).  These logged tracks are also subject to the 10,000 limit see above.

No they're not.
I have recorded some GPX files with over 50,000 points in the track. Don't think there is any limit. So long as wrap when full is turned on, it will just keep adding more points in the file (up to 86,400 seconds per day presumably).

[andrew_s]

I also used to regularly get GPX files on the SD card with well over the 10,000 point limit.
That was when I was logging at 1 point per second to get nice logs to digitise OSM roads from, back when a lot of the map was blank. Any ride over about 4 hours 20 was over the 10,000 limit, as could be seen when riding (do a 4h30 ride with the return running parallel to the start, and you could see the start of the ride progressively vanishing off the screen.