Re: Magellan eXplorist 500/600 Review

>> THanks for clarifying. Well the Garmin's use averaging I think so that
>> helps with the "wandering" ;-)
>
>Actually it's Magellan that has position averaging -if that's what
>you're referring to... It's hard to see the effects of position
>averaging in the eXplorist, because it's so stable...

Really I could have sworn Garmin did that too.

>> Looks like we are going to be able to
>> use SA Watch after all. Probably the best way to check the stability
>> and accuracy of the position. I don't "trust" Garmin's or Magellan's
>> "accuracy" calculations, not sure how Magellan come up with it, but
>> Garmin's EPE is certainly not terribly "convincing" ;-)
>
>You are exactly correct! I was able to run SA Watch on the eXplorist
>after I induced this notebook to create a soft Comm port when the unit
>is plugged in... I just told SA Watch to look at the soft port... You
>also inspired me to do a little testing of the unit on my back deck:
>http://www.gpsinformation.net/waas/Mag3-D/eXplorist2.html

Excellent, do you think you could log for several hours to see what
happens, the 30 minute numbers are certainly pretty impressive. I
don't think you can turn off SBAS to see what would happen without
it..

>However, inducing the notebook to recognize the eXplorist is no "mean
>feat"... I haven't figured out exactly what combination of
>plugIN-turnON-selectNMEA on the unit will produce NMEA on the
>computer... It doesn't always transmit NMEA...???
>
>So, I created a HyperTerninal file by first plugging in the eXplorist,
>set it to the NMEA mode, and made sure it was sending NMEA to a MapSend
>map. Then I configured a HyperTerninal file to connect to the soft COM
>port (created by the unit), at 4800 baud, 8, N, 1, Flow Control -None.
>-And also put a shortcut to it on my desktop. This way you can load the
>HyperTerninal and tell if the eXplorist is actually sending NMEA and
>save yourself a lot of frustration when it doesn't work.

Sounds scary, I'll give it a shot tomorrow though ;-)

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