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Garmin ASTRO BUNDLE DC 30 Collar Plus Astro 220. Tired of searching for your hunting dog in tall grass or dense cover? Now you can leave the hunting entirely to him. Introducing Astro, the first high sensitivity GPS enabled dog tracking system for hunters and sportsmen. This unique system pinpoints your dogs position and shows you exactly where he is, even when you cant see or hear him.
The Astro system includes a bright color screen handheld GPS device and the rugged, all weather DC 30 collar. The collar has an integrated GPS transmitter and is specially weighted so the antenna will always point to the sky for optimum signal.
To get started, just take Astro outdoors and turn on the handheld and transmitter to acquire GPS satellite signals. Then attach the DC 30 to your dog. Now you are ready to turn him loose / no other setup required.
As often as every five seconds, your dogs DC 30 transmits his position to your handheld, and you can see his current location and a trail of where he is been on the Map page of your handheld.
Switch over to the Dog Tracker page to view a compass pointing to your dogs location as well as his current status: whether he is running, sitting, on point or treeing quarry. Astro can also sound an alarm to let you know instantly when your dog goes on point.
Astro boasts a high sensitivity GPS receiver that can track your dogs position even in the densest cover. You can track up to ten dogs at one time with Astro, at a distance of up to seven miles away /depending on terrain/. The system transmits information by line of sight, so it reaches farthest in flat, open territory.
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 An Upgrade from their earlier astro (orange box style) |
| Review Date: October 24, 2009 |
| Reviewer: HMMWV, santa clara, CA USA |
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. |
I can't recommend this highly enough!
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| Review Date: December 26, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Noodles, Boston, MA USA |
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. |
Great Product, But...
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| Review Date: October 16, 2009 |
| Reviewer: M. Woodson, Minneapolis, MN |
| I bought the Astro to use with my pointing dog, primarily for grouse and woodcock. I tried it at home, before an early season trip to North Dakota for sharptails, and it worked like a champ, tracking the dog as my wife walked her around the neighborhood, and beeping to show me the dog was on point when they stopped. But, in North Dakota, it would never tell me the dog was on point, even though she had been for a long time. I took it home, messed with it, and again, had it working at home. Back to ND two weeks later, same thing - the dog would be on point but the unit would not pick up the signal. I called Garmin, and the support rep said to change the COM setting to 30 seconds. That didn't make sense to me, but I tried it - no difference. I emailed at the same time to Garmin, and got an much better answer back the next day. "Likely the system had become corrupted, and you should perform a hard reset, and download the latest operating system at the same time." The instructions were very clear, and after performing those steps, the unit works like a champ. I used it this last weekend in the north woods of Minnesota, and it signals EVERYTIME the dog goes on point. It works great!!! I may get rid of the beeper collar completely (instead of just using it on point-mode only). I'll keep the bell, so I can track the dog between points. I also bought the Topo map, and that is a great help in the woods - know where the hills and potential swamps are, as well as most logging and all county roads. As other reviewers have mentioned, its not a "high end" GPS, and you still have to use a training collar, but it does what it is supposed to do (with the help of support at Garmin). I really like hunting without all the noise of a beeper collar, and I think the dog can hear me much better too. I'm surprised it works as well in the hills and woods as it does, as I have tracked my dog out 250+ yards. One other issue, if you have a small dog like mine (33 lbs.) the unit won't fit well around the neck as the two units (battery/radio and gps) are not flexible and not curved much. It's very uncomforatble for the dog, and kind of heavy. Overall, 8 out of 10. |
confidence
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| Review Date: October 13, 2009 |
| Reviewer: JulieRo, Michigan |
| I own and raise brittanys and have always enjoyed hunting them. This product has allowed me to hunt in deep cover and know where the dogs are and even better, get me back to the truck!! What a delight to follow the cover and dogs rather than always worrying about getting out of the woods! |
This system rocks!!!!
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| Review Date: October 15, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Douglas E. Curry, |
You'll always know where your dogs are located. The guess work is completely gone. You always know their exact location and how far they are from you. Finding your dogs is way too easy with this unit. You'll love it.
The extended range antenna is a must. I have not even tried to run the unit with the factory antenna installed. I live in the mountains with pretty tough terrain and a lot of dense forest and don't really expect it to work well without the extended range antenna. Since I've had this system, the farthest I've been away was 4.5 miles and was still tracking my dog. It works by line of sight, so I will lose communication with a dog if they or I go into a hollow; however, it is only for a brief period of time until one of us gets out of the low spot. This can happen in less than a half mile distance. The GPS keeps the last location on the map where it had last communicated with the collar, so even if you lose communication for a while, you'll still know where-ish they are located.
I bought the combo, Astro 220 with the DC30 collar. It worked so well that I immediately bought two more DC30 collars. Garmin really did a nice job here.
The software they ship with it is pretty weak; however, I didn't buy it for the software. I bought it to track dogs.
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