GPSMAP 66s/st v9.60 - Expedition Mode Broken [Bugs 136, 137]

[987]

GPSMAP 66st, firmware 9.60. Issue with Expedition mode.

I have now two times observed issues with expedition mode on this firmware.
Once in real life and once while testing. I am using GPS+GALILEO and WAAS/EGNOS.

If put in expedition mode, the red light flashes but after the unit is resumed to normal operation:
1. No points have been saved during the expedition mode.
2. Only GPS satellites are used (GALILEO turned off) and may have troubles locating satellites.
3. Battery drained as if the unit has been on.

The unit was in a place of good reception all the time.

In the real life event, i used expedition mode for about 2 hours and when i then needed to navigate i resumed operation.
When doing so i could see that there were no track points save during those 2 hours. It also could not lock for any GPS signal for about 10 minutes.
I checked the satellite page and it had been set to GPS only, i tried changing to GPS+GALILEO and select GPS=off and then on, but i had to restart unit to make it work again. I could see that battery usage was larger than expected, but a few hours is too short to say for sure.

Later i made an overnight test, with about half the battery left (this should give 48-72 hours in expedition mode).
The unit went into expedition mode, red light flashing.
After the night (8-9 hours) i resumed the unit to normal operation.
This time it did lock GPS satellites normally fast, but again not GALILEO, i could change that without restarting.
No track points were saved.
Battery was almost completely drained and the first thing i got after waking up the unit from expedition mode was a low battery warning.

I was not able to reproduce every single time, i also made a test after freshly restarting the unit, in that case expedition mode worked.
In the other cases (where expedition mode was not working) i have had the unit on for about 20 min - 1 hour before i went into expedition mode.

Did anyone else see this problem with expedition mode on 9.60 firmware?

[987]

The expedition mode issue i experience looks very much like bug 56.

[GPSrChive]

Tested today with one of my GPSMAP 66 variants and found Expedition Mode to be quite lackluster in its performance. The track was horrid, and half of my battery power was drained over a 10 hour period.

Reported to Garmin Software Team.

Please do the same!

See GPSrChive > GPSMAP 66 > Troubleshooting to find out how to report your issues to Garmin!

[GPSrChive]

GPSMAP 66st, firmware 9.60. Issue with Expedition mode.

If put in expedition mode, the red light flashes but after the unit is resumed to normal operation:

1. No points have been saved during the expedition mode.
2. Only GPS satellites are used (GALILEO turned off) and may have troubles locating satellites.
3. Battery drained as if the unit has been on.

1. Duplicated and submitted to Garmin Software Engineers for evaluation. [Bug 136]

2. This is correct Expedition Mode operation - Only GPS satellites are used while Expedition Mode is active, but we also believe it should revert to user settings when resuming from Expedition Mode [Bug 137].

3. We also duplicated this, losing nearly 50% of battery reserve in less than 12 hours. Garmin have been informed. [Bug 136]

The unit was in a place of good reception all the time.

When Expedition Mode is active, the device will not log track points while it remains stationary.


Please see GPSrChive > GPSMAP 66 > Setup > Expedition Mode for additional information.

[987]

Hi.
It looks like you guys must have got a nice message from Garmin, possibly the same as i did:
"It sounds as if you are testing the device inside. If that is the case then the battery drain will increase. Also, if you are using the device inside you will not see any tracking points as it cannot receive a good enough GPS signal."
I don't know if it is better to laugh or cry..

Anyhow.
Device was tested while in motion outdors. Even if there if the unit is stationary, it will save some points in expedition mode and thirdly, even if it does not find any GPS signal it should not drain the battery. Not finding signals is a real-life possibility when for example on a ship, on a train, in a car, in some cave, etc. etc.
Sometimes there is signal, then it will log that position, sometimes there is not any signal, then it probably will not log or log the last position again after a some minutes.
If there is signal and the position is stable the unit anyway usually logs every so often (i have seen once every 3 minutes in earlier versions of the firmware, but it may be less often now).


So, from what they tell me i think the main issue is the GPS signal handling while in expedition mode, something that is broken after 7.60 firmware (worked in 7.60). The unit cannot fix satellite signals when in expedition mode, even if reception is good, the signal does not get fixed.
As a second effect it seems it then just keeps trying instead of sleeping for a while, this drains batteries.

Last, yes GPS systems settings should come back after one resumes from Expedition mode, just like it did on 7.60 firmware and most earlier.

[GPSrChive]

There are certainly some issues here, as we tested for nearly 12 hours, and more than two of those hours we were driving, yet the track log only saved points for each location we stopped at for more than a few minutes (not stop lights etc).

[GPSrChive]

It looks like you guys must have got a nice message from Garmin, possibly the same as i did.

Nope, no response back to us yet... We just know what they are gonna say!

[987]

Hi.
After the 9.90 firmware update of 66s/st it looks like the bug [137] is corrected, it does not seem to be an issue returning from expedition mode, tried it total of 3 times.

Bug [136] being the excessive battery drain while in expedition mode, i cannot say because i tested too short time, so this is yet to be concluded.

But, unfortunately, the expedition mode is not back to normal.
I was driving a stretch of some 60 km with expedition mode on in one direction and off in the other. Driving time around 35 minutes one way.
Instead of saving points every so many minutes, it just give two points, one at the beginning one one at the end of the expedition mode (or perhaps just before entering expedition mode and just after resuming normal operation). Picture attached showing straight line while in expedition mode.
The other day when i also used expedition mode, i did not observe this, the points were saved every so often and the track followed positions along the road stretch.

20220129_expedition_mode_issue.png

[GPSrChive]

We were also testing Expedition Mode today, and over a course of more than 30 miles, some driving, some walking, total elapsed time > 5 hours, we found the resulting recorded track to be quite accurate. We did have recording controls enabled the whole time, and did power out of Expedition Mode several times to check progress along the way before resuming Expedition Mode again soon after.

We will continue to test several more scenarios this week to see if any anomolies appear.

Did you have Recording Controls active the entire time?

What can you remember was different during the time the straight line occurred?

Was the GPSr in a location where it may not have been able to get a sufficient satellite signal when it 'woke' to save a track point?

[987]

Hi.
recording controls were on (and recording everything before, after expedition mode, and should of course have done so during expedition mode), no other changes has been made at all.
All settings are identical the few weeks with both firmware 9.60 and 9.90. Reception was very good all the time and the unit was in good reception all the time.
As mentioned, it doesn't seem to be an issue all the time, because a day earlier expedition mode worked just well. Conditions were very similar (it was a different location, but used in the same manner).