Motorman355

After much thought, I finally sprung for a GPS unit. Shannon's postings pushed me over the ledge. I got a sweet deal for a used Garmin GPSMAP 76S on e-bay. I mostly plan on using it for geocaching and some hiking. I was surprised to find on geocashing.com is a cashe hidden in the park out my back door. I manually entered the coordinates from the website into the GPS. Inside of being a stone's throw away, the cache was showing to be hidden somewhere between Ennis and Rosser, TX, some 53 miles away.

I entered several other coordinates for my neighborhood and they all showed up in the same area out in the sticks. My starting point pretty much is dead center of where I live, it is just the way points I enter are off. I've calebrated the compass, did a new location set up, and updated the time zone. Still I'm clueless.

The manual is not much help. There is not a trouble shooting section. Could it be the way I enter the way points?

Way points at geocaching.com look like this;
N 32° 47.436 W 096° 46.983
Way points on the GPSMAP 76S look like;
N 32.47436o
W096.46983o

Does the decimal point or where the degree symbol is located make any difference? Any help would be much appreciated.

Motorman355

Shannon

There are different coordinate systems and they are not interchangeable. You can't just drop off decimals or move them.

If you find coordinates online that you need to enter into your GPS unit, and it requires a different coordinate system, then use this GPS coordinate converter to convert to the proper units.

Anything else, and you'll be routed to who-knows-where using the wrong coordinate system.

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- Shannon Moore
Your Host @ WildTexas.com
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Alchemist2000

Shannon has given you an excellent website to convert between different formats for the location. However, it will probably be easier if you set the format of the coordinates in the gps to match what you are commonly using. As you already noticed, the coordinates from geoaching.com are listed as

N 32° 47.436

which is degrees, minutes, and fractions of minutes, or hddd° mm.mmm' If you go to the location tab in the setup menu of your gps, you should be able to select a location format that looks something like hddd° mm.mmm' Try selecting that. Then you can enter the coordinates directly from geocaching.com without first converting them at another website.

(disclaimer: I have a Garmin gps, but it is not a GPSMAP 76S. Without having your particular gps in front of me, I cannot be 100% sure that I am telling you the right thing in a way that makes sense. However, I downloaded the manual for your gps from the Garmin website, http://www.garmin.com/manuals/GPSMAP...nersManual.pdf I think what you need is covered on page 52 of the manual.)

Good luck. If it still does not work, post again and I will try to help you figure it out (or some kind soul with a GPSMAP will tell us both what you are doing wrong. )

Motorman355

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. I finally found the setting to make the formats of my unit and the coordinates posted on gc.com match just by flipping through all of the windows. The manual for the GPSMAP 76S really stinks. It is not user friendly for the first time buyer. I was beginning to think I had bought a used lemon on e-bay. I got within a few feet of my first cache in the park behind me, but I was being muggled. I will try again later. Thanks again.

Alchemist2000

Yea!! I agree that the manual for the gps is bad. Fortunately, once you get things setup, you probably won't have to bother with it again!

Good luck on finding the cache. If you have not stumbled upon it already, I would highly recommend the site www.texasgeocaching.com It is the connection to the geocaching community in Texas, particularly for the north Texas area. I think you will find everyone there to be friendly and helpful.

lphilpot

Although this isn't a continuation of the earlier conversation, it is about a GPSMap 76S, so I'll post it here.

I just noticed the power button (red light bulb symbol) on my GPSMap 76S is slightly lower than the others, i.e., it sticks up about half as far as all the other buttons.

Can any other 76S owners confirm if this is normal, or has something shifted in my unit?

It's working fine and I've not mistreated it at all. Maybe that's the way it's always been - I just never noticed before.

Thanks.

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Len Philpot
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Shannon

I wish I could remember from my old unit, but I haven't had it for a year or more now and my memory's not that good!

From a quick Googling, it looks like the power button might indeed be inset slightly deeper/lower than the other buttons.

Check it out here -- http://images.google.com/images?q=garmin%20gpsmap%2076s

Hope this helps!

__________________
- Shannon Moore
Your Host @ WildTexas.com
http://www.twitter.com/ageekgal

lphilpot

You may well be right - A number of those photos seem to show it slightly inset (which makes sense, since it's the power button). I don't know why I didn't think to Google-image search for it... I use Google image search on a regular basis. At least it makes me feel a little better.

Thanks!

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Len Philpot
l e n @ p h i l p o t . o r g (no spaces)
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