New Garmin Montana

[BobM]

I've been having problems with Profiles switching from the current one to "Automobile" without my input. I had thought it may have been due to using "Prompted" setting for Routing and sometimes selecting Automobile instead of my usual "Direct".

Well, today it happened so many times that I eventually saw the pattern. Here's what is happening: I created a new Profile today called "Test" and it had a unique setting in it that no other profile had. This setting kept disappearing and I noticed that the Profile was switching back to "Automobile", which was at the top of the profile list. I moved a different profile to the top and it started switching to that one unintentionally.

I was stopping a lot today to take photos and I realized this profile switch was happening whenever I restarted the bike. I'm guessing the sudden drop in the 12VDC (due to the starter motor initially appearing to be a short circuit) is causing the GPS to reset (without screen freezes, whiteouts, crashes, etc) and it hasn't written a record of the active Profile. When I power the GPS off properly it always restarts with the last profile being reactivated. The Montana 600 is in an AMPS mounted fed from a switched 12VDC (via ignition switch).

A short term fix is to move the desired Profile to the top of the list.

BTW, I use the AMPS screen saver and my GPS was in sun from 8am to 6pm (with 86F high) today without any of the "screen saver" issues. I did notice it was almost too hot to hold when I took it out of the AMPS at the lunch stop.

Bob

[bighopper]

Bob, I have never had that issue, as I have my AMPS mount hooked to a fuse panel that in turn is powered all the time. the only trouble I have had on this set up, once was I ran out of power on the Montana, that turned out to be I didn't mount it in the AMPS correctly. I now verify that I have power connection by looking at the battery level indicator on the main screen.
I am not worried about flattening the GSA battery, as I am usually not stopped longer than a hour most times.

Originally Posted by BobM

I've been having problems with Profiles switching from the current one to "Automobile" without my input. I had thought it may have been due to using "Prompted" setting for Routing and sometimes selecting Automobile instead of my usual "Direct".

Well, today it happened so many times that I eventually saw the pattern. Here's what is happening: I created a new Profile today called "Test" and it had a unique setting in it that no other profile had. This setting kept disappearing and I noticed that the Profile was switching back to "Automobile", which was at the top of the profile list. I moved a different profile to the top and it started switching to that one unintentionally.

I was stopping a lot today to take photos and I realized this profile switch was happening whenever I restarted the bike. I'm guessing the sudden drop in the 12VDC (due to the starter motor initially appearing to be a short circuit) is causing the GPS to reset (without screen freezes, whiteouts, crashes, etc) and it hasn't written a record of the active Profile. When I power the GPS off properly it always restarts with the last profile being reactivated. The Montana 600 is in an AMPS mounted fed from a switched 12VDC (via ignition switch).

A short term fix is to move the desired Profile to the top of the list.

BTW, I use the AMPS screen saver and my GPS was in sun from 8am to 6pm (with 86F high) today without any of the "screen saver" issues. I did notice it was almost too hot to hold when I took it out of the AMPS at the lunch stop.

Bob

[Emmbeedee]

Originally Posted by BobM

I was stopping a lot today to take photos and I realized this profile switch was happening whenever I restarted the bike. I'm guessing the sudden drop in the 12VDC (due to the starter motor initially appearing to be a short circuit) is causing the GPS to reset (without screen freezes, whiteouts, crashes, etc) and it hasn't written a record of the active Profile. When I power the GPS off properly it always restarts with the last profile being reactivated. The Montana 600 is in an AMPS mounted fed from a switched 12VDC (via ignition switch).

What bike do you have? The reason I ask is that on the two DR650 Suzukis we have here we used to power our Montana Rugged Mounts off a wire in the dash area. This wire was supposedly a good place to take power from and in theory it was, but in practice we were seeing exactly what you describe. The gps would lock up and often ended up on white screen failure.

After these failures I tapped one of the power wires leading to the ignition switch and the gps is much more reliable now. I often see the 'Power has been lost' message when I hit the starter but the gps does not suffer in any way. It always continues to work in the profile it was on.

Maybe you just need another power source?

[Be Rad The Fish]

I have to agree with an earlier poster that compared a Montana to a Blackberry. I have both, and both are very complex devices with numerous capabilities, if you know how to set them up properly.

I've been a Garmin user since the III came out around 2000, I don't know if that helped me with the Montana learning curve, but I was able to become as proficient as I needed to be relatively quickly.

With that said, I appreciate the simplicity of my iPhone and have been using MotionX apps lately which seem to work for what I'm doing. So as a test, I put the Montana aside for a couple weeks to see if I could get by with using the iPhone only. The biggest issues included that the iPhone isn't waterproof, lower screen brightness, and gloved hand operation difficulty. And a year ago, the MotionX apps couldn't keep a satellite lock reliably, but now I never have that problem.

Since the iPhone/MotionX takes care of my navigation needs, I'm not going to keep the Montana, it can be found over in the Flea Market!

I might pick up an eTrex for when I absolutely must have a simple dedicated device, which doesn't happen very often anymore.

[BobM]

Originally Posted by Emmbeedee

What bike do you have? ..... Maybe you just need another power source?

I have a DR350SE and a F650 Dakar, but I was riding the DR yesterday when I observed the issue. The wire I tap into for my GPS and heated grips is the outgoing switched 12V at the ignition switch. I'll try a temporary hookup directly to the battery terminals and see what happens.

My Dakar has standard heated grips and I have a separate fused wire going directly to the battery for the GPS. I just tried the GPS on it and started the bike 3 times and the profile didn't change. I also noticed that the headlight turns off automatically while starting the engine so perhaps the voltage drop isn't as much. On the DR, the lights dim noticeably while starting.

I assumed it wasn't due to being on a switched supply, but due to the starter motor dropping the voltage right at the battery. A motor is a dead short for a very brief time when first energized, so it just a quick dip in the voltage. When the GPS is powered down correctly the profile never changes.

Bob

[Rocky TFS]

Originally Posted by BobM

I assumed it wasn't due to being on a switched supply, but due to the starter motor dropping the voltage right at the battery. A motor is a dead short for a very brief time when first energized, so it just a quick dip in the voltage. When the GPS is powered down correctly the profile never changes.

Bob

It has become apparent by now that the Montana (and quite a few other GPSRs) are extremely sensitive to voltage fluctuations or interruptions, measured in microseconds. So many early problems were caused by the internal battery not being very well held in its holder. Since we ride machines that are inherently rather vibratory over rough roads that exacerbate the problem, it is not surprising that so many of these voltage issues show up on this forum.

I'll bet 30% of the posts in this forum are related to this issue. The problem is, voltage fluctuations cause different behaviors in different Montanas. For instance, I hard wired mine from day one, so I never saw the stuff you described. I did, however experience shutdowns traced to the internal battery that went away after I put in an earplug and then a few more after one did not entirely solve the problem. (Every time I'd get on some washboard)

Quite surprisingly, since it seems so common, I've never experienced the WSOD. (Knock on wood!) I have experienced quite a few of the other Montana odd behaviors (including uncommanded profile changes), but I can't relate them absolutely to power anomalies. They do, however, NEVER seem to show up when it's used in the truck, so it's still a possibility. I think Garmin needs to find room for a small capacitor!

[SKINNY]

My 690 has some serious vibration thru the bars and the rubber bushings on the rugged mount only seem to magnify it to a higher frequency that can't be good for the Montana.
I've tried several different rubber isolation mounts and a Ram mount...none of them reduce the HF vibes.
Someone had an earlier post that mentioned loosening the screws that hold the rugged mount to the Ram adapter.
If that doesn't help, I think I'll try building a cable isolator next...

[JossaXR]

Originally Posted by BobM

I've been having problems with Profiles switching from the current one to "Automobile" without my input. I had thought it may have been due to using "Prompted" setting for Routing and sometimes selecting Automobile instead of my usual "Direct".

Well, today it happened so many times that I eventually saw the pattern. Here's what is happening: I created a new Profile today called "Test" and it had a unique setting in it that no other profile had. This setting kept disappearing and I noticed that the Profile was switching back to "Automobile", which was at the top of the profile list. I moved a different profile to the top and it started switching to that one unintentionally.

I was stopping a lot today to take photos and I realized this profile switch was happening whenever I restarted the bike. I'm guessing the sudden drop in the 12VDC (due to the starter motor initially appearing to be a short circuit) is causing the GPS to reset (without screen freezes, whiteouts, crashes, etc) and it hasn't written a record of the active Profile. When I power the GPS off properly it always restarts with the last profile being reactivated. The Montana 600 is in an AMPS mounted fed from a switched 12VDC (via ignition switch).

A short term fix is to move the desired Profile to the top of the list.

BTW, I use the AMPS screen saver and my GPS was in sun from 8am to 6pm (with 86F high) today without any of the "screen saver" issues. I did notice it was almost too hot to hold when I took it out of the AMPS at the lunch stop.

Bob

Same problem on my Montan with 4,2

[empedrado]

Originally Posted by SKINNY

My 690 has some serious vibration thru the bars and the rubber bushings on the rugged mount only seem to magnify it to a higher frequency that can't be good for the Montana.
I've tried several different rubber isolation mounts and a Ram mount...none of them reduce the HF vibes.
Someone had an earlier post that mentioned loosening the screws that hold the rugged mount to the Ram adapter.
If that doesn't help, I think I'll try building a cable isolator next...

If you don't mind how a roadbook holder looks I built a real nice dampening system that includes my odo. My 690 is an 08 and used to kill the odo's on a regular basis. Once I went this route all is well and I do not worry at all about vibration hurting my electronics. Basically, I parted out an old MVG Touratech mount and used the dampers from it to isolate everything. Since I like where the roadbook holder positions the gps this was a natural fit for me.

[atlas cached]

Originally Posted by SKINNY

My 690 has some serious vibration thru the bars and the rubber bushings on the rugged mount only seem to magnify it to a higher frequency that can't be good for the Montana.
I've tried several different rubber isolation mounts and a Ram mount...none of them reduce the HF vibes.
Someone had an earlier post that mentioned loosening the screws that hold the rugged mount to the Ram adapter.
If that doesn't help, I think I'll try building a cable isolator next...

Have you tried these from BMW?

#4 in the diagram, PN 11.72.7.559.515

[SKINNY]

Originally Posted by atlas cached

Have you tried these from BMW?

#4 in the diagram, PN 11.72.7.559.515

These look to be about the same as the rubber isolators used on the Touratech GPS mounts...
They don't isolate HF vibration...they only isolate shock. I'm getting a harmonic vibration that needs something besides rubber bumpers to damp the harmonic.

[Emmbeedee]

Originally Posted by SKINNY

These look to be about the same as the rubber isolators used on the Touratech GPS mounts...
They don't isolate HF vibration...they only isolate shock. I'm getting a harmonic vibration that needs something besides rubber bumpers to damp the harmonic.

Those are called Silentbloc anti vibration mounts. Sold in bearing and better hardware supply stores.

[kbroderick]

With time enough to call Thursday a travel day, I created a moderately complicated route from Moretown, Vt., to Bethel, Maine. As recently discussed, the map's definition of a road may not match your own, so I went over the route carefully, referring to both CNNA and OSM Garmin maps as well as Google, the state of Vermont road centerline data, and the appropriate Delorme Atlases. In short, I turned a there-hour route into a six-hour route, eliminated the interstate and most of the travel on US 2, and limited the not-quite-a-road sections to one I'd done before and a short one that looked likely to not be so bad.

When I attempted to use the route on the bike, it didn't work.

More specifically, it took "a while" to even render the route on the overview map and display the "Go" button. After hitting Go, it did bring me to the moving map...but without any route active.

I finally realized that the 24K topographic map had somehow been activated (my riding profile is supposed to just have OSM, a custom, non-routable map with all of the class 4 roads and legal trails in Vermont and the worldwide basemap active). When I deactivated the topos, things sped up substantially...and then I got the "the map on which the route was created is not available, do you want to recalculate" message. Choosing yes got me an error about no roads in the routed area; no resulted in the route not being activated.

I finally ended up stopping and creating a route with the remaining waypoints (about 8, IIRC, down from 10) once I got far enough that I didn't remember where I was going. Creating that route on the GPS worked fine.

The return route loads as expected.

Any thoughts? The firmware on the device is current.

[BobM]

Originally Posted by kbroderick

... When I attempted to use the route on the bike, it didn't work. .... Any thoughts? ....

For my type of DualSport/ADV riding there are always sections of the route that have no underlying, and routable, road so I always create my routes as Direct (Off-Road, Straight Line, etc). It's really no big deal using Direct routing if you prepare the route correctly and have a waypoint at every "intersection/turnoff". You don't need a squiggly line on a GPS screen to stay on the road in front of you.

It's not that long ago that all GPS routing worked that way. "Follow road" routing isn't necessary to get to a destination, and only allows 50 waypoints anyway. Direct routing seems to work perfectly with up to 500 waypoints, and it doesn't need routable maps.

Bob

[arraflipper]

I got my Montana a little over a week ago, loaded C N and works pretty slick when you program in a place. I did a search for cities and punch one in and away you go. Today I was riding the back way to friend's place, The roads are all black top, after you go a hlaf mile all I see it the name of the raod on top of the screen a a car symbol the road disappear. When you get close to an intersection the road appears, a long with the intersection. I had it on just map, is this normal for the Montana? My Garmin Nuvi shows the road all the time. So far I am no impressed, while it might be the map not the Montana, but hey Garmin is selling all this why can't they get the maps right. It did it the other day on a state hwy, kept telling me to turn as there was no road. The road has been widened and the lanes are split that was done two or three years ago. A lot of money for a GPS that couldn't find my shop a whole three miles away on the same road.