I’ve escaped the oven in Arizona and I’m in central Utah riding mountain trails. Finally, I’m putting the 700i through normal abuse for many hours over many miles on my ATV.
I have the AMPS rugged powered mount using RAM handlebar mounting hardware. I have it in landscape orientation, panic button up. It’s been in temperatures between 24 and 83 F the last 2 days, between 5,000 and 10,000 ft. I’ve beaten the crap out of it over some nasty sections of road and observed a few malfunctions:
Three times I’ve had the unit power off. I didn’t see it happen or notice a warning prompt and chime as if I’d pulled it from the cradle. I just glanced at it and the screen was off and not responding to touch. It didn’t seem to coincide with extra bumpy terrain, it was just random. I pushed the power button and it booted up to the InReach “Skip or Next”. Pressing Skip seems slow to respond to touch and has been so, in general, since the last firmware update anytime I power up.
Back to the power-off glitch: I confess I shortened the cable between Garmin’s voltage converter and the cradle, inserting a 3 wire inline connector so I could unplug the cradle to swap between toys or use the 600 mount in its place (with a separate 2-wire connector for 12V) The 700 series mount voltage converter reduces battery 12V to 5V to power the cradle. It also has a relay to send the 5V, controlled by a grey wire whose 4.3V goes low when the GPS is mounted.....hence the need for the 3-wire connector (red and black heavier gauge wires with grey) Obviously, I’m not using the serial data wires or headphones in my “power only” wiring. All that said, my wiring is solder and shrink tube and the connectors ohmed out and connected solidly. I’m trying to imagine a brief hiccup in power causing a power off. If the 700i freaked out then got voltage again when I hit another bump, wouldn’t it just stay on? I think my wiring is solid but maybe someone who hasn’t chopped the mount cable will report the same glitch.
Also, I’m on the Map screen most of the time and, just like the 680t, I’ll look down and have a pin on the map I didn’t ask for. Today I even saw some menu screens as if I’d touched the 3 bars or Map select shortcut. Once again it doesn’t seem to be directly related to bone-jarring road sections. (Same applied to the 680t)
I’ve followed the Compass freezing thread and whenever I checked that screen it seemed accurate (20-30mph, twists & turns). When I took a break I calibrated the compass for the first time and it behaved while I ate lunch and spun around some but I didn’t hike with it for a good test. Compass settings in default (Auto)
