mapping on my Garmin 1450 not correctly showing my location

Have you done a hard reset after the map and FW updates?

Just followed the directions from the Garmin site during the uploads. Don't recall any directions suggesting a hard reset. If do a hard reset will my custom POI be affected?

Have you checked how many BIRDS are visible by your unit when parked in front of your house?

Is your house surrounded by trees with dense foliage or tall buildings?

When there is no clear reception or environmental interference the accuracy of the GPSr diminishes.

Signal strength is excellent. No dense foliage or tall buildings.

You said to be satisfied with the 1450 and the only issue is with your home location, that narrows down the problem to the location of your house and not the 1450

Funny If the home address location is not showing correctly has me concerned that other locations may be off especially when I may need them.

Then, route to a nearby POI and see if the location has the same level of inaccuracy. It's easy enough to determine that, right?

You took the words out of my fingers...

Before the route to a nearby location to check it, make sure the location has the correct coords. Wouldn't want to skew the results, would we?

Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ...

Thank you. I will check tomorrow. About that hard reset, is that something I should do if the new location I check is wrong? Will a hard reset interfere with my custom loaded POIs?

Thanks

The first thing to do is make sure the POI location coordinates are correct, right? If they're out then the check is useless.

If you really want to do it right, go to a location and park right in front of it. Save the location. Drive 5 blocks away, and then route back to it. See what the result is. You'll have an answer right away.

As for the loaded POI's, yes, it will wipe them unless they're on the sd card. But, those can be reloaded easily enough.

Your favourites can be saved by copying the Current.gpi file, renaming it to 'temp' and then copying it back to the nuvi where you found it.

I had a 350 and have 855 and a 3790lmt. All three show my house address in the wrong location. The problem lies with the builder and the city. The city didn't locate the house where the builder had indicated it on his Plat. I don't know if that can be corrected by Garmin.

I will try doing the 5 block test and see what happens. I'll post back to advise of the outcome.

Thank you.

rthibodaux - The nuvi200 I also own reports correctly. I'm going to do the 5 block test as suggeted.

Thank you.

If the 200 and 1450 are side-by-side and you press the vehicle icon to get your current position, do they both show the same value? If they do, then I suspect the difference is in the maps.

When I input my address in the Garmin GPS, it show the location at the end of the stree. When I do a Where I Am from in side my house, it show the incorrect house number, I am at 2415 and the GPS show 2473. I will have to try the rest of the houses on my street and see if they are off.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocoding

especially the section titled "Complicating Factors:"

Finally, several caveats on using interpolation:

Most interpolation implementations will produce a point as their resulting "address" location. In reality, the physical address is distributed along the length of the segment, i.e. consider geocoding the address of a shopping mall - the physical lot may run quite some distance along the street segment (or could be thought of as a two-dimensional space-filling polygon which may front on several different streets - or worse, for cities with multi-level streets, a three-dimensional shape that meets different streets at several different levels) but the interpolation treats it as a singularity.

If you like tables and graphs, this might even be more helpful:

http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/2/1/10

Click Figures 3, 4, 5 in the above link for detailed visuals.

Box Car has put us on the right track for this post because there are really two possible issues:
1. the GPS is not accurately recognizing its position
2. the maps the GPS uses have inaccuracies.

As Box Car suggests, get two or more GPS units (find a friend with one or maybe go to a store) and see what they say their current location is. If they are close, then the GPS unit is OK. Another possible solution is to drive to some established NGS location and compare your GPS to it (see http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_county.prl)

Please do not expect the coordinates of addresses on your GPS to always be accurate. Most will be right on, BUT some will be way, way off. The mapping companies do the best they can but they do not drive to every address and record the coordinates.

Other threads now active have questioned the routing that a GPS takes between two addresses. This is part and parcel of the same map inaccuracy problem. If the GPS is routing between two addresses whose coordinates are off, then the streets used may be quite different from what a knowledgeable person would use.

number 2. Google, Mapquest and Map Google have it right. Only the GPS has it wrong.

I'm assuming you are using the updated 2012.30 USA & Canada map on the 1450LMT.

What map are you using on the 200W that displays correctly?

muell9k asked, "What map are you using on the 200W that displays correctly?" To answer that question, the following questions need to be asked.

• Is his 200W a 1GB unit or 2GB unit?
• Did he purchase map updates for the 200W?
• Did he know before finding this site how to load portions of the map onto the SD Card?

If he didn't purchase map updates and didn't know how to load portions of the map to the SD card, then his last map version would be no later than CNNANT 2009 and thus should fit, in its entirety, on the internal memory, regardless of whether his 200W was a 1GB or 2GB model.

With a 1GB 200W, the last map that I recall fitting completely on the device with extra voices removed was 2009.40 or 2010.10. All subsequent maps required a SD card. 2GB 200W receivers wouldn't encounter space issues until 2012.40 or 2013.10, based upon my predictions for the memory capacity of the 1xxx units, which have 2GB.

Other than near your home, when you are driving down the road to other locations does the 1450 show you on the road, without saying "Recalculating ..." all of the time? Does the GPS reach an intersection or turn the same time your vehicle does? If so your fine.

I wouldn't worry about your home address being down the street. I'm in my neighbors house too. I just sat in my driveway and waited for the accuracy to get real low and marked my driveway for my HOME Favorite setting. The map has inaccurate addressing in many, many locations.

With the 1450 I pick a location and entered the "Where am I" function. I then saved the location (coordinates used) as part of Favorites" as "Test Location." Then I drove about 1/4 mile away and had the GPS map me back. The 1450 was right on.

Drove home, when I pulled in the driveway the car in the 1450 showed that I was driving on a street about 60ft away and the banner at the top of the screen also said I was on the street 60ft away. Then drove way and returned using the coordinates for my HOME function and not my address. The 1450 showed that I arrived home when I was in fact home but then showed me pulling up the street about 60ft away.

Pick an address across town and saved it as "Favorite," then used the 1450 to map me there. The 1450 was right on.

Used both my 1450 and 200 side by side while in front of my home. At first when I fired up both units the cars on both GPS accurately showed where I was but when I mapped both to my home using my ADDRESS, the 1450 said I was arriving but also showed that I had another 40ft to go.

In all test incidences the car on the 1450 always correctly showed that I was on the roadway.

To answer a previous poster, I uploaded the new map to my 1450 correctly. On my 1450 I am using map update CN North America NT 2012.30 (US & Canada). On my 200 I am using CN North America NT 2010.10, (East Region). As mentioned the 200 data space could not handle the full US mapping.

So as some have suggested, the mapping near my home may be off.

Comments or suggestions.

The 1450 does not say recalculating when I'm on the road. So as you have suggested, looks like the mapping is off and I won't worry about it.

Thank you.

What I do when I put an address in favorite is that when it ask for the name, I put the house number at the end of the indivdual's name. This way I make sure that when I arrive that the house number match.

Let your GPS lock in and when your accuracy is pretty low tap the vehicle on your map and get your coordinates. Plug them into Google Maps and see where you go.

I had the same issue a few years back on an old Lowrance iFinder. The map had my whole town fine except for the 3 streets towards my home. They were half scale so I had to drive off into a field, on screen anyway.

Google Maps will probably show you right where you actually are. So you just might have to park at your neighbor's home for a while, on screen anyway.

Great idea, I will begin using it.

Thanks

Park at my neighbor's home, but what will my wife say

I knew there was something we couldn't fix here.

Happy New Year!

OK, did everything that was suggested to fix. Even did a hard reset. The 1450 is about 60ft off. When I am at a corner about to make a turn the gps notes that I have 60ft more to travel. I even picked a destination across town and every intersection where I had to make a turn was about 60ft off.

It seems there are several of us who own a 1450 that are having the same problem.

Any more suggestions as I plan to write or call support for this Garmin.

Only suggestion I have is to drive slower...

I've never heard of this 60 feet off. I'm curious, if you navigate to a destination that you have to take a right turn on a given street that is 60 feet short what happens if you come from the opposite direction and have to take a left turn onto the same street? Are you still 60 feet short or 60 feet closer?

When I come to a turn it shows that I am to travel 60' more before I was to turn. I even stopped at the corner to give the GPS time to register and it shows either 40' or 60' but mostly always 60' yet to drive before I should make the turn.

AND when I'm sitting in my driveway it shows that I am about 60' away perpendicular to my street an another street near my home

I didn't there are 2 threads going at the same time with the same problem and I couldn't figure out where my post was going. Or why it kept looking slightly different.

Maybe I'll be smarter in the New Year.

I will have to do the opposite street thing tomorrow. But this issue was the same across town at all intersections.