GPSMAP 66st problem with search from FIND menu

Discussion related to the Garmin GPSMAP 66s/st GPSr
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987
Posts: 317
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:40 pm

GPSMAP 66st problem with search from FIND menu

Unread post by 987 »

Hi.
GPSMAP 66st with software 4.10, GPS 2.70.

I am experiencing a very slow search (2 examples will follow) when searching for locations with help of spell search typing some address.
I have a topoactive north and south europe on the device, and a openstreetmap map over nordic countries (sweden, norway, denmark, finland) and northern half of germany and northern half of poland.
On the map page, i have disabled all maps except the openstreetmap. When searching, if i press meny and Select map, i cannot say if it is better or worse to select "best maps" or specifically the openstreetmap. Strangely this view does not show all maps... (but that is a different problem).

I am located approx 700 km from both locations that i search. It seems worse the further away the location is.

First example.
I search for the city Berlin (in Germany).
1. Press FIND -> Cities.
2. press MENU -> Spell search.
3. I start typing Berlin, after a few letters the search becomes very slow. Total time is often 35 - 45 seconds.

Second example:
I search for the small location Folven (in norway).
1. press FIND -> All POIs
2. press MENU -> Spell search.
3. Type in Folven, press Done. and wait. The search never ends (or at least not within a minut or two), i actually never waitied it to finish.

If i compare an old etrex vista hcx, with the same openstreetmap map, searching in the same way for Berlin, takes about 20-25 seconds.
Searching for Folven, gives me a few matches immediately after pressing the last letter.

Do you observe the same slowness in search?
I have reported to garmin, but i am not expecting quick resolutions.
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GPSrChive
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Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 11:29 pm

Re: GPSMAP 66st problem with search from FIND menu

Unread post by GPSrChive »

My first thought, when comparing speed of city search result between eTrex Vista HCx and GPSMAP 66 is that one had a total database size measured in megabytes while the other can be measured in gigabytes.

Other than that, yes, many searches do seem to be very slow or never return results, especially City Search.
987
Posts: 317
Joined: Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:40 pm

Re: GPSMAP 66st problem with search from FIND menu

Unread post by 987 »

I noticed that the GPSMAP 66st sometimes returns results with the search string as one part inside a name.

Say the city Berlin, if one types "erl" it may display Berlin as a result since it contains the combination erl.
I have seen it multiple times, especially when searching for close by locations, but i cannot safely reproduce it, it simply does not show every time.
If this is the case, index usage would almost be impossible, making the search to fallback to full scan of the database (which seems to be sqlite) or the entire IMG file.

Does anyone know how the indices are build, per complete name ("Main street") or per word ("Main", "street")?
The per word makes extra much sense for languages where words indicating a street, road etc. are placed before the name or where street are named after persons with their complete name (more than one word).

Perhaps sort order of the data in the database could make some of the searches much quicker, for example when searching for the beginning of a word or phrase...

Maybe garmin engineers can re-think how data is indexed, if change of indexing in the sqlite database is enough to speed up the search, than no other software changes would be needed than to update the index creation process.
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GPSrChive
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Re: GPSMAP 66st problem with search from FIND menu

Unread post by GPSrChive »

Only the Garmin software engineers know the answers to those questions!
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