Jim_Kirk

Hi all,
I had a strange problem develop yesterday with my 2004 Navi system.
I had just finished washing the car and took it out for a drive to dry out the brakes when I notice that the Navi car icon was not located on the road I was driving. It appeared the icon was offset about 1000 feet and when the car was moving so was the car icon-just on the wrong place on the map .

I turned the car on-off a few times with no change. I tried ejecting the DVD Navigation Disk and putting it back in-no luck. Finally, I accessed the Navi Diagnostic screen [see this thread for how to do it click here] and I cleared the Navi memory. This wipes out your home address, all destinations, etc. and it also resets the calibration of the Navi [you would only know this if you looked at one of the menu's in the Navi Diagnostic]. After doing this the car icon offset disappeared and the car icon position now agrees with the actual position.

It was interesting that before I did this memory reset I checked the GPS position [using the Navi Diagnostics screen] on two TL's I have. The problem TL Navi was showing the identical GPS position as the other Navi that had no problem. Apparently something scrambled the Navi-creating an offset between the GPS position and where the vehicle icon was shown on the screen.

I was wondering if anyone else ever had this type of problem and how they solved it?
Jim Kirk

cM3go

this is happened to me before, it usually corrects its position after some time

Jim_Kirk

I wondered if it would do that-good to know it does.
I think the scrambled Navi offset problem may have been caused by backing the car out of the garage and then turning the key on-off several times while I was trying to move the transmission lever [was trying to get car in N so I could roll it a few feet while washing to clean the rims-can't do it]. This on-off may have scrambled the poor Navi.
Has anyone else seen this offset issue?
Jim

gatrhumpy

iTrader: (1)

I have had the same problem in my Accord. It's very strange why it does this, but the GPS always corrects itself in my car after about 45 seconds. I wonder if something like a magnet or another GPS would cause this to happen...

1995hoo

This happened to me one evening when the car was wet from rain. Where it happened to me was on the 14th Street Bridge in DC--I was on the express lane bridge and it thought I was on the regular lane bridge--and then later the same evening when I exited the express lanes at Duke Street, the display went from "I-395S" when I was in the HOV to "I-395 HOV LN" when I was not in the HOV. Weird.

It was cleared up the following day, which had nice weather. Could it be that the water on the GPS somehow diffuses or otherwise refracts the signal from the satellite and makes the Navi think the car is off by a bit?

Casper42

I pissed mine off the other day coming down fro the 4th floor of a Parking Garage that was right next to a main street. It must have recalculated my route like 7 times on the way down and then the next 2 miles it was off. After like a min or two it settled back to the right spot.

1995hoo

This happened to me again this morning--the car icon was off by some distance. It rained last night but the car didn't get wet as it was parked inside; this morning it's very cloudy with a low ceiling (planes taking off from Reagan disappeared into the clouds very quickly). I am now wondering if excessive moisture in the atmosphere might have something to do with it.

93SHOcar

I believe that if the Nav looses the satellite signal, it goes it to a "dead reckoning" mode. Perhaps, the weather conditions caused it to loose the satellite and the inaccurate position was due to the dead reckoning mode not doing as good of a job fixing your location.

Casper42

GPS Accuracy is also based on # of satellites being tracked. If you only have 2 or 3 your position can be off by over 100ft. Once you get up to 5 or 6 Sats then it gets more accurate like 15 ft.

wallaceoh

I'm away from home, so I can't give you the exact page, but I remember reading something about this in the NAVI manual. There are instructions in the manual on how to "correct" your position if necessary. Just a thought if you are looking for ideas on where to go next....

1995hoo

Oh, it doesn't bother me that much because every time it's happened I've known where I am, I just find it peculiar, that's all. I'm aware of the option on the setup menu to move the car icon.

On an unrelated note, discovered this morning that if you hit the Navi's "Audio" button when the stereo is off, it turns it on to the last mode you were using.