GPS stops responding to Navigator 2

mshah

I have this problem that when I am travelling a long, suddenly my position on the map freezes. Navigator still responds in the normal way but seems to show the speed at the point my fix froze.

Sometimes resetting it brings it back but then it'll go down again. If you leave it for a while, it then starts moving again slowly from a weird position (not the GPS position or actual position) and slowly work its way to the spot to where it froze. Very weird, find it hard to describe.

I didn't have this problem until i installed the speed camera database. I then uninstalled it and things worked fine. But then it happened again when i didn't have the database on.

It's also happened in roughly the same road. I know it is not the fact of no roads being there cos at least with that it still moves you along the correct position.

Anyone had this before? I got an Ipaq 3870 and Navigator 2.02 (Just upgraded to 2.22 to see if that will help).

One other thing i should say is that when I went in the GPS status when it froze, it still reported the number of satelites it had a fix on when it froze, the current signal strength of each satellite and the position in numbers....all of these were frozen on the values when it all froze up.

The icon that shows the connection between navigator and the GPS receiver is also frozen. Is this anything to do with it? I have an Emtac BTGPS. The lights are all flashing indicating a bluetooth link and the green light on the GPS is flashing indicating a sat fix. I dunno what is going on? Please help someone

thanks
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--> Milan

Fuego

Just to try and consolidate threads :

help gps freezing

GPS stops responding to Navigator 2

BT GPS Reconnect to PDA’s

Fuego

Following up, I drove home with absolutely no problems with just the TTN2 GPS driver program logging the route to the SD card on my iPAQ 3870, using the BTGPS.

Also, replayed the log a couple of times, when I got home, with TTN2 running this time, and that ran right through as well.

Still not enough testing to be conclusive, but it does indicate that loading is a factor in triggering this BT disconnect, which then requires a BT radio reset to recover.

Fuego

Well don't know if anyone else with this problem is doing any testing ... it would be nice to know.

I took the next step, which was to remove all my Bluetooth devices from within BT Manager (I have about half a dozen BT devices I use), on the iPAQ 3870, and then I just re-created a single one for the Socketcom BTGPS.

I then bonded the device and tested it over another short half-hour journey, using TTN2; no hangs, even though I had my BT mobile phone with me at the time, and I deliberately took a few wrong turns to get the software to re-calc the route. There was some cloud cover, and I lost the fix a couple of times, but the BT link never broke. As an aside, switching off the BTGPS and switching it back on was recovering fine, without intervention - just took a few seconds to re-establish itself.

Again still too early to say, so will test this again tomorrow. I was using the Emtac Wireless GPS configuration in the TTGPS program, in case anyone is wondering, and I have reverted back to running the full GB map from an SD card.

king

Cheers for the consolidation fuego. As you've probably seen in the 'help gps freezing' thread I've had pretty much identical problems to those outlined above. I'm running a 3870 with emtac and ttn 1.51 with tt gps v2 (ttn v2 upgrade should be here today!) Thought I'd just outline what I've tried uptil now. I had maps on SD card so I tried running just the tt gps from main memory this proved a little more reliable but the freezing still occured. I have tried this before and after the compaq user update 3 and with bluetooth v1.011 and 1.1 I have also tried tt gps v 1.5 and v2! I have also reinstalled everthing on two occasions after hard resets. Glad I'm not the only one out there with this problem though. Seems we all have the 3870 in common.

Fuego

Yes, the 3870 seems to have the most problems with this particular issue.

Just racked up some more testing miles. By now I would have expected at least one hang, if not two, or three. I have had none yet, but I'd like to cover a few hundred more miles before I say the problem has gone, for me.

So, at the risk of getting egg over my face and coming crawling back here to say that I've just had another freeze, I'm going to say that it looks like it is a BT reconnection issue and that if you simplify your configuration so that the iPAQ only has one BT device that it knows about, and that offers serial port services, then you stand a better chance of avoiding this issue.

If I have not seen the problem after a few more hundred miles, I will bond my mobile phone back to my iPAQ and then see if the problem returns, just to prove the case further.

My feeling is that the BT connection is dropped, or reset, by the iPAQ in conditions of heavy load, or external errors (say, passing close to a mobile phone transmitter, or something), and then it tries to re-establish the connection but gets confused about which BT device and service to use. At this point it locks up, and requires a re-initialisation of the BT stack (radio off/on, or soft reset).

I don't ever recall the iPAQ 3870 BT Manager prompting me to select a device when an application attempts to use COM8 (outgoing BT master serial port connection) and there are two BT devices, which are both paired to the iPAQ, and which both offer serial port services.

Gets me wondering how it decides. I think I'll re-test this condition, as a point of interest.

king

if you havent upgraded already tt gps 2.05 may be worth a go it claims to fix some issues with the 3970 freezing? off to test out my newly installed ttn2....

Paul Carl

Just got back from a trip to Devon. This topic has really grown.

On the trip I had my Ipaq 3870 EMTAC Bluetooth GPS receiver and TTNavigator 2.2.2

Left home at 5am all was fine all the way to North Devon got there by 8am. Stopped foe a breakfast an hour and then set of on the final part of the journey.

Now I have 1 question for everyone are all lockups during the day?

I have not had the system lockup on me a night!

I noticed on the second part of the trip that it locked after about 25 miles. Stopped to reset everything. Managed to get it all to reconnect and it worked for a few more miles.

Then it locked up again. This time I noticed how warm the GPS reviver had become on the dashboard while driving into the sun. So I removed it from the dashboard turned it off and let it call down. After about half an hour turned it back on and restarted TTN all worked for the rest of the journey but I did keep it out of the sun. The return journey was in the evening and the whole system worked with out errors from start to finish.

I need to do some more testing but I think the problem is to do with the receiver not the Ipaq or TTN. When it gets to warm it has communication problems on the Bluetooth interface.

If anybody else can confirm this please let us all know.

Paul Carl

hollis_f

Quote:

Now I have 1 question for everyone are all lockups during the day?

Aha!

This could be a known problem. The IR port on the iPAQ has been known to think that the Sun is another machine trying to communicate with it. It uses a lot of CPU cycles trying to interpret what the Sun is trying to say.

Start | Settings | Connections | Beam

Uncheck "Receive all incoming beams..."

Fuego

Paul, I personally would not dismiss your theory. I think the jury is still out on this one, and we need people that have the problem to try and do methodical testing to pin it down.

One question that arises from the GPS receiver "over-heating" scenario is; does this happen with anything other than iPAQ 3870s? If not, why not? There must be some inter-play between such a condition and the 3870.

For the record, the serial number of my receiver is 0305000253 and it is a Socketcom badged one - just in case there is a bad batch out there.

Unfortunately I have not done enough night driving with the unit, yet, to say whether the problem occurs at night.

Continuing on with my own programme of testing; I added my BT phone connection back into BT Manager, this morning, and after twenty minutes of driving I got the freeze.

I then stopped and checked that it was the normal freeze as we know it and confirmed it.

Next, I turned off my phone, even though there was no BT connection to it, and waited a couple of minutes. No change.

I then went into BT manager and deleted the phone connection, and waited. Still no change. I then closed and reopened the BT connection from TTNGPS program. It took a long while to re-open, but still no change - still frozen.

I had another look in BT manager and noted that the serial port service (therefore no services) were listed in the device scan for the BTGPS.

Finally, I reset the BT radio (Off then On) and everything leapt back into life. I suspect that if you switch the iPAQ off, wait a couple of seconds, and then switch it back on, it should also recover (and it's less fiddling), but I need to check that.

So, I will continue to drive around now, with only the BTGPS, setup in BT Manager, and continue testing. I'll try leaving the BTGPS unit in the sun for a while, this weekend, and take a trip to see if it will freeze.

I could also go back to my laptop and test with that again, to eliminate the iPAQ 3870 from the equation, but it is all going to take time and more testing before I can be sure that I know what conditions cause the problem.

I still don't know how the iPAQ 3870 BT stack decides which device and service to connect to when there are multiple BT devices around. I'm wondering if setting up a group with just the BTGPS in it, in BT manager, may provide a work-around.

king

Interesting point about the heat. Mine worked fine at the start of the year it only since the weather starting getting hotter that I've had the problem and I have noticed the heat of the emtac. It does lock up very quickly sometimes. I wonder whether the heat has time to adversly affect it. Think its worth checking out though.

king

just been out, only for about 30min but had no lock ups at all. I have deactivated the 'receive incoming beams' function and I put the emtac in the centre console under some papers to keep it cool (amazingly still 7 sat fix). I have also downgraded the gps to v1.5. I'll post with how I get on tommorrow.

mshah

I think the problem is with the 3870 and the Socket/Emtac BTGPS cos I have the same setup as to the rest of you with the same problem.

It is very weird as the first time it happened to me was when I installed the Speed camera POI. I uninstalled the Speed camera POI and it didn't happen again that trip so i thought that was the problem. Anyway, it happened later again. Interestingly enough it was at the same location (Going down the A43 near Silverstone).

I was heading down to Southampton via A43 and A34 and it seemed to happen a lot while going there but on the way back up to Northampton it was all fine. Not a single lock up.

I've only got 2 bonded BT devices the first time it happened. My T68 mobile and the GPS receiver. After the first time it happened, I had my Ipaq bonded with a computer as well. I have no removed this in hope that it might clear things up.

I've got the lastest v2.20 Rom and v1.1 of BT manager. I'll have to do some testing to see if i can help with this narrowing down of what it might be. Thanks for everyone doing the testing
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--> Milan

Dave

Well I hate to put the cat amongst the pigeons, but I have a 3870 with 2.20 ROM and BT Manager 1.1 without any problems. There is another thread about heat and the Emtac/Socket it might be something to do with this.

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