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Birdseye thresholds (at least for me)

phesby
Thought I'd summarize my experience with Birdseye so far in the hopes that Garmin development is able to use this info.

I'm running Basecamp on an HP laptop with 32-bit Vista and 3GB of RAM and am transferring the Birdseye files to an Oregon 300. I had previously loaded 5 JNX files on my Oregon where each file contained about 20k images and was about 300 MB. Last weekend I started the process of trying to load 5 additional JNX files of similar size. Downloading the five new files to Basecamp took a total of approximately 75 hours and required a few reboots along the way.

So now I have 10 JNX files in Basecamp and started the process of trying to transfer the five new files to the Oregon. If I tried to transfer more than one file Basecamp would crash, so I started to do one at a time. I got the first three files to go, but each time Basecamp would get slower and slower and after the second and third files it crashed just after the transfer completed.

At this point I have 8 JNX files (20k images each, ~300MB each) on my Oregon (I'm saving these to an 8GB microSD card). Now when I start Basecamp and try to either click on the last two files or try to start the transfer of the last two files Basecamp crashes every time. I tried to clear everything out of memory that I could and started with about 900MB RAM in use, but Basecamp quickly chews through the remaining 2.1 MB and goes down.

So looks like in my environment that the 8 JNX files is the limit that I can download.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    I am running BaseCamp under Vista 64 with 6GB memory. I now have about 24 BirdsEye files for a total of almost 6GB imagery. I don't see the crashes and slowdowns that 32 bit users are experiencing.

    Have not tried sending all of these to my Oregon yet however, I initially sent 3 files for a total of about 450MB just to test things and the only issue I had was the lack of program feedback to let me know how the transfer was going and when it finished. This weekend I will try sending all the files and see what happens.

    But from what I've read here in multiple threads, it appears that BirdsEye is happier in a 64 bit environment.
  • 0
    That's a pretty beefy home system and probably not typical of what most users are running. Per Garmin's Birdseye page the min requirements are:

    PC
    Windows® XP SP3 or newer
    1 GB RAM
    at least 1024 x 768 display
    USB port
    Internet access
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Well I make my own maps in a variety of format and use programs like GlobalMapper which benefit from the memory and CPU speed. Although possibly "beefy", it is just an off-the-shelf Dell Inspiron 530 that I bought for $650 at Best Buy last year, so I wouldn't consider it a particularly high end model.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Today BirdsEye started acting slow so I decided to quit and reboot since it has run constantly for over 2 weeks. After quitting, I noticed that my Trend antivirus appear to be stuck in a loop scanning for a number of hours, so I thought that might be what was causing my whole system to slow down.

    After re-booting, BaseCamp took forever to start up and seemed hung on a blank window. The process was showing 1.6GB memory use and not responding, so I terminated it.

    Starting BaseCamp again I watched memory use climb steadily before the window even opened. When it got to about 1GB, the window opened, and around 1.6GB it drew everything and started responding normally, meaning I could easily pan and zoom the image. Memory use continued to grow and has topped out at about 2.25GB so far (I am currently downloading a 275MB image).

    I'm guessing that the slow startup could be related to disk read time for all the cached data. Elsewhere on these forums I saw a post from one of the developers saying that the program is disk-bound and if you want to maximize response you should get the fastest possible drive.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Well I have finally reached the limit where BaseCamp runs really show and uses huge amounts of memory. Evidently this is what others are seeing, but the threshold is higher on my machine due to the 64bit OS and/or large amount of memory.

    I have a total of 7.53GB of BirdsEye imagery in BaseCamp and have just finished moving all the .jnx files to a folder on my computer. I passed the limit of my 4GB microSD card, so I have been copying the files to a folder on my hard drive as I go. Just now backing up the data on a 16GB card that I was using for something else so I can re-purpose it for BirdsEye.

    When transferring the files to the card, BaseCamp gobbled up huge amounts of memory and slowed my whole system down. It was using 3.7GB of RAM and as much as 65% CPU at times. I also had a couple crashes/freezes.

    [edit]
    All 7.5GB is now on the card and it works great on my Oregon 400t. I have deleted about half of the images from Basecamp and it's now using less memory (1.7GB) and is more responsive. Downloading some more imagery now and everything is working so far.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    The memory consumption is one of our top issues. We're working on making BaseCamp usable both for power users like OSTROFF01, and others that have run into slow downs and crashes at much lower levels.
  • 0
    ZHENKEL - Great to hear this is a top priority. The Birdseye feature is very useful in the field, so once the memory issues (and hopefully download speeds) are improved with Basecamp I look forward to downloading much more imagery.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Sounds good! BirdsEye is really great and will be even greater as BaseCamp matures.
  • 0
    Downloaded 3.0.3 tonight and memory usage is much better! After starting up BC and connecting my Garmin (with 8 250-300 MB JNX files loaded) the BC memory use went up to about 1 MB. I transferred two more JNX files successfully and memory use went up only to about 1.1 MB.

    Thanks Garmin!
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    BC memory use went up to about 1 MB. I transferred two more JNX files successfully and memory use went up only to about 1.1 MB.


    I'm guessing that you mean GB and not MB... unless Garmin has really worked some miracles in this update! :D