Inside a trashy sat-nav

[@zh84]

8:03 "Accuracy: NONE". Honesty like that is always refreshing.

[@pstuff]

I've played with a lot of satnavs over the years, from writing navigation software to various utils for their configuration and calibration. First thing you need to do on kit from that era is make sure your date and time are set correctly - I noticed in the video that you had the time at various values. Without it being correct the Rx really doesn't like it. The receiver also tries to use the existing location to speed up satellite acquisition - if you used it say in London, switched it off, traveled to Miami and switched on it can take hours to realise it's unable to pick up the expected sats. As soon as it's identified a suitable satellite to track it will start downloading the ephemeris data so it will know what other sats to expect. The usual chip in those receivers try to track either 12 or 20 sats iirc (sirf 3?) and require 3 to get a 2d fix, 4 for a 3d (well you could get by on 3 if you use the earth as a pseudo sat). The ones with the highest signal strength should get used in the position calculation, as sats come in and out of view the ones used should change. Main problem with sirf chipset was it was a little deaf when it came to receiving the sat signals. This meant that if it never picked up one satellite of sufficient quality it would never actually progress with the almanac download. Inside a building you could very rarely get a lock - putting it near a window occasionally worked. Slight aside - similar hardware to the Gizmondo handheld console. Also running win CE 4.2 Love the channel btw.

[@lptf5441]

I'd agree that with those very old GPS chipsets they'll almost never get a lock indoors.

[@z0rkmids]

The kapton tape is sometimes put on parts to make it easier to give suction-based pick-and-place tools a more secure grip during assembly.

[@wimwiddershins]

I'd wondered about that, it makes sense.

[@AndrewGillard]

Particularly common on connectors and similar parts where the top either isn't flat (e.g. surface-mount pin headers) or has holes (e.g. micro-USB sockets, with the two holes for the retaining latches). Pin headers are often supplied with a little plastic "hat" for that purpose, and it isn't always removed before selling the product, so you can occasionally find them still in place when buying electronics modules and such :)

[@thomasbonse]

Sounds like the perfect time to substitute krapton tape for the Kapton variety.

[@JAPANattacks]

Thankyou!

[@Rich-on6fe]

Allows it to go through a soldering process without getting effed up.

[@TumbleFig]

A blur effect on screen... that must be the most editing I've ever seen in a Big Clive video.

[@PraxZimmerman]

Probably should have made it a bit bigger though. I'm guessing there's still enough info there to find the right house.

[@phonotical]

Must have taken hours to render, amazed he didn't use a sheet of paper!

[@mikropower01]

@@phonotical - He is editing and cutting his videos all the time, but it needs time to do this. I think he need a lot of time for this process of opening and writing the circuit, to cut this whole process to such a little small video, we all love. I open devices too and searching for errors, this is often very time consuming. He do not want to waste more time then necessary.

[@phonotical]

@@mikropower01 I made a joke, maybe it does not translate well...

[@mikropower01]

@@phonotical - Oh ... okay ... you mean the opposite of this what you did say? As a German I possibly do not understand fun so really well. I want to defend his work a little bit, because I like it and I know how much work this can be.

[@Sylvan_dB]

A GPS complete cold start can easily take 30 minutes. The receiver has to listen to all the frequencies until it can identify a GPS signal, then it has to receive and decode that signal for several minutes to get ephemeris data for the constellation and then it knows which frequencies to expect signal and can selectively listen to those. Ephemeris data is good for about 2 weeks.

[@tz8785]

Shouldn't the Almanac allow a first position fix in about half that time?

[@Sylvan_dB]

@@tz8785 the almanac is the ephemeris data and gradually loses relevance over about two weeks. The 30 minutes is a typical worst case when it takes some search time to locate a satellite with a clear and uninterrupted signal and download the current data. Data rate is very low.

[@ncot_tech]

My Garmin eTrex was a bugger for this. It was considered a good day if it got a fix within 15 minutes of being switched on.

[@cuteraptor42]

A-GPS helped a lot getting a quick on modern smartphone. Getting this data through a network operator was quite revolutionary.

[@alexanderkupke920]

@@cuteraptor42 which is nothing else than actually loading a more recent "almanac". Only I think with A-GPS it is somewhat usable only for about 3 days. To some degree some of the devises with the information they got from the satellites they kind of updated their internal almanac. that is when restarting usually went a lot faster for a while. I remember those things taking usually at least 3 minutes to know where you are, and then trying to get you from some neighboring road to the road you already are driving on. Most useless for short trips within the city, you might have arrived before the darn thing had an idea where it is. Modern A-GPS indeed is quite an improvement, it is not that hard to forget that it was not always like, instant on and the software knows where you are when the app is started. Well, maybe that is not about forgetting but suppressing I guess... I for my part would not want to change back. Also additionally Android these days takes more than just GPS into consideration (With GPS just being used as a Stand in for actually GPS, GLONASS, BAIDOU, Galileo and what else satellites todays Chips can handle), but known Wifi networks as well as Information from Cellphone towers. so even without satellites only with cellphone towers an android phone very likely knows within 300 meters its position.

[@fouzaialaa7962]

i was messing with a gps module a while back and i learned that they draw huge spikes of current (up to 1.2 amps for a few microseconds in my case ) when they are searching for signal and each time you turn it off it actually saves the location and the satellites that it had locked on last time in memory and try's to get there signal next time ..... so you get the perception that they get a signal fast but in reality it was from memory that's why most of them come with a small cell in the breakout board....... in this case i guess the battery was so dead it couldnt save or reconnect to satellites from memory so it had to search again every time it turned on ....thats why it took so long .... and it couldnt get a signal becoz the battery couldnt supply the huge spikes of current so it just kept browning out !!

[@Graham_Rule]

I cancelled the amazon order for my jetski when I saw that Clive's location was blurred out. :)

[@JAPANattacks]

Lol Graham

[@mikropower01]

Ha ha ... But I know, there are many people with to much free time and they feel very close to somebody they never meet or know. This could develop to a problem for the entertainer/educator (he is doing both). There are other people, which stopped making videos because of to much people which came to their house to any point of time, even if it was a very bad point of time. This ends sometimes in calling the police. The thing is ... Big Clive do not know all the people and humans have a very limited need of company and you do not want to know everyone. He is making some money, can do some interesting things, share it with us and sometimes he have a little meeting in the British empire with other British people in his area. This is all and it is nice.

[@FixerUK]

And who says that romance is dead. Oops wrong jet skier. 😉

[@blueredbrick]

"Isle of Man, Big Clive" should be enough for the postal deliveries nowdays ?

[@InsanityPlusOne]

I mean I hear the isle of man is pretty small and you'd be looking for a particularly easy to recognize sparky.

[@hi-tech-guy-1823]

may need a firmware update "Older GPS devices are facing their own mini Y2K bug The GPS week number again reset to zero at 23:59:42 UTC on April 6, 2019. Many GPS-enabled devices that were not properly designed to account for the rollover event exhibited problems on that date" and after

[@bobshowrocks]

Maybe, but the fact it was saying it was on the isle of man would indicate it's able to use the GPS signals correctly. You need at least 4 signals to properly calculate a location with GPS, so it may have been able to get a very rough position with the 3 signals it said it could find.

[@twerki78]

This is exactly what I was thinking.

[@lukedavis436]

I fixed my Navman S30 by simply editing the date within windows CE, either that or its just unaffected

[@iainathairydog]

@@lukedavis436 it must have been unaffected. You can always set the date and time, but when it gets a fix, that will overwrite your settings. If it stays correct, your device doesn't have the bug. None should, because the rollover has happened before. It wasn't an unknown or unforseen event, and should have been allowed for.

[@lukedavis436]

@@iainathairydog I'm just glad it still work's, unlike my other tom-tom which had Touch issues, can't ever beat old faithful

[@GEORGE-jf2vz]

All that room in that case and they used the tiniest hard-to-use connector.

[@JasperJanssen]

Compatibility, probably.

[@spasticmuse4262]

@@JasperJanssen Exactly my experience. The standard is set by the display manufacturer to maximize compatibility across multiple design platforms.

[@wpherigo1]

I’d be surprised if it found satellites inside, rather from a clear sky view outside.

[@uploadJ]

Notice, his antenna is facing DOWN on the bench too.

[@randycarter2001]

These things typically only go for 30 to 60 minutes on internal battery. They expect it to be used in a vehicle with external power from a lighter socket.

[@merlin1346]

That is correct.

[@ericpode6095]

From my limited experience most have trouble lasting 5 minutes. That being said my latest (branded Aonerex) was on battery for 45 mins the other day and still showed about 70% on the indicator.

[@RaduTek]

Kinda like dashcams, although in dashcams the battery is used to save the recordings and safely shut down after power is lost. But the cheap ones use small capacity batteries that lose their capacity quickly from the heat and wear.

[@BersekViking]

Older GPS can use an hour to find the first satellite if it hasn't been used for a while. More modern GPS have more channels allowing the receiver to look for more satellites at the same time, shortening the time to lock on the first one. When locked to the first satellite, it has to download the almanac (a map of where satellites are on the sky) because it knows nothing about where satellites are. This is done at 50 bit/s and takes about 15 minutes. When it has done this it can start locking on to more satellites and calculate it's position. On a phone, the almanac is downloaded from the internet, so it only takes a few seconds to lock onto the satellites.

[@caralynx]

Looks like the OS is probably WinCE. I've got a small unit with a similar UI and can break out of it to get a nice WinCE desktop. As for the GPS, not too familiar with how it all works, but from what I've read, without any assisted GPS data (smartphones use cell tower IDs and data connection to an AGPS server), it may have to redownload the almanac, which takes around 10 minutes, before it can get a lock. I wonder what that blob of what looks like solder is used for on the antenna. Also fun fact, there was a GPS week rollover in 2019, so receivers that are not updated would show the year as 1980 (although the time would be right).

[@ILoveWomen]

My grandpa had a Windows CE Sat Nav and it made the exact same annoying BLOOP sound this unit did when Clive pressed shut down, so I’m willing to bet it’s CE as well

[@khaitomretro]

Wince.

[@jm036]

Yeah no way any android version is gonna boot that fast on such an old device either.

[@fredbear3915]

@@khaitomretro Yeah thats what you do when you realise how crappy it all is...

[@iainathairydog]

Redownloading the almanac takes around 12 minutes, but you'd be very lucky to start just before it begins. So it's best to assume it will take twice that long. Add some time to tune into a satellite signal and you're looking at up to half an hour before it's done from cold start .

[@LewinEdwards]

The Kapton tape is on the antenna so it can be picked up with vacuum tweezers by pick and place equipment. The ceramic surface is too porous for this.

[@wonniewarrior]

I love the graph of the satellite signal strength. I wish my GPS had part of the screen showing that data - it looks 'cool'.

[@bigclivedotcom]

There are apps for your phone that give lots of satellite data.

[@phoenixdundee]

I'm glad to see that the owner appreciated the technology and named the device Alan. We should all name our electronics so we treat them better. ;-)

[@stephenlamley541]

Ill call mine a different name im not always the kindest to myself.

[@JDWatkins]

Looks like it came out of the QC Fukit Bucket.

[@rd6864]

Quality Control......there wasn't the usual QC PASSED sticker so it must be bad, it's the first label that's put on and they don't often go to the trouble of removing it.

[@JDWatkins]

@@rd6864 that is why I said it CAME OUT of the QC Fukit bucket lol

[@zsombor_99]

@@rd6864 Yeah, I can imagine it: manufacturers just put on the QC PASSED sticker without actually checking the actual product, they only check a few samples which are going to be inspected to avoid paying fines. That sticker's purpose is to reassures the customer it's a good product which he/she bought, I think. Anyway, it's just a dirt cheap tablet with additional cheap GPS circuitry and a modified boot process to automatically launch the navigation software.

[@JDWatkins]

@@zsombor_99 they do when it comes out of China lol

[@zsombor_99]

@@JDWatkins Especially from there, of course. 😉

[@citizensteve6713]

Wouldn’t be surprised if it worked when coming to a T intersection “turn left or maybe right” 🤣

[@straightpipediesel]

It's very often the GPS LNA/front end, which is a tiny package with only several terminals. The reason is they use GaAs or SiGe HBTs for their microwave noise performance and power consumption, and to build them, they deposit very thin layers of different highly doped materials, which leads to all sorts of stresses and material interactions. The long-term reliability of these transistors has always been a known issue compared to boring Si. Then add the cheap China factor, particularly with the fact they are often MCM/MCPs to accommodate the filter and bias circuitry. You'll see the same issue in other consumer microwave devices like radar detectors and satellite receivers.

[@masterman7033]

I use a set of curved tweezers to reinsert those ribbon cables.

[@MakeItWithJim]

Plot twist - the GPS isn't broken, all the satellites have fallen to earth

[@WineScrounger]

“Today we have a satellite I found in my garden. One moment please…”

[@JudasMugensson]

@@WineScrounger "Okay, here's the schematic for the satellite that landed in my garden"

[@johndododoe1411]

@@JudasMugensson I strongly suspect that a competent designer of space electronics could make their own GPS transmitter with relative ease, hard part is launching them into the right orbits and running the entire organization around them. Anyway, the Loran-E satellites work even when on the ground, and prevent spoof and jamming attacks by using really loud signals.

[@borislipschitz2740]

An offline GPS device, that doesn't have AGPS data from the internet to assist it, taket 10..15 minutes to start up "cold" (meaning the almanac data have to be downloaded fresh off the satellites,). You'd probably get a lock if you'd let it try for 15m or so after it got 3 sats. And yea, thats probably CE based, and an iGO has been one of the best offline navs out there back in those years when mobile data abroad was hard to get by.

[@drkastenbrot]

Its definitely CE, android is way too resource intensive for that processor.

[@IMBlakeley]

Yep I had an early satnag like that. It could not get a lock on the move ever. If I needed it working I'd put it in the car & turn on and go back into the house for a cuppa. Once it had found the satellites generally it was okay but way less use than a decent mobile.

[@rowanjones3476]

Modern multi GNSS receivers have a TTFF of a minute or two at most. It very much depends on the receiver architecture ( number of channels, acquisition strategy)

[@alexanderkupke920]

@@rowanjones3476 modern receivers very often rely on A-GPS to load almanac data from the internet as well. Besides last checking the satellite systems my current phone supports made me wonder, as I might never have heard of half of them before. I wonder how much of a market share these offline satnav systems still have. They are still around, and there are even specialised versions for motorbikes, caravans and trucks. But for everyday navigation I guess most of us have a device capable of more than a premium device from 10 years ago within an arms length.

[@uploadJ]

It would HELP if he put the antenna UP instead of pointing DOWN at the bench too.

[@cdnaudioguy]

Oh my, that was a healthy dose of Deja Vu! I've spent hundreds of hours messing around with those devices, loading different versions of iGo software and trying various settings.

[@Robvdh87]

I like these repair videos. Gives something positive when you find the problem and it functions again after a small fix or clean.

[@yodaco]

It does appear to run CE and not android much like mine but slightly bigger. There will be a way to jump out of the satnav software and into CE

[@MrHack4never]

USB OTG perhaps?

[@theredstoneblock8878]

I coincidentally found a very similar unit that also runs Windows CE 6.0 yesterday. I tried running applications by changing the navigation software path without luck and I haven't been able to figure out how to enter the Windows CE desktop yet. I've read that it supposedly has word and Excel installed and a image I found on some Russian forum confirms this.

[@theredstoneblock8878]

Thank you so much! I'll try this out

[@iainathairydog]

There is an icon to get there, but it's so underpowered that it's crap, and the screen alignment isn't good enough to use with the tiny menus.

[@iainathairydog]

@@yodaco definitely not. It is only powerful enough to be a satnav. iGo is by far the best software that it can run. You'd be daft to use it for anything else.

[@tonyweavers4292]

That looks like it's been cobbled together in a shed somewhere.

[@bigclivedotcom]

That description relates to a lot of small Chinese manufacturers. Standard components made into products in garages.

[@TheSpatialTheory]

Most cheap Chinese tablets are constructed in this manner

[@KanalFrump]

could be worse ... kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKCbfnd5ftGCe80

[@catalinbadalan4463]

@@KanalFrump Just the thing I had in mind.. :)

[@assassinlexx1993]

I wonder if it was reconditioned and sold as new?

[@coloradostrong]

I tool an old Garmin on a plane on the East Coast of the Colonies to Orlando, Florida while on holiday. It read properly from take-off until landing, up to 30000 feet. It was actually showing the roads below although we were doing over 680 miles per hour with a tail wind. That is my new high score for my navi unit. I sat by the window to get 4 bars on the reception indicator, and some of the passengers were staring to see what I was doing with a nav unit and a battery pack. A nervous bunch.

[@dozer1642]

Spend “trashy” level money, expect “trashy” level goods. Such can be said for so many things in life.

[@ThePlacehole]

You can expect trashy level goods no matter how much you pay nowadays.

[@bluudlung]

@Skank Hunt my favorite!

[@iainathairydog]

The hardware is trashy, but it appeared to be working once given a working power supply. The software is not at all trashy: developed by a Hungarian computer games company, they managed to make the best navigation software in the market!

[@ClaudeSac]

I have two of these ‘trashy’ CE based GPS units. One is well over ten years, and the other one six years old. The six year old is always on my motorcycle and has done mare than 100K kilometers. The other one has been in car all that time, and both work just fine. That old one cost me €65 new from dx.com, the younger one was €195 from a Dutch retailer.

[@mprebbz]

Clive: ”and now we are going to reverse engineer the circuit .. one moment please”

[@piconano]

I had one from Garmin and bought the Panama map before leaving for vacation in 2005. The damn thing routed me through the shittiest roads in Panama's back roads. The poor rental Toyota Yaris was taking a beating on the dirt road. I was very impressed by the heavy duty suspension of the Yaris. When I found there was a paved road running in parallel to the jungle dirt road, I got so pissed off, I throw the damn thing out the car window.

[@KomiyanVT]

... Ah, so that's how we can find random GPS units and other electronics in the jungle!

[@piconano]

@@KomiyanVT If you found mine, you can keep it :)

[@lImbus924]

If it has not been on for a while (or if it has been moved quite the distance switched off) then it will first need to download a new almanach from the GPS data which can usually take up to 15 minutes even with good reception before "seeing enough satellites" will actually result in a location pin. I have seen devices misrepresent this in that they did see satellites, but reported to see none before they were done with rebuilding the new almanach.

[@MoritzvonSchweinitz]

I've always wondered why downloading the almanach when A-GPS isn't available takes so long? It can't be more than very few kb, no? And AFAIK, the satellites are constantly transmitting them?

[@brendonwood7595]

@@MoritzvonSchweinitz The almanac is 15,000 bits long and takes 12.5 minutes to transmit. from wikipedia

[@lImbus924]

​ @Moritz von Schweinitz yeah the almanach might not be that big, but the data is scattered and fragmented, parts of it being transmitted with each datagram every satellite transmits with every pulse every second. I'm actually not sure whether the almanach is a thing that exists on every satellite and needs to be "downloaded". It could also be that a single satellite does not have the full almanach, but only has their own orbit data and every GPS chip receives the orbit data from every satellite and composes the full almanach from that. I think no GPS satellite is visible for 12,5 minutes in one pass from horizon to horizon for any place on earth.

[@jarenhudson9794]

Interesting that the company didn't remove the pick aid on the shield fence. Those are there for P&P machines to be able to grab hold of. Usually the pick aid needs to be snipped away for automated optical inspection/access to rework if needed.

[@Brian_Boxtruck]

LOL looks like they had an EMC nightmare.

[@slingshotcrabbing]

From what I remember of those older GPS devices there are a couple things that need to be set up. One is the general location needs to be set, I think for the time zone accuracy. The other is that they usually need an update to work properly, I think that had something to do with the azimuth or some such nonsense. I just remember my old garmen didn't work strait out of the box.

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

That looks like a kit-bash of circuit board + Adafruit lithium battery inside, and yes, I totally would use metal tape and an insulator, only in my case it would be copper tape and Kapton tape because that's what I have. True story, I needed to combine Neopixels and audio, and those Neopixels were surprisingly noisy, so the copper tape thing is what I did to shield the speaker wires. Not a perfect solution, but it was good enough for government work.

[@einfelder8262]

I struggled with a similar unit in the early days - It was equally crappy inside with a tiny battery which I think was more for voltage regulation of the 12v input from a vehicle than for running the device unplugged. Thankfully we are well past these pieces of trash, although there are still some of them on the market such as VMS, HEMA, Garmin, etc.

[@markfergerson2145]

Never ceases to amaze me when a mfgr puts antennas under a metal-backed display. What were they thinking? Wait, I punctuated that wrong--- what, were hey thinking?

[@jakeblanton6853]

Well, if it is being used in a car, the screen area is pointing back into a big metal box (unless you are in convertible), so maybe they are thinking that it acts as a reflector for the GPS signal? I can remember when the handheld GPS units first came out (which did not have any built-in maps) and trying to use them when I was flying a small single-engine aircraft. I had to place the unit on the glareshield (the equivalent of dashboard in a car) in order to get a signal. When I banked steeply into a turn, I would often lose satellite lock... On the other hand, my aircraft's LORAN receiver had no problem keeping up and it compared favorably with the GPS on cross-country navigation -- usually they were in agreement within 0.1 nm...

[@iainathairydog]

It is designed to be in a car, with the back facing the windscreen, so the antenna would be facing outwards

[@randycarter2001]

What I do to connect flex prints is I take a piece of sturdy tape like kapton, masking tape works too. I stick it to the flex print leaving a tab to act as a handle. Then I can then push and pull the flex print into the connector. Do the kapton right you can use it as a strain relief to keep the flex from pulling out.

[@albanana683]

The screening and grounding for a satelite aerial is very sensitive for getting a good lock. My OnePlus T5 developed a common problem with the GPS, and needed a tiny shim of folded aluminium foil to restore the ground connection. Known problem, easily fixed if you have the correct Torx driver, and teeny tiny fingers.

[@joshfriesen9401]

I like that you mentioned Jerryrigeverything, my second favourite KZbinr, you being my favourite. He also said “Lego”. Zack says ‘“I’ll pop it off like a little Lego.”

[@simov8chevy]

I have a P-Navi sat nav that appears to have a similar format. It needs to be on the windscreen to pick up any signals. Even moving it a few inches from the windscreen stops it picking up anything. I also replaced its battery with one from a poundstore powerbank. Been 2 years now without a problem.

[@halfrhovsquared]

I have an almost identical unit. It’s Windows CE rather than Android. The reason it went back to the menu when you opened it back up is probably because you managed to press the power button (which on a single press rather than a long-press takes the unit back to that menu).

[@spyderdryverlee4581]

Old Bridge of Tilt is near Blair Atholl, central Scotland. It carries one of General Wade’s Military roads over the River Tilt. I holiday in the area every August.

[@SigEpBlue]

Makes me happy to know I'm not the only guy with a toothbrush specifically for isopropyl alcohol & PCBs. 🙂

[@nicholasvalentine3907]

Yes, it's called my sisters! That was a joke nearly 60yrs in the making, we last lived together in the 60s and my sister is 70 now!

[@farmersteve129]

You just have to remember which is which... although a bit of IPA in the morning is a great way to wake up!

[@mikethedigitaldoctorjarvis]

@@farmersteve129 Yes,lovely with some orange juice !

[@adamf663]

The only difference for me is that I usually use contact cleaner to give the board a shower. A toothbrush is a vital part of any electronics toolbox.

[@jacktheaviator4938]

I keep a "Tupperware" dish on my bench full of isopropyl, with a toothbrush connected to it by a string. I got tired of hunting the toothbrush, so I used a piece of Paracord to attach it.

[@CJDavies]

The cuts/nicks in the foil of the circular polarised patch antenna are done in the factory to tune it. Sometimes they aren't so neat & look like damage, I wonder whether they are sometimes some by hand & sometimes done in a fully automated test jig.

[@thebrowns5337]

Love the way it sat ALAN on the back - made me think of festivals!

[@Stabby666]

Probably worth noting that GPS engines cache satellite positions using a battery backup. They take a while for "first acquisition" when you change batteries, as they lose the cache. So since the battery was disconnected, it would take a long time. Also, the ceramic antenna used there is highly directional in my experience. They need to face vaguely upwards. The spiral type antennas are better if the unit needs to be used in any orientation.

[@fitybux4664]

8:20 "It should really have picked them up" LOL. GPS satellites can take a good 10 minutes or more from a cold start to sync up.

[@MattRiding]

Years ago I found an old, cheap satnav that corrupted part of its firmware that handles the clock, which totally prevents the device from being able to latch on to satellite signals. Reinstalling the firmware fixed the issue, but after a day or two it would need to be re-imaged again.

[@TheMNWolf]

Total refurb job, half the "reconditioned" phones I used to work with looked basically the same. The blue and white sticker pretty much seals the deal on that too.

[@citizensteve6713]

That’s a fantastic place to live a small island in the middle of nowhere. The only thing wrong with that, you have to share it with others.

[@TheRealWindlePoons]

My favourite sat-nav story is of a lady using a smartphone app. She went into a large out-of-town supermarket (basically a big tin shed) and forgot to shut down the app after leaving her car. After a few minutes shopping, a mournful voice from her pocket bleated: "Lost!".

[@Gersberms]

I've seen that kapton tape on parts with holes in them, I think it's for the pick and place machines to get good suction when picking them up. On this antenna it doesn't seem to make sense except there's that little bulge on top - maybe it helps with that. I'm guessing the corrosion could be from the car A/C blowing cold air on the housing, condensing water inside.

[@Syntax.error.]

This brings back memories. I had one of these back in 2005 or so. It runs windows CE and you can use it as a PDA. It came originally with cracked TomTom but iGo looked a bit better.

[@georgefriday4872]

It's quite normal for a GPS device that hasn't been on for a long time to take a while to find satellites as it needs to download the almanac from the satellites to give the device an idea of where it is in the world and what satellites should be in view. I've known it take half an hour on first acquisition after a long period of being off. But it could be faulty too :-)

[@scaleop4]

It might have picked up a GPS signal if it was outside

[@hi-tech-guy-1823]

Just to add SDR Receivers chips 4:40 Run Hot to make them more Frequency Stable - I was hoping for a few chip close ups

[@TsunauticusIV]

I’m surprised you were able to get any sat signal indoors. My old sat devices would go out if a bird flew over 😂

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

You must have some REALLY LARGE BIRDS...😉

[@ableite]

I had one GPS with this same board but different SW. It had this same gps locking issue after a while. I thought that the RMA technicians had damaged the gps antenna after fixing another issue. I thought the laser cuttings on the antenna were screwdriver markings after using the antenna as a lever point to remove the shielding cover... i realized the laser cuts were a normal thing after seeing replacements antennas on ebay. Either way, i have sold the unit with my old vehicle as it had backup camera with it. Also, it had a digital tv reception module that was soldered on the header right next to the Lcd and touch header. I never found out a way to reflash the firmware but i still have its dump.

[@gonzo_the_great1675]

The tape supplied on SMD parts, is to give the vacuum pickups in the pic and place machines. Is meant to be removed.

[@frogz]

meanwhile all kinda old garmin and tomtom units sitting at goodwill until ultimately no one buys them for $5 and they get sent to the dump including plenty of newer units with micro sd and media features

[@ericpode6095]

How easy is it to update the maps on TomTom or Garmin? I've done it on generic Windows CE units, just a matter of cut & paste using a laptop.

[@frogz]

@@ericpode6095 the newer the model the easier, some of them are as simple as downloading a couple gig file and dropping it onto a sd card or internal memory, they will even sell you new maps if you cant find them for free elsewhere *wink wink*

[@ericpode6095]

@@frogz 👍

[@frogz]

@@ericpode6095 hardest part is finding "unlocked" maps that work with any unit, just need to know what to look for

[@sorcererx1]

Same here, trying to update and old Magellan. Roadmate with south America maps, they are nowere to be found, at least to try if they are compatible

[@offdagrid877]

I can’t believe how well Sat navs work when they are on the windscreen in full sunshine all day. You can barely touch it sometimes. Ours threw a tantrum in France once and shut down. After I restarted it seemed to work ok

[@logenmattsen]

I find it stunning that you think you're gonna get a good GPS lock while you're inside a building I have never been able to do that

[@ebthepcguy]

Pretty sure this runs Windows CE with iGO Primo. Had a Jenson VX7020 with this. Tried DesNAV. Was not any better.

[@adamf663]

RFI is a real problem for gps receivers. I once built a car stereo using a mini-itx motherboard in a double din case, with a tablet for the UI. The tablet couldn't pick up GPS because the motherboard was putting out too much RFI. That tablet now works fine since I moved to using a raspberry pi located in the trunk. On the cheapo satnav, shielding the cpu componentry on one side still lets the RFI out through the PC to interfere with the receiver.

[@sciking8756]

As an Italian speaker I really appreciated the 7:42 pronunciation of "primo" :)

[@MrProvinspoul]

Hi Clive, I have a old TomTom nav I'm using, I found out when my Mobil phone was week off signal my TomTom was also missing signal! When looking into it using some app for the phone so I could see how many mast it was connected to, it would funny enough be almost the same as the TomTom in satellite, what can we make out of this? Thinking about it can it be possible to send a signal many hundred or miles maby thousand miles, using batteries and some solar panels to power the extremely powerful amplifier on the sattelite, thinking of the Ghz band they are using, and the power it will need, I'm not sure there is hanging anything in the air for sattelite anymore. I'm and electronic engineer, and I'm educated at the government telecom in Denmark in 1987, my background is in tv/radio /mobilphone transmission and receiving, at the time the mobil was only 450mhz and the later 900 mhz, when I was educated it was the GSM signal.

[@lohphat]

I wonder if its firmware couldn't handle the GPS 10 bit week number counter rollover in 2019 (1023 to 0) so that it could no longer interpret timestamps correctly. Once that happened, it couldn't sync to a single satellite to download the GPS almanac data (via carousel broadcast data) which gives the current position of all the operable satellite locations and any WAAS and LAAS stations for better accuracy. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_week_number_rollover

[@sebastian19745]

I had many Chinese GPS units like this and integrated in car radios to update theirs maps. Many came with iGO Primo and are WinCE devices (few MB of ram, low power ARM SoC) and usually for old devices 1 to 4GB internal storage only, the newer have memory card slot. All of them that had battery have only minutes of battery time before they shutdown, (I think) because they were used plugged on in the lighter car adapter. One device (Danet, french made) was able to run for a hour or so from its battery only because it was new in the box and it was intended (marketed) as a pedestrian GPS device. Using the device as mp3/media player actually have same time of use like the navigation program, so I think that the GPS circuit itself is not te main power consumer, but the screen light and the CPU. Even TomTom, Via Michelin, Garmin or other well known brands have low battery capacity inside that make them unsuitable to pedestrian use. So, use it plugged in; I guess it need a 5V mini USB cable.

[@Zerbey]

Older units took ages to get a lock and you could download a file to help it along. Sit out outside for 10 minutes and it should work fine.

[@youdontknowme5969]

my old Note 3 GPS got like that after a few years - it couldn't find any satellites even when outside on a clear day. I had to set location services to rely on cell towers only, which _mostly_ worked

[@joj.]

Credit where credit is due though, these parts look like the manufacturer just pulled them out of a discard bin from other products and made a working (somewhat) Sat Nav out of them.

[@nicwilson89]

I'm sure Photon/Andy could 'overclock' it to work properly :D

[@itmaybeokay]

Ohhhhh, I popped it!

[@nicholasvalentine3907]

My ancient Garmin has never been able to pick up satelites in the house, it's fine in vehicles and outside. I've never been sure whether this is the building sheilding connection or whether it needs to be connected to a car battery. On disconnection (from the van or car) it always knows and asks whether I want it switched off or left on, I've never checked that sats are available disconnected whilst in a vehicle.

[@mrfrog8502]

6:35 The problem is the way those batteries spontaneously catch fire when damaged not the energy density. Simillar capacity batteries in LiFePO technology don't have this problem.

[@Opel_Guy]

My old sat nav is donkeys years old! It's so old it's OS is Windows CE and probably pre-dates Android! Maps are stored on an SD card. Still works absolutely fine though. The battery still holds it charge for months when not used.

[@WineScrounger]

I had a cheapo GPS unit years ago, although it wasn’t cheap at the time. Whenever I drove past a lay-by it would try to divert me through them. Back to the shop it went.

[@iainathairydog]

This is pretty much identical to many Windows CE satnavs, some of which were/are sold under the brand Nozatec. Cheap and nasty components, rather dim screen, tiny battery (they're only intended to be run when powered by the supplied 12v adapter lead) but they are shipped with iGo software, which is by far the best (though not the most Intuitive) consumer navigation software on the market at any price. Unfortunately, the GPS will have the week number rollover bug (fixable with a free firmware update from the Facebook group) out of date and incomplete map sets (current, complete sets a free download from that group) and the meridian bug which can affect routes planned across the Greenwich meridian (there is no fix: you have to work round that one). Interesting that a failing battery stopped it getting a GPS fix. It would be well worth paying a couple of quid for a new battery. These things work surprisingly well. Vastly better than TomTom, Garmin, Aguri which cost much, much more. You can buy a new one for about £40 or so, but that will need the maps fixed, even new out of the box.

[@bigclivedotcom]

This may actually be a CE unit.

[@ChiEKKUsama]

2:30 okay Mr. Big "I Have Problems with My Big Hands and other Appendages" Clive, we get it hueheu

[@blxtothis]

As usual I didn’t understand one word but feel so much better for watching it all through, I’m still a dunce when it comes to electricity and electronics though.

[@mattlee3044]

The yellow tape on the white GPS receiver is Kapton tape, isn’t it? It’s heat-resistant - which the receiver may have needed when the unit was soldered.

[@ced1106]

I didn't know that Red Green made electronics. Thanks for the videos!!! 🚗🚗🚗

[@adamsalmon4527]

Old devices have trouble locking on to satellites if the system time is out by any great margin. Always worth setting the system time after a device has been moved while off and it has to do a cold start.

[@andrewfrance1047]

Aerial is pointing straight down into the bench. Not many satellites down there. Turning it so the screen is vertical might help.

[@nickademuss42]

A few years ago they did an update to the GPS sats, many devices couldn't connect after that without an update. My older GPS dependent star locator from Meade quit working, that's why the 300$ device is now worthless...

[@rayceeya8659]

So speaking of stylus' and touchscreens, last summer I was struggling to find an inexpensive stylus for the capacitive touch screens at work. I could buy stylus' built for that but I found a far less expensive option. Baby carrots. So I could swipe the customer's card and give them the handheld to sign with a baby carrot instead of using their COVID swarming finger. Single use edible stylus that works on any screen.

[@eDoc2020]

Banana peels also work. I learned this by accident.

[@patomahony9747]

Necessity the mother of all inventions and edible to boot lol

[@krashd]

That's why I've always said that a frozen carrot would make the perfect murder weapon because you can then eat the evidence. Well, you could eat the murder weapon anyway, the body would be optional.

[@uploadJ]

Gross!

[@tmastersat]

Yea those old gps systems could only read a few sats at the same time and the longer they were off the longer it takes them to relock. You have 3 locked that's normal you have to bring it outsite.

[@kbhasi]

That somehow reminds me of an old "HP iPAQ Travel Companion" sat-nav that my aunt used to have, that would fail to find satellites, AND didn't have Wi-Fi so aGPS wasn't possible on that.

[@Slikx666]

To be honest I was expecting a bigger battery than that. Then I remembered that this is reality. 😀

[@iainathairydog]

The device comes with a 12v adapter and is meant to be powered. The battery is just to cover interruptions such as starting the engine.

[@jhsevs]

If you had turned down the voltage on the bench power supply slowly down to say 3 vilts, would the sat chip trip and stop working before the cpu, which would cause it to lose satellite reception but keep the cpu turned on and show the ui like the symptoms in the start of the video?

[@trevorbaldwin2935]

Surely an original SatNav as old as that would need to be outside to get the satellites? Mine always use to be better outside than in behind bricks and mortar. Or did you try that and I wasn't listening?

[@pfefferle74]

Newer ones aren't much better indoors either. Phones only track location indoors because they also have access to the cellular phone network's location tracking data that has a much higher signal strength.

[@WaltTFB]

'O flir of Scotland, when will we see your like again?'.

[@D4NS80]

Might be best to test that one outside mate where the receiving antenna can see the sky.

[@stoojinator]

I own a Hema Navigator GPS that I purchased brand new in 2013 and it looks EXACTLY like this on the inside! I paid $700 Aussie Pesos for it and it was top of the range in the day. Mine didn't come with all the masking tape and foil though :) Incidentally, mine runs Windows CE. And it's really quite a good GPS. Its both on and offroad (shipped with heaps of topographical maps).

[@stoojinator]

Actually, it is very similar, but that's a heap of shit compared to the Hema :) It uses the same software though - iGo. Interesting.

[@Spiderelectron]

We want to know what comes out that video connetor!

[@MD4564]

Batteries overtime in general effect the performance of any devices, GPS included.

[@lyfandeth]

Early satnav needs to be outdoors to see satellites. And after being shipped, may need 1/2 hour to reacquire the new position.

[@ncot_tech]

Anyone remember the ancient DECCA system for navigation?

[@JessicaFEREM]

I love my Samsung fancy pants note because it has a stylus built in Also Samsung phones have a sensitivity switch if you are having trouble with sensitivity For some reason android phones use pre-calibrated touch sensitivity and iPhones figured out how to have adaptive automatic sensitivity, iPhones tend to have a more consistent, less sensitive touch panel. I know some converts can't get used to either way because it's so different in a way that most people wouldn't think of

[@sz-zr6rn]

we sell ceramic patches and antennas and all that copper tape from the pcb to the battery must be for improving the patch performance as its in the corner and that's bad placement for them.