What could be slowing down my HDS-8 so much?
I do have a lot of old trails stored in memory, but I do not have them set to be displayed. I also have a lot of screen captures stored--perhaps 100 of them. Would deleting these old trails and the screen captures help improve the responsiveness of my old HDS first-generation? I experimented to see the effect that these trails might have.
I exported all my waypoints, routes, and trails to a file. I used .GPX format because that is my preference; also .GPX is the only way I can edit the files.
Then I deleted the waypoints, routes, and trails from the HDS. This can be done from the FILES page. You have to hit the MENU button to invoke all the menu options. Unless you do this, there are only two options shown (Export and Details). When you push the MENU button, two more options appear (Delete All and Purge).
- HDS_MenuHidden.png (12.59 KiB) Viewed 3704 times
To delete all the waypoints, routes, and trails, select that option and hit the ENTER button. A warning screen pops up to verify this action is really to be performed:
- HDS_MenuDELETE_ALL.png (24.96 KiB) Viewed 3703 times
To continue with the deletion of the waypoints, hit the YES softkey. After deleting all the waypoints, routes, and trails, these files are not really removed. They are kept on the internal memory of the HDS because they may be the source of data on other connected devices that are synchronizing to this HDS. To get rid of these file permanently, you have to use the Purge option. This actually will remove the files from the HDS memory, freeing up space.
- HDS_MenuPURGE.png (21.34 KiB) Viewed 3703 times
Again, the Delete All and Purge options are found by pushing the MENU button when on the FILES page. It is not particularly intuitive that those options are there.
As a result of deleting all the waypoints, routes, and trails from the HDS, the user-interface speed improved. I was going to make some recordings of the two states, but the sunlight was in a bad position and I could not record the screen very well. But the speed-up was noticeable.
Now the problem was to restore some of the data, particularly the waypoints. I have about 70 waypoints that I like to always have available on the HDS. Since I had just deleted ALL waypoints, they were gone. Of course, I had saved them in my exported file. The problem with the file management on the HDS is that everything is exported in one file. To restore only a part of that file means that some method of editing that big extracted file is needed.
I also discovered another gotcha in the HDS operating system. The exported .GPX file was 11.5-Megabytes. The HDS could not IMPORT this file. It ran out of memory in the process and crashed. It was fortunate (for me) that I used the .GPX format because I could then edit the 11.5-MBit file with my text editor. I separated the file into about eight smaller files: one for waypoints, a very small file, and the rest for the many trails I had, some of them with thousands of points and taking up several mega-bytes themselves.
Then I was able to IMPORT the waypoint data. I had all my favorite waypoints back. And I could import the individual trails, which I tested. They worked, too. But then I immediately deleted the trails I had just imported.
The bottom line for improving the speed of the user interface: avoid collecting a lot of long trails with thousands of track points. It will slow down the HDS to a v-e-r-y--s-l-o-o-o-o-o-w pace, even if you do not select them to be displayed. Export them, delete them, and purge them. Having many waypoints may also affect the performance in a similar manner.
I am guessing that perhaps the reason the trails have an effect on speed of the HDS even if not displayed is because the chart plotter may be calculating all of those points and lines anyways, and the option to not display is just shutting off that layer of the graphics drawing routine. You can see this because if you select the option to display them, they just appear instantly, without much of a delay. I think they have already been plotted and calculated, which takes up all the processor time, and then at the moment of drawing the screen they either get displayed or they don't. So they penalize you either way.