lbintab

iTrader: (1)

I have a very very strange problem. My car hasn't had the gps icon on for about a week. I've also had gps problems with my phone. I downloaded a utility on my phone that tells me how many gps satellites I'm connected to. When my car is off with the windows up and sunroof closed I'm connected to 10 to 15 atennas. When the car is on it drops to zero. I stick my phone out the window and it goes back up the 10 to 15. Also when I turn the car off it goes up to 10 to 15. Anyone else have an issue like this?

lbintab

iTrader: (1)

Here are screen shots from my phone. Other other phones in the car have the same issue

CJITTY

What type of window tint do you have? Some metallic films can block signals. I had an issue with my nav GPS icon but it was a loose connection and it was fixed. Do you have any type of plug n play devices inline with your head unit and nav? Are you sure your GPS antenna is plugged in all the way on back of nav screen. I heard it can look ad if its plugged in but can be pushed further and properly shielded and connected. With dash work, that connection can get loose.

I've had issues last week with my phone and Waze app not seeing GPS. Intermittent though. Could be major solar flares disrupting GPS also but haven't heard that on the news. I think its a combo of loose connection combined with electrical interference...pop that nav screen out and make sure your GPS connection is secured.

jmcraney

The GPS constellation is composed of about 24 satellites flying at an altitude of about 12,000 miles (half-synchronous). It would only be possible for a terrestrial receiver to see about 6 of them at any one time.

One thing you need to consider is an interfering signal from something that you have added to your car. So, be sure to turn off or disconnect radar detectors, power converters, laptop computers, cell phones - all things electronic that are not an OEM part of your car. You need to also consider that someone has added a GPS jamming device to your car. And you need to check for a tracking device that may have been added.

Your car's GPS antenna is located in the dash below the rearview mirror so windows and sunroof have nothing to do with it.

lbintab

iTrader: (1)

It has nothing to do with the tint. If you look at the 2 pics i posted...one is with the car on with 0 satellites fixed in and the other is with the car off with 15. It was very odd because every phone in my car had the same issues.

lbintab

iTrader: (1)

Everything from the car that's not oem was disconnected to troubleshoot which includes my bypass and my E-level suspension. I got into the diagnostic screen and it also shows no satellites connected. I read in another thread that you mentioned where the antenna was located. The moment i read that i slapped the top of the dash in the area it's located. Instantly GPS signals come back on in the diagnostics. My phone picks up all the satellite signals like before and the GPS icon turned back on on the map screen. It was definitely something the car was transmitting that was jamming my gps signal in the car. very odd with an equally odd resolution.

lbintab

iTrader: (1)

This screen was blank or had zeros prior to me slapping the top of the dash.

jmcraney

The advice you were given about a loose antenna connection may be spot on. Sometimes receivers will oscillate when they don't have a good match to their antenna. The antenna or cable may be defective or the cable connection may be loose.

You can see from the diagnostic screen that only 6 satellites (23,9,7, 16,20 & 10) have elevation angles and signal levels sufficient to provide useful information. The other 5 have shallow elevation angles and attendant low signal levels and would not be usable for "fixing" data. The GPS orbital path design only guarantees 4 usable satellites any where on Earth.

CJITTY

Ok bro....I tried to help. My solution was pushing in the loose connector to the back of the Nav. My solution for weak cell phone gps was a $5 Walgreens vent cell phone holder. Phone sits perfect to connect to cig plug and clear view of sky for GPS receiver. Waze locks in instantly. Depending on which direction I travel impacts gps strength too. Going north is weaker than south..makes sense since satellites follow equator. With my loose connection fix, car gps is never a problem and my GPS icon comes on right away and not spotty or randomly displays when I had the issue back then

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lbintab

iTrader: (1)

Sorry if I came off rude. My issue isn't with tint though. My car was acting like a gps jammer. It would not allow a anything sitting inside the car to obtain a gps signal including other phones. It was an annoyance that the cars gps wasn't working. But with my phones gps not working that was a different story. I stumbled upon the fact that the gps satellites weren't connecting to my phone when my car was on. I happen to step out of the car and boom gps on my phone was working again. I looked up a gps utility program which shows me satellites connected. I sat their in the car turning the car on and off over and over. Watching the connections come on and drop. That's when I realized my problem has something to do with the car some how. Over the weekend I'm going to pull the radio and check the gps antenna wiring. Hopefully that'll finalize and resolve my problem. Again the thing that boggles me the most is that all gps signal gets jammed inside the car when I had this problem.

jmcraney

The launch inclination of the GPS satellites is about 55 deg, so they are not following the equator.

Here is a neat graphic that I found that shows the orbital paths in mass. You can see that for the reference point of 45 deg N there are at least 6 satellites always visible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_...llationGPS.gif

CJITTY

Thanks for the detail..I just assumed the birds were south of my location based on how I see Directv and dish satellites pointed
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