UPDATE: Here’s my hands on review of the eTrex 20, including an evaluation of it’s performance.
Well this is the coolest thing I’ve seen on a GPS receiver in a long time. I picked up the new eTrex 20 yesterday and was happy to see that, as advertised, it promptly locked on to not only GPS satellites, but Russian GLONASS birds as well.
As far as I know, this is the first consumer receiver to feature GLONASS in the US. I know there is at least one smartphone available in Russia with it, but I’m not sure what else is out there.
We’ve seen recent reports suggesting GLONASS will improve reception in northerly latitudes and urban canyons. If you’ve got an eTrex to test in those environments, we’d love to hear from you. Chime in below!
About Rich Owings
That is cool Rich! Wave of the future i am sure.
Rick
Forgot to ask: On the graphical display of sat location, i assume the colored sats are GPS and the non-colored sats are Glonass. Correct?
They are all in color (assuming you’ve selected Menu > Multicolor from the Satellite screen). The bottom row shows GLONASS. In the circle graphic, all locked satellites are shown in color.
And yes, very cool indeed.
Rich
I have been using the Trimble Geo 6000 (Glonass capable) for several month and used it in Chicago and NYC and have been very please with the reception (no down time because of lack of SV’s). I was in Peter Cooper Village courtyard surrounded by 20 story buildings and locked in on a minimum 9 SV’s. The data lined up great on the aerials with no post processing.
Nice! Hey, good to hear from you Mike.
Next time you are in Charlotte stop in an see Greg and I and we can geek out with trees in the arboretum and GPSr (professional and recreation)
Sounds like fun. I’d like that.
Any way to use the device without GLONASS or is there no way to change that preference?
Jason: You can set it* to use GPS only (under Setup -> System), along with disabling WAAS/EGNOS. Interestingly though there’s no way to set it to GLONASS only.
* Well, at least the eTrex 30, but I assume this is true on the 10 and 20 models too.
Yes, it’s true on the 20 too and should be on the 10 as well.
The first device suporting Glonass in the US ? Not sure …
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
(Look at the Location section)
😉
But etrex sould be the first with SBAS (WAAS/ENGOS) and Glonass. And not so expensive.