Diamond GPS- Performance issues?

windows · 17-08-2008, 01:05 PM

navigation worked well apart from regularly losing GPS location, but the weather improved coming back towards home those problems seemed to vanish.

[Edit- topic split from original thread]

neilm · 17-08-2008, 04:04 PM

Could the locking in 2D mode be down to the SmartZoom settings or were you unable to manually reset to 3D as well. Not seen that myself in my 4 months with the program.

Agreed about the Diamond being flakey with regard to maintaining a GPS lock. Just updated to Radio .07, so will see if that helps!

windows · 17-08-2008, 04:15 PM

It only seemed to happen in very remote areas, that is in mountain passes or over the tops f not very populated hills. It always seemed to occur just before the machine lost the sat-nav GPS lock, so maybe it was related.

At first I thought that softwarewas the cause of the lock failing (and not restoring) but TTNV7 and CPL7 had the same problem. So definitely down to the Diamond. Problem did seem to happen a lot less after a soft reset though. Plus this was using radio .07 here too as part of Duttys 1.6 ROM.

Bassey · 18-08-2008, 09:00 AM

GPS definitely shouldn't be dropping out in bad weather. I use it in all sorts of foul conditions and, whilst the accuracy indicator may drop a little (particularly if there are tall trees about) I can't remember the last time I had a dropout. IT does sound like the GPS part of the Diamond radio is a little flakey.

windows · 18-08-2008, 09:40 AM

Definitely looks like that is the case then, a pity as otherwise it performed perfectly!

Bassey · 18-08-2008, 11:09 AM

I wonder if this is a result of the extra miniturisation in the Diamond? As far as I know it uses the same chipset as the Polaris etc and it's not yet using the new integrated designs that were announced a few months ago. Is the antennae maybe just a lot shorter?

windows · 18-08-2008, 11:25 AM

It could be that the antenna is shorter I guess but the GPS system is now part of the main processor.

Bassey · 18-08-2008, 11:47 AM

Ahh, right. That was quick then. They only announced that integrated chip a couple of months ago. Still, there are smaller GPS phones out there. The new Nokia 6220 classic springs to mind. That's standard Nokia candybar sized but I've heard no complaints about the GPS signal.

windows · 18-08-2008, 01:55 PM

Agreed, I think it must be down to the aerial or that in conjunction with the metal housing.

neilm · 19-08-2008, 07:38 AM

Overall, I've found the GPS signal to be pretty good on the Diamond, and lock times can vary from 30 seconds to 5-6 minutes.

The main problem I've seen- and it is a biggie if you need an accurate SatNav- is that if it loses a fix, it often will not reaquire it once the satellites are visible again.

On holiday in Italy last week I had 2 instances of this. Once, the canyon effect of high mountains caused a signal loss, and the second time, we went through a 2km tunnel.

In both cases, once the sats were visible again, they remained as 'Red Dots' in the iGO GPS control panel, signifying a visble satellite, but no accurate data. Even stopping and getting out of the car failed to get even any 'Yellow Dots' (Data but no accurate fix) let alone 'Green Dots' (accurate fix); in both cases it was necessary to turn the GPS off, then back on again with Auto discovery to restore a fix (which came up within 30 seconds)

I had the same issue once more on the journey back to the airport, but this time it did reaquire a fix while I stopped for fuel.

Running the same SatNav program (iGO8 ) on the HTC X7500 saw none of these problems- a lost signal reaquired soon after the sats were visible again, so this is a device issue, not a program issue.