Sat connections

[Fdnyfish]

I have just about given up. My p2 was getting crappy sat reception. Moving it just 20 feet on my driveway would fix the issue one day, but same spot would be horrible tomorrow.

After a crash, that I contributed to poor gps, while replacing the shell, I upgraded to the larger gps puck 4mm. It. Worked for a few days and the same reception issues started happening.

I read thru the forums about loose gps cable, and placed a piece of cardboard into the socket and covered the entire connector with black tape.

In the same process, I ordered one of those GPS boosters that sit under the top she'll,

Again, 1 day she works like a champ, the next day she is terrible where I just want to kick it.

My last resort is to replace the main board hoping to get a solid GPS connection.

What do you guys think

 

[dirkclod]

If you have tried all the fix's then just try another GPS puck .

 

[Fdnyfish]

I have another 4mm puck, does it matter which way it faces

 

[dirkclod]

I'm talking about the whole GPS puck . You could try and change the antenna again if you don't think you got the first one on right or maybe it was a bad one But I was talking about the whole GPS unit .
As far as which way it faces I've seen it put back the way the other one came out and also seen where they had them turned a little to keep from having to trim a lot of the plastic out . I don't think it really would matter .

 

[N017RW]

As others mentioned, there is no polarity or specific orientation of the GPS antenna.

 

[Fdnyfish]

Have a new gps unit on the way. I am also going to change out the 4mm antenna on my current unit to another 4mm. I purchased 2 when I ordered them

 

[Mako79]

Maybe your battery on the GPS is dying or not holding charge?

 

[Fdnyfish]

You might be on to something with the battery. This morning it took almost 5 minutes to get a lock, but it did. Does anyone know what kind of battery is in there, and is it replaceable, or needs unsoldering

 

[N017RW]

You might be on to something with the battery. This morning it took almost 5 minutes to get a lock, but it did. Does anyone know what kind of battery is in there, and is it replaceable, or needs unsoldering

It's not a battery but rather a super-cap. It is not intended to be replaced (spot welded into holder) or provide long term back-up.

From Wiki:
"Supercapacitors are used in applications requiring many rapid charge/discharge cycles rather than long term compact energy storage: within cars, buses, trains, cranes and elevators, where they are used for recovery energy from braking, short-term energy storage or burst-mode power delivery. Smaller units are used as memory backup for static random-access memory (SRAM)."

It is intended to allow a 'warm' start which would eliminate the need for the GPS engine to download the almanac and ephemeris data thus reducing time-to-fix.

You can learn more here:
http://www.gpsinformation.net/main/almanac.txt

But the fact that it is taking 5 or more minutes indicates that you have receiver or other reception issues. i.e. Internal or external radio signal interference.

 

[Seedler]

I had all the same issues, and while trying to solve it got to know the gps module very well. Its not a battery issue cos it is only designed to hold charge for a short time. I tried replacing antennas with no improvement. In the end I discovered it was the LNA chip between the antenna and gps chip that was at fault. I bypassed this with a wire direct from the antenna pin to the input of the gps chip. It worked great for a few months before my bad soldering broke. Tried resoldering but ended up shorting out the gps chip (these are very small parts). In the end I had to buy a new module and haven't looked back since. But if you like tinkering, this could be the issue.

Good luck,

Damien

 

[Fdnyfish]

I try a new module tomorrow and see if that fixes the problem

 

[Fdnyfish]

Well I just finished installing a new GPS Unit. The first thing I noticed was that the new gps unit's plug has no play in it when plugged into the main board. My Old gps unit had soo much sloppiness in the plug, that I was jamming little pieces of cardboard to make the plug tight.

So new GPS unit is installed (also put in one of the GPS Booster - http://buzzcam.co.uk/) and powered her up. I got the two sets of 10 flashing green lights in under a minute. It brought a tear to my eye !

So I have to think that the plug was the issue the whole time.

Where can I get a new end-plug for the gps module? I'm convinced that the unit is good (even has the larger antenna on it).