HW6515 not picking up satellites fully anymore?

11-23-07, 10:34 PM

I've had my HW6515 for years and Tomtom has been working perfectly. I upgraded from TT5 to TT6, and everything was fine. A few days ago I couldn't get an adequate signal (picked up several satellites but they didn't reach the "threshold" in TT for a usable signal). I did a hard reset, reinstalled TT6 and I had the same problem. I can pick up UTC (coordinated universal time). I know it's being picked up because it's accurate within 2 seconds of the real time (The official U.S. time - clock) and it's about 2 min off from my phone's time.
I let it sit out for 3 hours. It slowly started picking up satellites until it had 6 listed, but all were below the threshold (grey in color instead of the blue when there is a usable signal). What is going on??

12-01-07, 04:33 AM

I got the Holux GPSlim GR-236 and it is unbelievable. I would rarely get more than 6 satellites with the built-in GPS receiver out in the open. 10 seconds after I turned this thing on, Tomtom showed 8 satellites while still INSIDE MY HOUSE! I could never get even a single satellite inside with the built in receiver.
Now I wish my GPS receiver fried sooner.
Check it out:
Amazon.com: Holux GPSlim 236 Slim Bluetooth GPS Sirf III laptop PDA PALM IPAQ PC Receiver: Electronics

Beljevina · 05-27-08, 10:13 PM

Join my club. I've too got a very well cared for 6515 that was humming along fine, and with nothing more than regular usage, it stopped picking up satellites one day. Loading in the locational files makes no difference. I've tried installing other products in addition to VisualGPS, with better PD capabilities, and still nothing. (It finds the internal GPS, just never gets a signal) I swear though that I was driving once, and saw a satellite signal on 1 of the bars shoot up, but never saw that again. I'm pretty convinced that with my unit there's something that came loose on the inside (ie., whatever the connection to the AGPS minimal internal antenna is), since all PD diagnostics pass. Now I've got to find the time, tools, & hope for luck that when I get into it, I can find something.

06-03-08, 10:12 AM

I use Mapopolis and Google Maps on several hw6515 devices and have found that even with a fresh 7-day Quick GPS Connection update, it now takes longer to stabilize a 3-D fix. I chalk this up to changes in the GPS signal, not a device or software dependent issue.

Reinforcing that view, our local commuter trains use GPS to trigger station approach announcements and they lost this GPS-based functionality completely earlier this year. Some sort of functional upgrade was required.