Garmin GPSMAP 78: The Inside Story
I know, cheesy title, but I thought I’d try to put to rest some speculation around what is actually inside Garmin’s new GPSMAP 78 and probably the GPSMAP 62 which was just officially announced this morning.
I was hoping that Garmin might have decided to use the SiRFAtlasIV system-on-chip in this new line of GPS’s but as we reported several weeks ago when the FCC photos first became available Garmin has stayed with the STMicroelectronics Cartesio (STA-2062) and ST GPS RF chip (STA-5620) both of which are used in the Garmin Oregon and Dakota. In many respects this is not a surprise since a Cartesio design means Garmin didn’t have to develop and support yet another hardware and software platform, instead they could focus on developing a hard-button user interface and a few new features on top of what is clearly Dakota/Oregon x50 software and hardware. What it does mean is that the GPS performance is going to be similar to what we’ve seen on the Oregon with the only difference being in the antenna design.
To that end the Oregon uses what is called a ceramic antenna whereas the GPSMAP 78 appears to use a Cirocomm patch antenna. I have not had the time yet to make any conclusions about what this will mean in terms of GPS performance.
The rest of the components are to be expected and are similar to the Oregon x50 although Garmin seems to be using different manufacturers for some devices:
- Hynix 256 MB mobile DDR SDRAM (main memory)
- Samsung 4GB NAND flash (external file system and “ROM” storage)
- ANT wireless transceiver (for device-to-device and HRM/cadence wireless communication)
Now that I have my unit back together (and working!) I’ll be making some posts on the GPSMAP 78. I’ve already found a few interesting new features which I’m hoping Garmin might pull back into the Oregon and Dakota, after all they don’t have any excuses now that we know the hardware and software are so closely related to the GPSMAP 78!
Related posts:
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:10 pm
[...] chipset however. So that implies the 62 series will also use the Cartesio and not the SiRFStar IV. http://www.gpsfix.net/gpsmap78-internal-2/ I was hoping that Garmin might have decided to use the SiRFAtlasIV system-on-chip in this new [...]
June 3rd, 2010 at 3:20 pm
[...] GPSMAP 78 First Impressions Jun.03, 2010 in GPSMAP 78 After checking out the guts of my Garmin GPSMAP 78sc yesterday I’ve had a chance to play with Garmin’s [...]
June 8th, 2010 at 7:52 am
[...] likelihood the GPSMAP 62 is based on the STMicroelectronics Cartesio like the Oregon, Dakota and GPSMAP 78 but it is impossible to know at this point. The good news is that the GPSMAP 78 is looking very [...]
September 19th, 2010 at 10:05 am
I wish Garmin kept some of the good features of the GPSmap76CSx.
Waypoints do not include the real time they were taken. I like to know when I took the waypoint.
Waypoint info cannot be displayed in a box on the map or anywhere. I just did a 720Km cycle trip with 774 waypoints. I label them numerically by day such as 1002L, 1003R for day one. 2004R, … 2098L for day two. The L and R means I got to go left or right. The GPS labels the points by street names only. I cannot remember 774 street names or know which way to turn on them. When I navigate I have to pick a direction and hope I went the correct way or I get an arrow that tells me after I made a wrong turn. It’s not convenient. I wish Garmin would take my suggestions seriously, but so far no action. The ’78s is more sensitive than the ’76CSx and the birds eye satellite maps are nice.
September 20th, 2010 at 8:02 am
John,
I believe that all waypoints created on the unit do have a timestamp associated with them but to see the timestamp works a little differently. If you mark a waypoint and then view it in a waypoint list (for example, in the Waypoint Manager) you will see the name of the waypoint followed by the date it was created in parenthesis. There does seem to be a bug in that some waypoints have dates while others don’t. Just looking at my unit it seems like the waypoints I didn’t edit have the date while others I did edit (name or symbol) don’t. This should be reported to Garmin. Also if you connect your unit to the computer you can see the date in BaseCamp (or other software).
Also note that once you create a waypoint you can change the name to whatever you like, Garmin picks a default name based on the feature you pick off the map (if you use the map) or gives it a number if you use the button. By the way, if you are really looking to follow waypoints on the way back home you might want to look into using tracks to do this.
-Scott