Is my TomTom wired GPS a dud?

DuncanLawson · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 07, 2004 Posts: 12

After having my second TT BT receiver fail recently (being replaced - waiting for stock) I decided to get a wired version to use whilst I wait and also to keep in the car as a backup if TT BT #3 dies prematurely!

Got one on e-bay for a decent price but I think it is a dud! I wonder if anyone can confirm for me.

When I plug it into my TT car kit I get a flashing red/orange (can't distinguish exactly what it is!) light on the receiver. The receiver indicates that it is talking to TT GPS but there is no indication of satellites being found.

I then started up WinFast Naviagator and saw that the receiver is sending out data but there are no satellites being locked onto. In the Signal Level view all I get is one satellite (red dot) on the furthest North point. This will change to different satellite numbers and the data under the AZ, EI and CN columns is always zero.

In TT I already reset the GPS to my known position to help it along but it didn't help.

After leaving it on for long enough (15+ mins) it does finally get a fix on satellites but if I then leave it off for a while and come back to it, it's back to the very, very long acquisition.

I managed to get a friend's TT wired GPS to compare and I plugged it in, the green light flashed on that one and I got a fix within 30 secs so it's definitely a receiver problem.

Is it the battery inside that's dodgy and losing all the Almanac and Ephemeris data that it had logged? - or something else. It would be handy to know so that I can contact the seller armed with a good idea with what's wrong wih it to then see the best way to resolve it.

Thanks

Duncan

DavidW · Posted: Wed Nov 24, 2004 8:42 pm Post subject:

I'd leave the wired GPS running for a couple of hours (long enough to download and store a complete almanac) before getting worried about the possibility of internal battery failure.

David

DuncanLawson · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 07, 2004 Posts: 12

Thanks David, will try that first.

Haven't been on a long enough journey yet to give it that sort of time on charge!

DavidW · Posted: Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:03 pm Post subject:

Thinking further - there's a possibility that the internal battery is rechargeable (I haven't checked it personally), in which case a really long journey will definitely help matters.

David

	PocketGPS
	Web