Garmin eTrex

Garmin eTrex
I purchased my eTrex in November 2002 in order to work on a software project involving the GARMIN binary protocol. As such my review of the GPS might be biased towards the engineering side rather than the more common usability side. This is not my first GARMIN GPS reciever. My first handheld GPS was a GPS-12 that was now about approaching four years old, and really needed to be replaced anyway...

The GPS12 had a failure of the plastic weld joining the two halves of the unit together about a year ago, and although I have fixed this I am not sure how good a job I did. Also, the CPU in this unit is a bit slow by modern standards meaning that it is a bit slow locking on at times. Not a bad unit by all accounts.

I have also had some Garmin GPS-30 serial eight channel GPS receievrs with no display. These units really were dogs, but they were cheap by 1997 standards at least. Apart from these units I also have a whole lot of receivers from about three different manufacturers for embedded applications

GPS-12 Initial Impressions

When I first saw the unit I was impressed with the small size. The unit is not much bigger than the internal antenna and the display. The unit takes a couple of AA batteries and they last a long time. The LCD is quite readable which is essential for a modern GPS.

Taking the GPS outside to lock for the first time, it asked me some questions like where it was. Once these were answered the unit very quickly ontained a solid GPS lock. It was about this time that a couple of things struck me.

Firstly this unit can get really annoyong... It asks stipid questions like wanting to know if you are inside if it cant get a GPS lock. This gets really annoying when you are attempting to do anything inside. The other problem is the user interface. I REALLY have the keys on this unit. The GPS-12 was easy to operate. On this unit there are not so many keys and they are on the side rather than on the front like my older unit.

This may not sound like much of a problem, but I have lost count of the number of times I have pressed the ESCAPE key rather than the ENTER key. The user interface really is a pain.

Waypoint Display

The waypoint display screen is not really an improvement on the earlier models. Thanks to the reduction in the number of buttons, there is no PAN ability on the map display screen. All you can do is zoom. But you now have a walking man icon showing where you are on the map. I am sure that this totally compensates for the loss of the pan feature.

Data Interface

On the back is the new data interface for the eTrex series of GPS receivers. This plug is more complex than the ones that we have been used to in the GPS-12. The eTrex plug is flat, and slides on. I am not convinced that it is an improvement. Like the originals, after market plugs are available from pfranc.com

The interface settings are more limited than the original GPS-12, at least from my point of view. There is no longer the capability to upload positions from other equipment in NMEA format. NMEA download is OK, but there is no upload capability. Reports that I have receieved state that this is because GARMIN ran out of memory in the device, and that the european version does have this interface.

The GARMIN binary protocol is included, but has been varied slightly meaning that there is some software that will not operate with this GPS receiver.

Conclusion

The eTrex basic model from Garmin is a good BASIC model. It does not contain many of the features found in the more advanced models, but also does not come with a price tage found on those models.

Our biggest problem with this model was the lack of NMEA UPLOAD capability. You can buy an eTrex by clicking on the GARMIN graphic at the top of this page.