I got the Carloop pro basic application to work and connected via USB I can see the data (see below).
The “HASGPS” was something I added just to see if GPS was enabled on the device. After being plugged in with clear line of site to the sky with no clouds for 20 minutes there is still no lat/lng is outputted.
Is there anything I can do to speed up the time to lock? The timestamp begins to display after 20-30 seconds, which makes me think that there is some signal being received. It did work briefly the other night, but I cannot get it to lock on since then.
I’ve tried moving the device so the side with the label is facing up and also facing down. I’ve tried it with the battery + usb plugged in and also with just the usb plugged in. I can’t seem to get the GPS coordinates to output via USB.
Quick update, it just locked, but it seems to take a full 5 minutes of running before outputting a GPS coordinate. Is there anything I can do to speed this time up?
Hey @lucas,
Thanks for the feedback and helping us test the GPS in even more real world scenarios. We are working on potential improvements to the firmware to help with this issue. Either me or @jvanier will reply with an update.
By the way, after the GPS found the satellite fix once, did it take as long for subsequent fixes in your experience?
After waiting through the 5 minute period to get the initial fix, the subsequent fixes after restarting the device were acquired in ~20 seconds. Much faster!
Was it slow to get a fix because the device wasn’t powered on in over a day?
Late to the party, but in order to get a proper fix, the GPS receiver needs to know the current positions of all satellites to be able to calculate its own position from the data it gets of the individual sats in sight.
That position almanach is downloaded via low bandwidth transmittion in the sat data stream and hence takes a long time to download. Once that almanach is stored and not outdated subsequent fixes go quick.
A faster way to get a fix after having the device depowered for longer is to download the almanach via a higher bandwidth connection (cellular on Electron or WiFi on Photon) - at least this is how it can be done with the Particle AssetTracker.
Thanks for the info. I took a look at the AssetTracker code and couldn’t see anywhere the almanac was being downloaded over a faster connection. I may have simply missed it.
Could you possibly point me in the right direction for that?
Another possibility is that some car windshields have a micro metal film over the surface to reduce glare and keep some of the solar heat out of the car. This could be the cause of some shielding of the GPS signal. To test the theory, try getting a GPS lock with the GPS antenna outside of the car and see if the lock time improves significantly.
I’ll have to dig up that respective post where one of the Particle gurus had described who he’s done that.
I don’t think it’s in the stock AssetTracker stock repo but rather in a repo called Fancy AssetTracker (or so)
Yup, that was the name. It was a project of Dave Middlecamp
But as it seems, the respective ephemeris-loader sample isn’t in there.
Maybe you can ping/bump @Dave on the Particle forum in the respective thread
I just received my Carloop Pro in the mail today, and after running it for several hours - inside, on the front porch, and finally for a couple hours in the back yard with a clear view of the sky - I’m unable to get a GPS fix. My results are basically the same as Lucas’ first post, but I don’t even get a time signal from the GPS unit. Here’s an example of the output:
Hey @kogs,
I shipped a new GPS and cable your way. I suspect it is a bad cable but keep us posted on this community post so everyone can benefit from what you learn.
Im having the same issue as @kogs. I let it run for a pretty long time and unplugged it a few times to see if that would help. I finally decided to read the data directly from the gps unit using Serial1
if (Serial1.available()) {
Serial.write(Serial1.read());
}
This is what my output looks like…
$GPRMC,035129.00,V,151216,N71
$GPVTG,N30
$GPGGA,035129.00,0,00,99.99,6A
$GPGSA,A,1,99.99,99.99,99.9930
$GPGSV,1,1,02,03,21,32,2078
$GPGLL,035129.00,V,N46
As far as i can tell by looking at the datasheet it is not acquiring a signal from enough satellites to determine my location. Is there something I can try to get it to work better?
Help? Who do I contact for a replacement? I’ve tried everything. I think I got a dud GPS module. It’s quite frustrating as the applications I had in mind are all critical on using position data! So I’m a bit stuck…
Hey @jmb that’s a bummer! You can send us your GPS module and we will send you a different one. We have had really bad results with this GPS version and we are going to be announcing our next GPS version shortly. Our initial tests are really good but we want to make enough units to provide anyone that wants to upgrade. Please send me an e-mail at alan@carloop.io so I can send you instructions on replacement of the current version.
Have you not gotten a GPS lock ever, or is it difficult to get a lock?
Try it out somewhere with a clear view of the sky, with no signal shields.
Unfortunately, a metal car roof or a metal solar film on a windshield make good signal shields…
In case there is a hardware issue, @alanm and @jvanier should be aware you are having difficulty.
Is there some option to test GPS module directly without using Electron board? I am not getting GPS fix following open-sky prerequisite (by using carloop_minimal example). Maybe there is an error for GPS handling once device is in Europe
