star wars

kodkod · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 06, 2008 Posts: 3

over the past couple of months i've had major issues with my streetpilot c510. the problem is i've had to drive for around 40/50 miles without it finding the satalites Shocked

to the point where i thought they had all been shot down.
has any1 got any work arounds/tips for me pls

Andy_P · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 2:33 pm Post subject:

Not knowing that brand, the only thing I can think of is to try to let it find the satellites BEFORE you drive off.
Most sat-navs have a LOT more trouble "getting a fix" when they are in a moving vehicle.

On my first TomTom, it took a few seconds (sometimes a minute or two) when stationary, but sometimes it took forever if I drove off before it was ready.

More modern devices are a lot quicker and for TomTom users there is a thing called "QuickGPSFix" (basically a list of where the satellites are in space for your rough location), which you can download and is supposed to make the lock times faster.
Does Streetpilot have anything similar?

Or does it have a reset button or function you can use to re-boot the program? That often used to help.

Border_Collie · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 2:52 pm Post subject:

Just to add, if your car has an athermic windscreen, which reduces the signal strength, in addition to you driving off before getting a lock, you'll be very lucky to get a lock driving between Land's End and John O'Groats. Although sat nav requires only 4 sats to function, having 4 only means you could lose one, which is disappearing over the horizon, and not pick up another. As a result you'd be down to three and weird and wonderful things start happening. (Been there, done that Sad

). Always best to lock onto 6 or 7 before starting off and, with an athermic windscreen, get the locks outside the car, after which you should be problem free.
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kodkod · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 06, 2008 Posts: 3

i have tried it in 2 different cars and have also tried waiting b4 setting off, all to no avail Shocked

mikealder · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:07 pm Post subject:

Does the battery hold its charge or does the unit only work when plugged into the car power supply? if the battery is dead the unit will have to download a full set of lookup tables from the sats in order for it to work out where it is, this can take typically around 20 minutes, if its not the main battery I wonder if this device has a separate backup battery fitted internally that might have died some devices have two batteries, the main one and a smaller one to maintain the empheris and almanac data (I bet I have that spelt wrong, which is why I avoided using the terms earlier in the post) - Mike

kodkod · Occasional Visitor Joined: Sep 06, 2008 Posts: 3

mikealder · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:22 pm Post subject:

If it uses a backup battery though you wouldn't know if that was shot and it could cause these sort of problem, I have no way of currently checking what your unit has inside, but when I get home I will dig out some files off the PC to have a look for a datasheet - Mike

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