Flailing to solution - Garmin Astro 320 compass wrong - Master Reset

[ohland]

After a few oddities this AM (Belle was in sight, yet compass was 90 degrees off), I came back and rooted about Al Gore's internet, and found mention of retained satellite information futzing things up. I have noticed the Astro 320 taking no time (IMHO) to sync with the satellites for the past few days when powering on. The cleansing fire of the blessed "Master Reset" was mentioned.

Of course, there seems to be no letters of fire five miles high (Fornax, anyone?) on the net, BUT Youtube has at least one video from Espania....

Before doing this, you might want to save tracks into BaseCamp. If you have maps or images on a micro-SD card, you should pull the card before the Master Reset.

With left middle finger and index finger, hold down Enter and Map (use left thumb to grip 320 from bottom). With your right index finger (or thumb, or your nose, etc) push the power button and release. Continue to hold Enter and Map while it boots. Do NOT continue to hold Power, as holding all three only results in a normal boot.

Once into the Master Reset screen, it asks if you really want to nuke everything, and return to factory? I said YES. It takes maybe 1-2 minutes, if that.

I re-paired with my DC50 collar, went in the back yard, put the collar up on a rose trellis, walked out about 40 yards, then calibrated the compass twice (very slow and smooth on the flips). Checked the compass arrow, looked fairly close, walked over so the collar was directly left, about the same distance... Needle pointed pretty much dead on. For those into orienteering, I wish I had something like the lensatic compass, with the slit and moveable mirror to really get it right...

[dakotashooter2]

Very interesting.. I have been having compass problems with my Dakota 20..... I use the project waypoint feature quite a bit for marking game in the field. In the past I have been able to achieve fairly good accuracy doing this. This fall many of the projected waypoints have been off 500 -600 yards or more. The normal waypoints are OK but those made with the compass continue to be off. Calibration has not seemed to help. I might have to try the master reset.

[ohland]

Sent a few support requests in today. First, and MOST annoying- Someone with a Astro or Alpha blew me away today. There was a Dog ID conflict and I lost. What happens is that >you< MUST get your dog close enough to change the ID... So I called Belle off a Rooster, she came back, and the 320 re-assigned her. What? Fer gosh sakes, do a flippin hash of the unique collar ID and the assigned Dog ID. There should be NO excuse for stupid design tricks like that. If the collar can transmit GPS data every 5 seconds, Garmin should be able to jimmy in another transmission with collar ID. Plain bog-poor coding.

Compass was good last night. I powered up the Astro 320 about 30 yards from the car. Compass pointer was very close to being dead on. 150 yards later, I was blown away... Then the dynamic re-assignment. Not even 30 minutes later, I had the pointer telling me Belle was behind me when I could see her in front over 40 yards out.

So... drop micro SD, hard reset, this time I re-applied software ver 4.10 (didn't reload software from WebUpdater last time), went out back, brought up DC50, paired, went out 90ft, re-calibrated oh-so-slowly. Compass pointer within 2-3 degrees pointing at the collar from 90ft out, 3-7 pointing the antenna away from collar, about 2-3 degrees from 60 ft right or left. Now if it stays with that level of performance, I am satisfied. That is if the next time I get blown away does not require a hard reset....