Alpha

[South Texan]

Jay
You & your friend that's running 20
dog's on your alpha, yall's alpha doesn't freeze up when you shock a dog when you are tracking that many dogs?

I have 2 alphas and they both do it.
Robbie

[peachcreek]

Mine does the same blackout deal and it is always does it when I am on the compass screen. I don't have Birdseye or an extra SD card. I usually track 6 dogs. Here lately I have been having connection issues alot. One thing I have noticed is when running with someone using astro my system will cause the astro to not track over about three to four hundred yards. If I turn my collars off his astro will work like normal??? Garmin surely has some issues. I hope they are still working on some updates to hopefully make these high dollar jewels work a little better.... Good luck

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk 2

[JayD]

Robbie,
I have not had any issues with the Alpha turning off or locking up when I shock hounds. My hunting partner has not either. We are only seeing the problems when we are on the compass screen scrolling thru the dogs at the bottom so we can check the distance.

My biggest worries with the Alpha doing this is that(1) we hunt on highways and if a hound gets close to a road and my Alpha is turned off I could get a hound get killed and #2 is if my hounds are running trash and I need to shock them and can't cause the Alpha is turned off.

I still like my system and I have sold 5 more units for Garmin by people seeing and hunting with mine but this problem needs to be corrected quickly.

I am going to call Garmin and ask to speak to an Eng. tomorrow, all of us need to call and complain and not all rely on Buddy and they will see that there is more than one case and in different areas this is happening.

Phone # for Garmin is 1-800-800-1020 which is for the U.S.

Jay

[South Texan]

Jay
I totally agree!

I also like this system over anything else that garmin has come out with. If they could get this problem solved the alpha would be hard to beat.

I have garmin's number. It is in my phone & I talk to them regularly about problems I'm having. Most of the time they are helpful but not on this issue. They told me on this issue they thought two different dogs were interfering with one another causing the problem. I went in and separated the ID's manually on all 20 dogs. Didn't help a bit!

I think Buddy is closer to calling the issue on this problem than garmin. I also know he has a better contact with garmin than I do. He can get things done that I can't. That is why I stepped in on your post, just to let Buddy know your not the only one having these problems.

I'm doing a few things now to my alpha that Buddy mentioned above. If I solve some of the problems i'll keep you posted.
Robbie

[Buddyw]

I agree, Calling Garmin is definitely a good step, That way they can log issues and keep track of them.

I've had mixed experiences with the customer service, A couple of them are outstanding and seam very knowledgeable, and some are not helpful at all. But at least every call is logged and reported so they can find issues.

I tell my customers that I would like to know as much about these things as possible and make it a point to try and fix their issues best I can. Mostly because some time somewhere another customer will be calling me and It's really nice when I can help them out.

Robbie, I'll call you tomorrow. I would like to duplicate your issue if I can or swap you out so I can have one of your units to mess around with.

[JayD]

[South Texan]

Jay
I'm downloading another sd card right now with a lot less birdseye on it. I'm going to try that & see what happens. I'll keep you posted.
Robbie

[JayD]

All,
I did some testing this afternoon. What I did is I downloaded a full 16 gb card to my dads Alpha( which he has not had any problems) and I have tried to get the box to shutdown but it will not. Next I was using my Alpha and I was trying to find a specific collar and used the tone button then I scrolled over on the bottom of the list to look at another collar and the box went out, just like it has been. I turned box back on did the samething toned a collar and went to scroll thru on compass page and box cut off again. The only thing different between my Alpha and my dads Alpha is that I have the shocking ability and he doesn't. When I get time I will add his box to allow shocking and do the same test. Now with this being said my Alpha has shutdown before without toning a collar as well. The box did shutdown as soon as I did tone the collar and went to scroll that was the only thing I did after the Alpha powered up.Tried it again while typing this up and did not happen the first time but tried it the second time and it shutdown. This is the most consistent results I have gotten it to shutdown.I will try my dads box hopefully tomorrow.



Thanks
Jay

[JayD]

One more note I took my card out of the Alpha and repeated using the tone button then going down to scroll thru the collars and about the 2nd or 3rd time the Alpha turned off again without birdseye.

[South Texan]

The alpha unit with very little birdseye and tracking 16 dogs kept crashing out as I would scroll through the dogs on the compass page. Also slow response. I stopped tracking Henry's 7 dogs on this unit and just left my 9 dogs on it. Didn't crash as often and a faster response. It seems like the more dogs your tracking the more it crashes and slower response.

My spare alpha with lots of birdseye but only tracking Henry's 7 dogs would crash out when scrolling through the dogs on the compass page and slow response. (This unit has 20 dogs entered into it but only tracking 7 when this happened.)

I'm scratching my head on this one!
Robbie

[peachcreek]

Sounds like they need to add some ram to the alphas....

I personally don't think it has much to do with the number of dogs or Birdseye etc... Mine will shut off sometimes even when I am tracking 4-5 dogs and I don't have a card just run the factory map, but it has always shut off while in the compass screen.....

[njharnde]

This system has been horrible! It locks up at least a couple times each outing! I feel that garmin has truly dropped the ball on this system.

1. the system when loaded with the same amount of new birdseye as I had on my old system just plain crashes constantly.

2. if I load more than 4.5 mb of info using the same jpex numbers as I had on the 320 on the card it crashes allot!

3. we took the info cut it in half! Meaning each upload was half the size but the same amount of info. It will run. But still crashes about three times a outing.

4. if I get ahold of one more rep from garmin that says it was "the first time they have heard of the issue" I will flip my lid!

The shocking end of this system is nice. But when you have it constantly shutting down it is aggravating. I used to have full faith in my system! Now I just cringe and hope to god it turns back on! I currently own 7 garmin products and am truly saddened by this one!

[jimmyd]

Has this issue been figured out?

[chase]

Hi, i have a garmin alpha, and have had it for about 1 year... with same problems..

[Buddyw]

Go to your archived Track log and remove all the archived tracks on the device and see if that helps.

On the device you need to do them indivdually and it can take along time. I would recommend putting it in USB mode and connecting to your computer.

In the Garmin folder you can find the Archive folder and it's easier to delete them quickly that way.

Buddy