No new GPS position taken on later firmware?

Hardware
1

Hi,

We’ve configured the notecard with heartbeat=-5 and period=400, this should get us position every five minutes at the latest. However, it seems that the notecard doesn’t trigger any new positions (in _track.qo). The buoy is located in the ocean, but in quiet conditions.

There are coming in new _track.qo events, but they show the same location for the last 7 days.

Has there been any changes to this?

We are using firmware: 6.2.5.16868

Edit: I can share a CSV with output from track.qo if needed for debugging.

Regards, Gaute

2

It seems marginally better on: 7.5.1.16995, but one of our devices with this firmware is showing the same issue.

It is possible that they haven’t moved much, but they are definitely not in the exact same position (they’re drifting in the ocean).

3

We restarted the device remotely, and it has moved more than 10 km. This is not good for our data! I hope that this can be figured out.

1 Like
4

Hi @gauteh,

Yeah this is strange. Are you gathering any GPS log data from the problematic devices? It may be worthwhile to set the _log environment variable for the device to gpsmax and check the _log.qo Notefiles.

Rob

5

I will do that, and post back. Had to do a new restart today.

6

No info in the log. 123456789

7

Just to clarify - you are still seeing the same behavior where no GPS location data is being gathered, but the GPS logs are also empty, as if the Notecard is not even trying to activate the GPS module?

8

Correct. I don’t have physical access to the device when the error happens, so I assumed setting gpsmax would give me log messages visible in notehub. There were no messages there related to gps. I still had to restart the notecard to get another gps taken, this was in an environment where the device was moving very smoothly so it may not have registered movement on its accelerometer. But it should still have taken positions according to the configuration above.

9

That’s very odd, because you should definitely be seeing _log.qo events w/ gpsmax like this appearing whenever your Notecard updates its location and performs a sync:

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image1078×1502 148 KB

Are you seeing any _log.qo events for the problematic device?

For reference, my config looks something like this:

{"req":"hub.set","product":"x","mode":"minimum"}
{"req":"card.location.mode","mode":"periodic","seconds":3600}
{"req":"card.location.track","sync":true,"heartbeat":true,"hours":-5,"start":true}
10

You are right, they do show up in the events: but not in the log under device summary. I will check again next time this happens, I’m not 100% sure if the logging started before we had this happening again.

11

I have another device set with GPS_PERIOD=3600 and heartbeat=1, it is stationary after being started, but does not seem to send any new positions and thinks it is where it last was. Has been standing out for more than 24 hours. Currently in NTN testing mode.

12

So in this configuration, it should try to determine its location every hour and regardless of changes in position, send a heartbeat every hour as well. If it’s stationary though, it won’t enable the GPS (the assumption is if the device hasn’t moved, why waste battery on GPS).

Are you using the threshold argument of your card.location.mode request? Have you set a sensitivity value in a card.motion.mode request? Both of those could impact if and how often the GPS is enabled.

1 Like
13

I haven’t touched those parameters. It does match my suspicion that the movements are so mellow that it doesn’t think it has moved. I basically want it to take a new GPS position every heartbeat, regardless of movements or not.

In the case above, it was moved when off, and it didn’t realize it was at a new position when booted up again.

14

If you really want to “force” a GPS location regardless of the state of the device, we do have this doc on Taking an Immediate Reading in your firmware that might be useful. Not great for battery life of course, but it effectively overrides the default safeguards put in place to make sure GPS doesn’t drain battery unnecessarily.

1 Like