Strange red light on TomTom 3 bluetooth gps module

hegedusa · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 27, 2004 Posts: 55

Normally on the bluetooth gps receiver, there are two lights and the left one flashes blue, indicating bluetooth comms, and the right one is green when receiving a GPS signal, and / or red when charging.

On mine, the left hand light has gone red and the unit is totally unresponsive.

The first time, it was when it was in the car, charging (I can't remember whether or not it was "connected" to the pocket pc).

The second time, it was on, but not charging and not being used for a few hours.

The first time this happened I fixed it by opening it up, removing the battery, waiting 30 minutes, plugging it back in and holding down the button a few times then repeating this whole process 2 or 3 times.

Has anyway else had this problem?

How long is the battery supposed to last, and what make is the bluetooth module so I can work out where to get instructions for it as I didn't get any in the packaging. It makes it all a bit hit-and-miss really. Why didn't they include some instructions?

Help!

Anthony

hogbreath · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 12:20 am Post subject:

Anthony

Well it’s either the electronics or the battery, have you got access to a volt meter, what does the battery voltage read?

The voltage will give a good indication of the charge in the battery.

Pete

hegedusa · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 27, 2004 Posts: 55

Actually, I found an item on tomtom's "knowledgebase" and it says if this thing happens with the left hand LED being red, just drain the battery (i.e. leave it on for 5 hours) and charge it again. Sounds like a design fault to me.

Anyway, I plugged mine in and it started working properly within 5 minutes. Very odd. I'm beginning to think that the wired GPS is more reliable by a long shot.

Darren · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 2:45 pm Post subject:

TomTom's earlier BT units had a high failure rate and some issues with operation when trying to use it when the battery had been allowed to run down.

Newer units seem more robust and indeed TomTom no longer offer the car cradle as they identified this as the cause of the failures. BT units are more problematic than wired GPS mice but they are many times more versatile so the advantages far outweigh the occasional glitches!
_________________
Darren Griffin

NMatthew · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 7:32 pm Post subject:

Can you be more specific about the cradle being the cause of failures?

Having just paid a carphone man £20 to wire my TT BT GPS and HP2210 cradles into the car 12V system I'm not impressed at the idea that this is going to cause the thing to fail.

Why have Tomtom not issued a recall if this is the case? Or is it justt related to very low battery conditions?

Since my cradle is wired to an ignition sensed supply it gets turned off when not in use so the battery does slowly run down on its own I guess. But as it only has to survive a day or two at nost before the car is used again it'll never run flat.

Darren · Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2004 7:55 pm Post subject:

Whoa! I'm just relaying what we were told. I too have a TT BT GPS in a cradle hard wired into my vehicle electrics!

Our experiences (we lost 3 out of 4 TT BT GPS units) differ from TomTom's, at the time that we had the failures none of them were being used in the cradles, we suspected it was some problem with mismatched chargers or similar.

Since I had mine replaced in Nov I opted to use the cradle (as a result of our findings) and it has given sterling service every day since with no issues at all so I wouldn't worry Thumbs Up

_________________
Darren Griffin

	PocketGPS
	Web