Birdseye thresholds (at least for me)

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
    Just installed the new version and I am seeing the same thing. It starts up much faster. Watching in task manager, the old version did not even display the splash screen until over 600MB was allocated; this happened around 300MB with the new version. Window did not open on the old version until around 1GB was allocated and the new version was only using 600MB for this.

    Have not worked very much with it yet, but I am also seeing max memory use around the 1GB level. Sending BIrdsEye to the card now shows a little bar-graph for progress next to the file folder icon (although the transfer was still pretty slow).

    Keep up the good work - and thanks for addressing so many user concerns with the update! :)
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    One other little trick is to just start up the new version once. Let it load completely then shut BaseCamp down.

    On the second start-up the memory should be a little bit lower. There are a few extra steps we need to do just once to optimize the database. Once that's done you should be about as good as we can get for now.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    That's interesting. I had just quit Basecamp and restarted my computer when I read this. Starting Basecamp for the second time, it displayed the splash screen quickly and a blank window. It allocated about 436MB of memory and then the program stopped responding without ever drawing the window contents. After about 5 or 10 minutes I killed it and started the program again.

    This time it opened up normally. I had been in the middle of a BirdsEye download that appeared to hang earlier; I tried to resume but Basecamp claimed the download was complete. I'm now downloading that image again and Basecamp is using about 800MB of memory. Hey - thanks for adding the warning screen about how downloading again will erase any existing map tiles!

    Regarding RAM use, is there some happy medium where those of us who have plenty of memory can put it to use? If it speeds the program up to use more RAM, that's what it's for. :D
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    I noticed the same issues with the previous basecamp. After uploading current BaseCamp, computer does not crash or freeze anymore.

    My buddies with Delorme laughed at me. I told them after Garmin gets all the bugs fixed, watch out.

    They are no longer laughing.
    Thanks Garmin
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Please see Zhenkel's post about not upgrading to 3.0.3. I am seeing some problems myself now. The other day, basecamp wouldn't open, it got as far as drawing the blank window then hung so I killed it after about 10 minutes. I then tried again and saw the same behavior after 10 minutes. Went away for about a half hour and when I came back it had finally opened and was working normally.

    Garmin is doing a great job with the updates, but this is one you should probably pass on (by their own admission)...