Ever had your Navi go crazy on you?


Last night while I was driving I notice that my navi decides to go left while I am going right. When I was traveling north, my navi was indicating that I was heading south. I ended up pulling over and tuning off my car to restart the navi. It didn’t work.

I cam home and I parked and decided to take it to the dealer early morning.

When I turned on the car this morning everything was back to normal.

Anyone have or had this problem?

 

I have not had a problem with my Navi on my 05 TL. What version is your DVD for your Navi? You will have to eject the DVD in the trunk to see the version number. You should see version 3.40c unless you purchased the latest version of 3.50

 

are u sure that you didnt just press the little compass button in the top left corner because that has happened to me before

 

That has happened to me a couple of times, not very often, where I've pulled out of the garage in the morning and the Navi has me going 180 degrees the opposite of the direction in which I'm actually going. When it happens it corrects itself after about half a mile to a mile. I know it was not the compass thing because I've only pressed that twice since I bought the car in August 2004—once to see if I'd like it better with the direction I was going being at the top of the map, and once to change it back when I decided I prefer to have north at the top.

The thing I've noticed about the times it's happened has been that either the weather is bad with thunderstorms in the forecast, or I haven't driven the car in a while. I note the thunderstorm thing because it made me wonder if somehow electrical storms interfere with the GPS signal from the satellite such that the Navi has to rely on a gyroscope or some such thing until it gets a clear signal.

 

I cannot remember the person who posted the information below to give them credit.

The slow acquisition problems that occur may be the result of expired almanacs. GPS receivers use almanacs downloaded from the satellites as part of their data stream to predict the positions of satellites given a position and time. Thing is, the almanacs have a lifespan of 1 week, after which a new almanac must be downloaded. A complete almanac download takes about 12 minutes (the GPS data stream is extremely slow--only 50 bits per second!). Without a valid almanac, the GPS receiver would not know which satellites to look for.

Picture this: You have been driving around and the GPS is tracking fine. You pull up into your garage and turn the car off. During that time, the almanac expires. The next morning, you turn on your navi and it's completely lost! It must then search the sky for any valid satellite and download a brand new almanac before it can navigate. This process will probably take about 15 - 20 minutes.

Yes, this happens even for aircraft GPS's.

By the way, the GPS satellite signal is very weak, and is easily obstructed by buildings and foliage. Parking in a garage or carport will obstruct the signals until you drive out.

 

Woah! Thanks for the info. YOu guys are great! ^^

 

This has happened to me too. But not very often. Dec 5, 2005 was the last time or so. Nav showed me off-road (driving across a pond actually). Dealer said he would check it out next time in. Just a fluke I think, possibly related to satellite signal fade. Did not fix itself after several start/stops. Next morning it was fine.