Garmin Astro DC-30 GPS Dog Tracking System
Garmin Astro DC-30 GPS Dog Tracking System
- GPS Receiver:
- Barometric Altimeter And Brand New 3-Axis Electronic Compass
- Scratch Resistant Lens On The 2.6-Inch Color Tft Display With Backlit Display & Keypad
- Resolution: 240 X 160 Pixels
- Weight: 6.4 Ounces Without Batteries
Gps, astro combo unitAmazon.com Product Description The Garmin Astro GPS Dog Tracking System lets hunters and sportsmen spend their time looking for game, rather than looking for their dog. This unique dog-tracking system pinpoints your dog’s position and shows you exactly where he is, even when you can’t see or hear him. This system includes a bright, color-screen handheld Astro 220 GPS device and a wireless transmitter, called the DC 20. Simple and easy to use, you just take the Astro outdoors and turn on both units to acquire a GPS satellite signal, then attach the DC 20 to your dog, either via the included neoprene harness or by threading it onto an existing 1-inch e-collar, and you’re ready to go.
The Astro system features a bright color-screen handheld GPS device and a wireless transmitter. View larger.
View the Astro minisite
Tired of searching for your hunting dog in tall grass or dense cover? The Astro is the answer. View larger. The DC 20
List Price: $ 599.99
Price: $ 499.99
Garmin Astro 220 Dog Tracking GPS Bundle with DC40 Wireless Transmitter Collar
- Bundle includes Astro 220 handheld GPS device, DC 40 dog GPS collar, and accessories
- Rugged, orange polyurethane DC 40 collar pinpoints your dog’s position every 5 seconds
- Astro handheld has all the features of Garmin’s top-line handheld outdoor devices
- Accepts downloaded map detail, including TOPO maps with elevation information
- Barimetric altimeter provides elevation profiles for climbers and hikers
Tired of searching for your hunting dog in tall grass or dense cover? Now you can leave the hunting entirely to him. Astro is the premier high sensitivity GPS-enabled dog tracking system for sporting dogs. This unique system pinpoints your dog’s position and shows you exactly where he is, even when you can’t see or hear him.Tired of searching for your hunting dog in tall grass or dense cover? Now you can leave the hunting entirely to him. Astro is the premier high sensitivity GPS-enabled dog tracking system for sporting dogs. This unique system pinpoints your dog’s position and shows you exactly where he is, even when you can’t see or hear him. Release the hounds and know what they’re up to with Astro, the GPS-enabled dog tracking system for hunters. The rugged, all-weather DC40 collar combines a high-sensitivity GPS receiver and VHF antenna into an all-in-one transmitter. The Astro handheld has all the feature
List Price: $ 649.99
Price: $ 649.99
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Noodles
July 16, 2011I can’t recommend this highly enough!,
I purchased the Astro 220/DC30 in May of 2009 for my Samoyed who if you have ever owned a sled dog (Samoyeds, Huskies, etc), you know all too well their fondness for roaming, chasing, and running all the while forgetting to listen (ignoring is more like it!) for you calling them!
I now feel extremely comfortable when my dog is off leash on hikes, as the Astro 220 does as advertised. I know whether my dog is on the move, treeing some sort of critter, or resting. I also know what direction she is located and approximately how far away she is. It’s also come in handy finding my way back to the car a couple of times.
On the occasions that I have had to retrieve her the GPS/compass has been 100% on the mark each time. It saves me a lot of time wandering through the woods aimlessly calling her with that slightly panicked edge to my voice!
So far the collar has withstood several swims, miles of terrain, lots of digging into boroughs, and rough-housing with other dogs.
As someone else mentioned, make sure the units sync up before you release your dog. I sync them off the dog, then put the collar on her. Carry spare AA batteries with you. I get about 24 hours out of a set on the Astro. You don’t want to be DOA when you are looking for your pup. The collar however gives me about 15 hours on a recharge with the 5 second refresh.
Aside from all that, if your dog is a hard-running type, you will be amazed at how much ground they can cover in an amazingly short time.
If there was a wish-list for this product I would say some sort of rechargeable battery for the handset would for me make it perfect. A second-tier wish would be to make it slightly smaller.
I am sure I will buy whatever the next-gen of this product is as it can only go from Very Good to Excellent, I think.
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|HMMWV "God, Country, Corps"
July 16, 2011An Upgrade from their earlier astro (orange box style),
This astro should be pointed out that its fixed many of the bugs those of us early adopters encountered (like using velcro to attach anything to a dog was mistake 1).
The early versions featured an orange “box” with a non-amplified antenna built into the top of it, plus a li-ion battery. You got a velcro harness to hold it on the dog and keep it pointing skyward. After 2-3 trips the velcro was full of hair and the antennas were being broken by anxious dogs racing through brush.
Garmin re-designed the astro and fortunately for us all we had to do was buy the upgraded collar design. The (now black) collar works the same but features an amplified antenna on top, the electronics box down below where it naturally hangs, and an improved longer antenna with better range (about 25% better in my testing)
From the top of one mountain I can now find my dog 7.48 miles away with almost full signal strength, so this really works. Getting to the dog is another matter.
The collar transmits either every 5, 10, or 30 seconds. 10 is a good value as you get about 2 days of use from the transmitter before the battery dies. 5 seconds will die in under a day (about 18 hours). These settings are made by placing the collar in close proximity to the handheld tracker and uploading them.
Finally for the radio folk the collar transmits on the MURS VHF frequencies at 2 watts digital. The frequencies are 151.82, 151.88, 151.94, 154.57 (old analog radio channel – not a good choice) and 154.6 (same as 154.57) [all in MHZ]
The 151 frequencies provide the best range near towns becuase every fast food drive through uses the 154 frequencies to talk around. These correspond to the last 2 sets of 10 channels in the Astro.
If you are wondering how they get 10 channels on one frequency, its simple – both the receiver and transmitter have GPS inside, so they know EXACTLY when a second clicks by to a great precision. They then divide a time period (1 second) into 10 parts, each 1/10 of a second long. Channel 23 for example specifies frequency 2 (151.94) and timeslot 3 – the 3rd 1/10 of a second after 0.00 seconds. Since the radio and the transmitter both know when the transmission will happen the radio tunes frequency 2 at 0.3 seconds after a second “ticks” to listen for the 1/10 second transmission from the collar.
The only problem with this is you can not put multiple collars next to each other as the receiver needs time to process the data it receives (about another 1/10 second) so if 151.94 is a good channel for you, pick dog numbers of 21, 23, 25, 27, and 29 if you have multiple dogs on one system or are hunting with another astro user. Also, you can’t have the radio tune different channels at the same time, so don’t pick dog A on channel 14 and dog B on channel 24 because their transmissions will be at the same time on 2 different freqencies.
Keeping those simple rules of separation in mind you can track alot of dogs a long ways with Astro.
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|Jay Cutie
July 16, 2011Two thumbs up,
I purchased the astro primarily for hiking with my dog in the wooded dunes of West Michigan. It surpassed my expectations. My dog will be chasing something 200 yards away, well out of sight and hearing range, and it works great. All of the stress and worry of not knowing where the dog is is gone. Because my dog doesn’t stray for more than 200-300 yards, I haven’t had a chance to test the full range, but within those yards and in very hilly terrain it’s tracked flawlessly.
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|D. J. Morgan
July 16, 2011Review of purchase and use of garmin astro GPS dog tracking system,
The transaction was excellent…good price, quick delivery time. My husband was thrilled with his new “toy”, and couldn’t wait to try it out. He was very impressed with the details he was able to see when tracking his dogs in the area. However, upon the first real hunt with the unit, the dogs managed to disconnect and lose the antenna (which seems to be pretty wimpy!) and of course, the unit is useless without the antenna! When I placed a call to order a replacement, I was told that parts must come straight from the manufacturer. It was impossible to reach a person at the manufacturer, so I resorted to ordering a replacement antenna online which I did receive in time for the next hunt. We are now waiting on a reply to my husband’s email (he also gave up on talking to a real person) to complain about the antenna and ask for the manufacturer to provide a free replacement b/c this is an expensive piece of equipment and if the antenna is that easily lost (which renders the unit useless), I anticipate that this will be an ongoing problem and become the gift “that keeps on giving!”.
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|HMMWV "God, Country, Corps"
July 16, 2011Well thought out with a few rough edges you should know about,
Double UPDATE – Garmin has now introduced the DC 30 dog collar + gps transmitter. It fixes many of the bugs in the old design. It uses a metal backplate behind the gps instead of plastic. The gps is black instead of orange. The antenna is longer and more flexible allowing for better range and less breakage. And since the GPS hangs DOWN by default, the new dc-30 puts a tiny GPS antenna into the dog collar itself that faces UP towards the sky. Overall it works better, in the country it adds about 2 miles to your trackign range if you are using the car mounted antenna. Those 2 miles could mean finding your dog. The new kit is sold with the DC 30 and costs about $60 more than the old model (this one) which will most likely be discontinued as my dog has broken one antenna and two plastic mounting plates. Note however that the new collar has no rings for attaching tags or leashes. This means your dog will wear 2 collars when being tracked, but gone are the days of broken parts and tracking down your GPS unit without the dog attached.
Update – I ordered the car mount antenna and found the range boost phenominal. In CITY range went from .7 miles to 1.7 miles, almost the full 2 mile rating. In Country range went over 4 miles. It is the best $25 spent plus amazon’s price on the accessory is heavily discounted over garmin’s. If you think you may have to use your 4WD to find your dogs, start using the external antenna accessory option from the beginning.
I got my Astro about a month ago and from the start the 2 mile range wasn’t there (more like .33 miles maximum). I checked it with a pulse wattmeter from HP/agilent and it was outputting only 0.45 watts for .38 seconds, not the 2W rating (and the battery lasted alot longer than it was supposed to for some reason!). I shipped it to garmin, got it back and it was now putting out 2.2 watts. Range was still disappointing at 0.6 miles (city – granted – but my rino’s do far better and they aren’t digital!)
Next, I found that there are 5 channels Astro can use of which 2 of them are used by every jobcom radio in construction etc (154.57 and 154.600 are the worst and are in use all over the place) – my unit was on one of those channels which was almost always in use, so using another RF tool (spectrum analyzer) – I found a much better channel and suddenly the in city range went up to 1.5 miles which wasn’t bad.
Mounting -
You get 2 mounting options – a screw bracket that will mount the transmitter to the dog collar which works really well, or a velcro pocket to put the transmitter in, strap it around the dog’s breast and put a tab under the dog collar to keep it upright. I tried the vest option first and when the dog came back, the whole assembly was swinging around the dog’s neck (and velcro fills up with hair if your dog sheds – the gripping effectiveness goes to zero).
The collar I thought would be better because the tags are always at the ground, but now the heavy part is up high. My guess was to put a lightweight fishing sinker in the dogtag strap which would keep it verticale – without that weight the dog comes back with the collar rotated sideways and the antenna horizontal, which hurts your range again.
Once factory adjusted to full power, put on a clean freqency, and mounted with a counterweight it works really well – 1.5 mile range in the city and 2.0 mile range or better in the country are not uncommon. I found my dog had gone on a 5 mile chase one time from the truck.
There is a problem in the few bits that garmin uses for “dog status” like “treed” or “quarry”, etc – when the gps has moved a bit they are meaningless so I ignore that and leave it on the doggie detail page which tells you how far away your dog is, where it is, and the battery level/gps coverage in the dog’s GPS, along with the radio signal you are getting. I would have preferred “moving” or “stable”, which you can get from the map if the signal reaches.
You can get a nice VHF (marine type) antenna if you become car bound and unscrew the garmin antenna and connect the outdoor antenna which more than doubles range or better right away – great for end of the day searches for the dog. Both the dog and user antennas are SMA and removable unlike the rino which by law must have a permanently attached antenna unless you are good at soldering on external jacks yourself, which allows you big outdoor antennas and high power amplifiers on one radio. Dog transmitts at your programmed time interval, the handheld transmitts when only when you need to adjust the dog parameters, making it a 2way link temporarily on the AA batteries.
The GPS(s) in both the dog and handheld use the highly sensitve SIRF chipset (which is dirt cheap because the entire gps is in one chip, but because of the indoor usability of it garmin sees fit to charge almost 2x more e.g. the rino520HCX is…
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