suemccartin

Hi All
Had my axim x5 advanced since last year been working fine. The most intensive thing I do with the unit is run mapopolis 4 with a cf gps for navigation.

This weekend my setup completly lost its mind. On the outbound trip I kept losing the fix, several times but it finally got me where I was going. Its been acting up occasionally for a few days but this time it was much worse than usual.

On the trip back I couldn't get a stable fix at all. If I did get a fix I'd immediately lose it when I set a route. I tried soft resets, hard resets and loading only individual maps, nothing helped. Whats strange is that there was NO problem before about a week ago when I got a new cf gps, I put it in my setup and it would fix/lose several times in a row before I got a stable fix. I thought there was a problem with it so I returned it, semsons.com just wrote to me and told me they couldn't reproduce the problem I complained about (but they're sending a different one anyhow).

Now you might say this all sounds like some kind of atmospheric issue and that was one of my first thoughts too but usually that kind of thing doesn't go on for a whole week. When I got home I tried an earlier version of mapopolis, same problem and I also put the software and a mapset on a different sd card to rule out the infamous Sandisk SD card problems, same problem. I'm posting here because I'm wondering if there could be some kind of communication issue between the pda and the gps. A couple of times I got a message I'm not used to seeing about "there was no connection associated with this device" or something to that effect, referring to the gps I'm assuming.

Everything else seems to be running ok on my axim but since this is the most intensive program on it I'm just trying to rule out hardware issues. Is there any kind of utility that will test things such as memory integrity, etc. I spritzed a little contact cleaner in the cf slot and on the gps and things seemed to improve for a little while.

I'm also thinking about the post I've read about power issues in the cf slot, if the gps wasn't getting the juice it needs I could see this kind of thing happening as well. I briefly had crux view on the axim and it was telling me the gps signals were very weak. I'm charging up my maestro today going to see what happens with mapopolis and the gps unit on that tonight. Any and all suggestions greatfully appreciated.

JakeRich

Lots of things to comment on!

1. You didn't mention here what version of Mapopolis. Ver 4.37 has some major bugs in it and should be considered a beta version. 4.33 is more stable. I'm running 4.37 and I have noticed that occasionally it "misses" an update sentence from the receiver. If that update sentence is partially received, but wrong, then it does an immediate re-route and displays crazy stuff. Then it re-routes again when a valid and accurate sentence arrives a second or so later. I think this phenomenon is created by the heavier load the speech synthesizer in 4.37 is placing on the Axim.

2. Your settings may have gotten hosed by the new CF card. WM2003 sometimes sees GPS CF cards as modems, showing a prompt about the "new" card that is installed. Changing GPS cards may have triggered this activity by WM2003. If the prompt you are getting is about a new modem card being detected, you can just tap the X to make the note go away. Annoying, but it's part of the operating system.

3. Low power to the GPS receiver would have nothing to do with low signal strength from the satellites. You either have a signal or you don't. You either have sufficient power to the GPS receiver to work, or you don't. The two are not related to one another.

I would check that your Axim is not locked into the slow processor mode for any reason and make sure it is running fast enough to handle the Mapopolis load. If it isn't, it may miss or incorrectly receive the asynch data from the GPS receiver, making it look like the receiver has lost the fix, when it has the fix but the Axim is missing the data.

If that is ok, then the problems may be with whatever changes you made to use the new GPS, even if you think you have "undone" them. If you have a simple setup, or a backup from before the new receiver was used, I might recommend a hard reset and a reinstall/restore.

Hope that helps some.

__________________
Want to know about GPS? See GPS 101. Want to know more? See GPS 201.

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)

suemccartin

Sorry, meant to put that in there but forgot, that's what i get for writing technical posts before the morning caffeine fix

I started out with 4.37 a few weeks ago it worked fine with the holux but I was seeing some "float" on the maps but not a lot. Then I got the fortuna gps saw the float problem and the fix/loss problem and posted about it, lamar sent me 4.38 beta to try out. This problem seems to have built up over the last few weeks till it's at the point its at now.

The problems seemed worse with 4.38 so I went back to 4.37 for my trip. AFAIK I didn't make any changes to anything on the pda for the fortuna unless the fortuna programmed changes itself which I think is unlikely, there was no driver or utility disk in the package with the Fortuna.

When I got home last night I removed the 4.37 and put 4.33 back on there and went out in the driveway and tried to get a fix. I got one but the map was pointing to a spot that's not my house, I don't think it's even in pinellas county as I didn't recognize the street names it was pointing to. I tried again later and could get nothing but a blank screen.

The only other change to the machine was that I put crux view (I think that's it, came from here in the download section) on there to check it out but I didn't change any settings that I know of and that was after the fortuna was messing up. The holux viewer shows data flying by on the screen and I do get a long/latitude so I really have a feeling the gps is working that its either mapopolis or the axim. I took crux view off and did a hard reset so if it changed any system files that should have been taken care of when I was trying to get it to work in Eustis Florida.

Yeah, I know that all I have to do about that prompt is hit the x, happens a lot with the holux and I may have seen it with the fortuna don't remember right now for sure. I was wondering if the gps has gotten into some weird state but it seems strange that both units would do it. Someone in my area posted in the mapopolis forum that his setup had a spat of lost fixes within the past couple of days with the NC maps but it went away and its not done it since he upgraded to the ND maps.

Are there settings and/or registry entries someplace that could have gotten hosed? How about problems with the gps being in the wrong mode? If I understand right if I'm getting data in the holux viewer its in the right mode? Agg I'm so frustrated with this. Going to boot up my old maestro tonight and see if it works with the holux, hopefully semsons will get my fortuna back to me in the next day or two and I'll have that to test with too.

JakeRich

The hard reset should have put everything back to factory fresh, so any changes made would be eliminated. If you then restored, you might have restored the problem, but you didn't say you had done that. As I said, I noted that on my system I occasionally get a "wild" fix. That had been a problem some time ago and got fixed in one of the early 4.xx releases. At the time it was a timing issue where the async data was flowing in and Mapopolis wasn't ready for it so it lost part of the data. I'd get a one or two second fix at some really bizarre location (equator, pole, very strange numbers) and then it would right itself.

Your problem sounds really strange. I have no more ideas, but if you have snap-to-road on, try turning it off and see where the raw data locates you.

__________________
Want to know about GPS? See GPS 101. Want to know more? See GPS 201.

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)

suemccartin

Semsons got my fortuna back to me today. I want to keep it off the axim till I figure out what's going on in case it infects the fortuna with the same problem again. I put the fortuna on my old audiovox maestro with mapopolis 4.33 on it and was able to get a fix. Strangely mapopolis didn't automatically load up the right map but after I specifically selected pinellas county and asked it to find the gps position it found me--but still with way more float than I've seen before. I put the holux on the maestro and it fixed and lost it almost right away, when it lost the fix it locked up the maestro with pc2002 on it and I couldn't shut it off, had to soft reset. I just loaded up winfast navigator CE and while I get data scrolling across the screen the blue fix light only flickers it never gets solid blue and I notice as with other times when there's been a problem that the holux light is always steady. I'm clueless, any other ideas? I think I'll try another hard reset as much as I don't like that idea because I have to reinstall activesync too before it will see the axim again.

suemccartin

Hi All
After a lot of googling around I finally found out that the FAA will release NOTAM advisories if GPS reception is being interfered with for any reason. I found the following:

https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/distribution/atcscc.html

Selected Notams

The following NOTAM list was selected by the user from a previous request. This list may not reflect all active NOTAMs for any of the below locations.

Data Current as of : 26 FEB 18:00 GMT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ZJX JACKSONVILLE (ARTCC),FL. [Back to Top]

!CARF 02/093 (KZJX A0060/04) ZJX GPS UNRELIABLE WITHIN A 270 NM RADIUS OF 3050N/08025W AT FL400. THIS AREA DECREASES WITH ALTITUDE TO 225 NM RADIUS AT FL250, THEN TO 160 NMR RADIUS AT 10000 FT MSL, THEN TO 115 NM RADIUS AT 4000 AGL. IFR OPERATIONS BASED UPON GPS NAVIGATION SHOULD NOT BE PLANNED IN THE AFFECTED AREA DURING THE PERIODS INDICATED. THESE OPERATION INCLUDE DOMESTIC RNAV OR LONG-RANGE NAVIGATION REQUIRING GPS. THESE OPERATIONS ALSO INCLUDE GPS STANDALONE AND OVERLAY INSTRUMENT APPROACH OPERATIONS 1600-0400 DLY WEF 0402221600-0403010400



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ZMA MIAMI (ARTCC), FL. [Back to Top]

!CARF 02/079 (KZMA A0031/04) ZMA GPS UNRELIABLE WITHIN A 270 NM RADIUS OF 3050N/08025W AT FL400. THIS AREA DECREASES WITH ALTITUDE TO 225 NM RADIUS AT FL250, THEN TO 160 NMR RADIUS AT 10000 FT MSL, THEN TO 115 NM RADIUS AT 4000 AGL. IFR OPERATIONS BASED UPON GPS NAVIGATION SHOULD NOT BE PLANNED IN THE AFFECTED AREA DURING THE PERIODS INDICATED. THESE OPERATION INCLUDE DOMESTIC RNAV OR LONG-RANGE NAVIGATION REQUIRING GPS. THESE OPERATIONS ALSO INCLUDE GPS STANDALONE AND OVERLAY INSTRUMENT APPROACH OPERATIONS 1600-0400 DLY WEF 0402221600-0403010400


Number of NOTAMs selected: 2 End of Report


The way I read this I'm within at least one of these from Miami International. I've read that sometimes the military conducts jamming tech excercises but I don't know if that's what's going on this time. I wonder how I find out how long this is supposed to go on???

gcpiney

At the bottom of the NOTAM, there are notations that indicate that some kind of testing is going on between 02/22/04 at 1600Zulu (2pm EST) and 03/01/04 at 0400Z (Midnight).
This is daily (DLY). You should have normal reception between Midnight and 2PM.

suemccartin

Oh? I assumed they'd provide times in Eastern time for Jacksonville and Miami, guess not, so what is Zulu? that must be mountain time if it's 2 hours behind eastern time???? I was reading that as 1600 (2 pm) eastern time till 0400 (4 am) eastern time.

At 5:30AM Eastern I got up and tried the ST mode on the fortuna, it couldn't see a single satellite even after several minutes (XT mode still working great).

At 7:30 a.m I was able to get a fix with the holux even though it did its little fix/loss dance a few times but it did fix and mapopolis was pointing to where I was standing. So I'd say that clinches it.

On the FAA site this AM there are four or five other advisories just like this one that are all over the place, Texas, New Mexico Los Angeles, etc. I also saw something on the coastguard site that says there will be gps interruptions at various times throughout 2004 in the vicinity of Cape Canaveral. Aggggg, go play in somebody else's backyard Mr. Military dudes

JakeRich

Zulu is what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. It's 5 hours AHEAD of the East coast, so 1600 Zulu would be 11 am Florida time. (BTW, 1600 is actually 4pm (12 + 4 y'see), not 2 pm ;-) ) Of course, when the East coast goes to Daylight savings, it will be only 4 hours ahead, so you have to continue to adjust through the year.

__________________
Want to know about GPS? See GPS 101. Want to know more? See GPS 201.

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)

gcpiney

Sorry about that 2pm - 12pm fingercheck. Still the gist is that the satellites are unreliable between Noon and Midnight until 03/01/04.