PastorJon Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 Suddenly my nuvi seems to have a tough time finding satellites. It was fine yesterday afternoon, and then last night it either couldn't find anything, or was only finding 3 satellites, giving me about 150-300 ft accuracy. There was heavy cloud cover, but I expected it to do better. It has not been dropped or rained on. Any ideas? Quote Link to comment
+Rockin Roddy Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 Suddenly my nuvi seems to have a tough time finding satellites. It was fine yesterday afternoon, and then last night it either couldn't find anything, or was only finding 3 satellites, giving me about 150-300 ft accuracy. There was heavy cloud cover, but I expected it to do better. It has not been dropped or rained on. Any ideas? Throw it out the window, reverse and then again go forward all while making sure to target the Nuvi. This should clear the memory just enough to help?? Sorry to hear of your troubles, my friend! I hope things get better soon for you and am sure, if there's an answer to be had, someone with knowledge will be along to help you!! Quote Link to comment
PastorJon Posted October 1, 2009 Author Share Posted October 1, 2009 Suddenly my nuvi seems to have a tough time finding satellites. It was fine yesterday afternoon, and then last night it either couldn't find anything, or was only finding 3 satellites, giving me about 150-300 ft accuracy. There was heavy cloud cover, but I expected it to do better. It has not been dropped or rained on. Any ideas? Throw it out the window, reverse and then again go forward all while making sure to target the Nuvi. This should clear the memory just enough to help?? Sorry to hear of your troubles, my friend! I hope things get better soon for you and am sure, if there's an answer to be had, someone with knowledge will be along to help you!! Thanks for the sympathy... friend... Quote Link to comment
+Rockin Roddy Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 Suddenly my nuvi seems to have a tough time finding satellites. It was fine yesterday afternoon, and then last night it either couldn't find anything, or was only finding 3 satellites, giving me about 150-300 ft accuracy. There was heavy cloud cover, but I expected it to do better. It has not been dropped or rained on. Any ideas? Throw it out the window, reverse and then again go forward all while making sure to target the Nuvi. This should clear the memory just enough to help?? Sorry to hear of your troubles, my friend! I hope things get better soon for you and am sure, if there's an answer to be had, someone with knowledge will be along to help you!! Thanks for the sympathy... friend... Couldn't resist the jab at a friend!! Let us know how things work out for you! Quote Link to comment
PastorJon Posted October 1, 2009 Author Share Posted October 1, 2009 (@ Rod: At least I didn't leave it on top of my car and drive off... ) Today's a nice clear day, so I'm going to see if I have better luck. If not, I understand that a hard reset of the unit might fix it. I've backed up my data... but I'm not entirely sure how to do a hard reset. Anyone have any experience with that? Quote Link to comment
+Redwoods Mtn Biker Posted October 1, 2009 Share Posted October 1, 2009 Make sure you have the latest firmware first. Otherwise, search support at garmin.com for reset for your particular model. Backup your faves first. Quote Link to comment
JDiablo Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 (edited) (@ Rod: At least I didn't leave it on top of my car and drive off... ) Today's a nice clear day, so I'm going to see if I have better luck. If not, I understand that a hard reset of the unit might fix it. I've backed up my data... but I'm not entirely sure how to do a hard reset. Anyone have any experience with that? Hi Jon, any luck? Generally, weather doesn't have an effect on reception (I say generally because I have personally seen the effects where a shamal that degraded reception). I believe I read somewhere that some nuvi units have a reset button (well a hole that one uses a toothpick or a paperclip with). Good luck. Edited October 5, 2009 by JDiablo Quote Link to comment
PastorJon Posted October 5, 2009 Author Share Posted October 5, 2009 I don't think it was weather. I'm not even sure if it was the nuvi. I'm wondering if it was some temporary (36-48 hr) glitch in the satellite coverage? The next day, I went out... clear weather... same problem. I saved my faves and reset the unit.... same problem. I reset it a second time, this time leaving it out in the truck for an hour to get a good lock on where it was. The rest of the day, it still showed pretty poor geometry and accuracy... but then, the next day, suddenly it started picking up 5-6 satellites, and giving me sub-20-foot accuracy again (which is about as good as the nuvi ever seems to get). Anyway, at the moment it seems to be working fine. For a while I thought I was going to have to try to convince Garmin to exchange it. For reference, the reset is accomplished (on the 255w) by touching the bottom-right corner while turning the unit on. Quote Link to comment
JDiablo Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 Glad to hear that it's working for you now. Thanks for adding the reset procedure, I'm sure that will help someone out down the line. Quote Link to comment
+kallt_kaffe Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 (edited) I'm have had the exakt same problem recently with my Nüvi 255. Sometimes it works just fine and sometimes it just sees a few satellites. If those 4-5 satellites are high in the sky then it's all fine and accurancy is acceptable but if the satellites seen are near the horizon the the accurancy can get really bad like +/- 86 meters. And then again some days it just works as normal with 8-11 satellites seen. It can't be an antenna issue as even if it just sees 4 or 5 satellites the strenght can be excellent. I also have my legend HCx to compare with and under the same sky it can see 11 satellites when the nuvi only sees 4 or 5. I've reset the unit with the resetbutton, I've hard resetted it and also reflashed it with latest firmware (the same one that I allready had) and since then it seems to work a little better but that may just be a coincidence. I'm not sure when this started but until a few weeks ago it has never done this. Perhaps it is a bug in the latest firmware? Edited October 5, 2009 by kallt_kaffe Quote Link to comment
+John SKP Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 Suddenly my nuvi seems to have a tough time finding satellites. It was fine yesterday afternoon, and then last night it either couldn't find anything, or was only finding 3 satellites, giving me about 150-300 ft accuracy. There was heavy cloud cover, but I expected it to do better. It has not been dropped or rained on. Any ideas? I've had the same problem for two months now. My Nuvi 255W was fine for thirteen months when all of sudden it would report poor satellite reception. After a month of this and doing a reset, I bought another 255W and within a few days it started doing the same thing. Sometimes it would regain satellite reception in a few minutes and other times it would take hours. I know that it wasn't satellite problems because my handheld (PN-40) never lost reception. I did a reset on this one also to no avail. Garmin wants me to send it back but I know that they'll reship it to me saying that everything checked out OK as they have done in the past with my other units. Quote Link to comment
+Rockin Roddy Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 Suddenly my nuvi seems to have a tough time finding satellites. It was fine yesterday afternoon, and then last night it either couldn't find anything, or was only finding 3 satellites, giving me about 150-300 ft accuracy. There was heavy cloud cover, but I expected it to do better. It has not been dropped or rained on. Any ideas? I've had the same problem for two months now. My Nuvi 255W was fine for thirteen months when all of sudden it would report poor satellite reception. After a month of this and doing a reset, I bought another 255W and within a few days it started doing the same thing. Sometimes it would regain satellite reception in a few minutes and other times it would take hours. I know that it wasn't satellite problems because my handheld (PN-40) never lost reception. I did a reset on this one also to no avail. Garmin wants me to send it back but I know that they'll reship it to me saying that everything checked out OK as they have done in the past with my other units. If I'm reading this correctly, you should be able to simply return it to the store? Quote Link to comment
+kallt_kaffe Posted October 5, 2009 Share Posted October 5, 2009 This problem is supposed to fixed in FW 5.70 that was just released. Quote Link to comment
PastorJon Posted October 5, 2009 Author Share Posted October 5, 2009 Well... we went out on a caching expedition again this morning... 4 for 4 with the nuvi.... and that was under heavy tree cover. And then, back in the truck, I was running with 17-19foot accuracy (which, if I understand correctly, is about as good as I can really hope for). Quote Link to comment
+kallt_kaffe Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 (edited) More info about this problem can be found in this thread: http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=128479 And as I said above, it should be fixed in the new firmware (5.70). EDIT: Just installed this and it also brings GPS firmware up from 3.10b to 3.70b. EDIT2: Had an accurancy of 3-4 meters almost the whole way home from work today while seeing 12 satellites (most of the time). Seems to work great so far. Edited October 6, 2009 by kallt_kaffe Quote Link to comment
PastorJon Posted October 6, 2009 Author Share Posted October 6, 2009 Great... ! Thanks for the update on this thread. Quote Link to comment
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