1. hal1's Avatar
    What can cause a loss of satellites? It was cloudy all day, could that do it?

    Just got Garmin Mobile. It worked fine yesterday, but today it couldn't find a satellite - ALL DAY.

    Also saw that BB maps couldn't get satellite ( I figure that is why I couldn't get a Garmin signal)
    12-16-08 08:28 PM
  2. jeffh's Avatar
    My Garmin Forerunner 205 and Freedom Keychain 2000 have no problems with clouds. I don't have OS4.5, so I can't check my Verizon's internal GPS.
    12-16-08 10:52 PM
  3. hal1's Avatar
    I'm wondering if I may have changed some settings? Though gps is still on 'location on"
    12-16-08 11:00 PM
  4. delta_foxtrot2's Avatar
    I highly doubt clouds would dense enough to block GPS signals, otherwise the US miltary would have been out of luck on cloudy days, "oh we can't go to war today, it's cloudy our sat nav won't tell us where to point missiles!"

    Maybe Verizon was twiddling with something?
    12-16-08 11:08 PM
  5. hal1's Avatar
    Hmm, after not working all day, a soft reset just fixed it. Any guesses why?
    12-16-08 11:13 PM
  6. jeffh's Avatar
    Rebooting fixes many problems. Add this one to the list.
    12-16-08 11:15 PM
  7. delta_foxtrot2's Avatar
    Forgot to mention this, the GPS system is designed to a minimum number of satelites visible above the horizon at any time anywhere on earth, however this can be reduced by a number of things, trees, buildings and other dense things.

    This site: LIVE REAL TIME SATELLITE AND SPACE SHUTTLE TRACKING

    Shows you the current GPS cluster over head, although you might have to register to fix the earth location to view sats from.

    The site is showing 6 sats that should be 'visible' to my location at present, my 8310 is only 'seeing' 4 or 5 depending where I stand outside. The other day the site said 14 sats were visible from my location. That's how the cookie crumbles at this stage, although with the Europeans doing their cluster of sats, the Russian cluster and the Chinese all doing like wise to some extent the future in terms of location based stuff is going to be very very interesting.
    Last edited by delta_foxtrot2; 12-17-08 at 05:39 AM.
    12-17-08 05:29 AM
  8. delta_foxtrot2's Avatar
    Now the site shows 10, and the BB is saying it can see 8 of those.
    12-17-08 05:54 AM
  9. teal's Avatar
    Clouds should not affect but being in buildings will. Seems like a device issue.
    12-17-08 05:58 AM
  10. delta_foxtrot2's Avatar
    Clouds should not affect but being in buildings will. Seems like a device issue.
    "Urban Canyon" can also badly effect GPS, ie lots of tall building round you.
    Last edited by delta_foxtrot2; 12-17-08 at 07:42 AM.
    12-17-08 07:29 AM
  11. deckroid's Avatar
    I was trying to get a GPS point inside a Hospital, but couldn't. Microwaves, concrete with rebar, not to mention all the RF from all those machines...
    12-17-08 09:25 AM
  12. delta_foxtrot2's Avatar
    I was trying to get a GPS point inside a Hospital, but couldn't. Microwaves, concrete with rebar, not to mention all the RF from all those machines...
    What does microwave (ovens?) have to do with it?

    MW ovens operate at about 2.45Ghz, GPS is 1575.42 MHz...

    However anything with density will absorb the signal, unless something is outputing on the exact freq as the GPS sats, they won't interfere with GPS at all... and since GPS also happens to be in GSM phones, they don't seem to adversely effect the signal either and they tend to splatter over everything at short range, even USB connections etc.
    12-17-08 10:17 AM
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