Sat Nav Woes

[The Moo]

From time to time my Sat Nav mapping places me anything from half a mile to exceptionally 8 miles from my actual position but shows me moving in the right direction. Up to now it has eventually corrected itself, but the latest episode took approx 3 days to right itself. I rarely use the Sat Nav for routing and have not had the problem when trying to get somewhere new so not sure what would happen if the glitch occured whilst being directed.

Is the likely cause a software glitch or perhaps the antenna or do those BMW satellites orbiting the earth get shuffled from time to time

 

[mmm-five]

MIne does random things sometimes:

• directing me back home when I as for a reroute around traffic
• taking me through city centres instead of using the ring-road
• taking me on roads at peak times that are only quiet during off peak times
• not creating a route from the inputs (I try it a few times, reset it & try again, but sometimes it just doesn't want to do it)

But I usually only use it now to see what fun route it's going to take me on before I switch on my TomTom.

 

[mikedav]

Weird, never had any issues with mine in 4 years, and had the same system in my previous car. Occasionally in very built up areas it might put me on a parallel road to the one I am actually on but that's about it. Have you tried a hard reset of your system? Details are in the handbook...

Alternatively, from another forum:

The Almanac is only valid for a certain length of time and if the position of the GPS has moved significantly since the almanac was loaded, it will have to do a 'sky search' to pick up a good bird to enable an almanac download. Some GPS systems that require a sky search can take 30 minutes or more to acquire a good bird that is up long enough to download the almanac, so you really need to go to a nice open field with a good view of the sky and horizon (if possible), leave the system powered up for 30 minutes to an hour and in that time, if there is nothing wrong with the system, you will get a good almanac downloaded, from then on things should sort themselves out.

 

[AlanJ]

Weird, never had any issues with mine in 4 years, and had the same system in my previous car. Occasionally in very built up areas it might put me on a parallel road to the one I am actually on but that's about it. Have you tried a hard reset of your system? Details are in the handbook...

Alternatively, from another forum:

The Almanac is only valid for a certain length of time and if the position of the GPS has moved significantly since the almanac was loaded, it will have to do a 'sky search' to pick up a good bird to enable an almanac download. Some GPS systems that require a sky search can take 30 minutes or more to acquire a good bird that is up long enough to download the almanac, so you really need to go to a nice open field with a good view of the sky and horizon (if possible), leave the system powered up for 30 minutes to an hour and in that time, if there is nothing wrong with the system, you will get a good almanac downloaded, from then on things should sort themselves out.

What a useful piece of equipment - so all I have to do to get this marvel of modern science and technology to work is sit in a field for and hour

 

[MRol]

My SatNav has acted like this two times over five years. Once it starts it just gets worse and worse. BMW put it right under warrenty. A pain the first time as they kept the car for about a week, and told me they were claiming from BMW over £2K

 

[The Moo]

Did they just replace the whole unit then?

 

[pvr]

Weird, never had any issues with mine in 4 years, and had the same system in my previous car. Occasionally in very built up areas it might put me on a parallel road to the one I am actually on but that's about it. Have you tried a hard reset of your system? Details are in the handbook...

Alternatively, from another forum:

The Almanac is only valid for a certain length of time and if the position of the GPS has moved significantly since the almanac was loaded, it will have to do a 'sky search' to pick up a good bird to enable an almanac download. Some GPS systems that require a sky search can take 30 minutes or more to acquire a good bird that is up long enough to download the almanac, so you really need to go to a nice open field with a good view of the sky and horizon (if possible), leave the system powered up for 30 minutes to an hour and in that time, if there is nothing wrong with the system, you will get a good almanac downloaded, from then on things should sort themselves out.

What a useful piece of equipment - so all I have to do to get this marvel of modern science and technology to work is sit in a field for and hour

Is ok for you - just go to the nearest dessert ...