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OK, I got the Garmin Alpha back in August and everything has been peachy until this past weekend. Two things happened.
1. one of the 4 collars (TT 15) I was running lost GPS signal and never got it back. Anyone else seen this problem? Is there a way to "reboot" the collar to help it start receiving the signal without catching the dog and turning the collar off and back on? None of the other collars had this problem.
2. Have started noticing all of the dogs disappear from the screen randomly. I can go into the dogs setup and restore defaults and they will come back. Has become a more of a nuisance recently.
A little background. I updated the Alpha unit to the most recent version a couple weeks ago (version 4.40). Had a couple hunts that had zero issues and then this past Saturday where it was kind of a pain. Also I have tried to update the collars using the Garmin webupdater and it always tells me there is an update available no matter if I just ran it or not. I have a friend that I helped update his unit and the web updater says his collars have the most recent version of the software. Mine ALWAYS say there is an update available. Is there a way to tell what version of the software is on the collar? I love the unit, just a couple bugs to get worked out. Thanks for the help!
Just be sure to write down your track and train codes so that if one does loose signal you can just remove it and add it back by putting in the train code without having to be near the collar. The collar keeps the same codes and Id unless you change it.
Did have a problem with one of my Alpha collars last Saturday when hunting with a club. Normally turn on all my collars after Hunt master draws up a hunt and so do other dog drivers. If a collar does not receive satellite uplink from info screen or interferes, I will delete that collar and re add, again going back to Info screen to make sure collar has satellite uplink before turning that dog loose. This one collar did receive satellite uplink until delete and re entered. No interfere was ever show at all day with this collar. That afternoon, a red triangle shown up on my alpha screen ( two others also ) point to the collar location. This location was correct for other hunters dog( same club) who had the same tracking code #. The other point was the location off my dog about 2 miles away. Has any experienced this before ? It was suggested that we delete all collars ( no preload # ) and re enter at the start of the hunt.
I had the dog on the screen for a couple of hours and then the collar dropped the GPS signal and just never picked it back up. Once I caught the dog and rebooted the collar it started working again just fine. I've gone through and reset and updated everything. I still have an issue where I can update the collar to the latest firmware and the garmin webupdater will always say there is an update available so I don't know if my collars are updated or not. They go through the whole process and beep and turn off when the updated says the install process is complete. Be nice if it told me there were no more updates like it does for the alpha unit though.
Call Bill Grey at Outdoor Dog Supply... They will be more than glad to try to help you get to the bottom of this...There # is 757 498-0101... These are the best people Ive ever dealt with on Garmin stuff... Hope this helps some...
Glitches like this is why I still run beeper collars... GPS collars are computers and they will glitch... just a thought...