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Useless Badelf GPS?


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13 hours ago, scsirob said:

Note that some very old GPS receivers are not useful anymore. One of the counters in the GPS data has rolled over in 2019, and several older GPS receivers were not designed to deal with that.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_week_number_rollover

 

 

That's good to know. 

It set me a googlin' to discover if an old Garmin GPS 12  I have hanging around could still be expected to work.

This is what Garmin says:

 

GPS 12 Time and Date are Incorrect

We’ve identified an issue with this product that causes the date and/or time to be wrong after the GPS Rollover on April 6th, 2019. However, all functions not dependent on date and/or time will continue to work normally. Due to the age of the device we have determined we will not fix this issue. 

What does that mean for my Garmin?

  • The date and/or time determined by the GPS will be wrong
  • Position, velocity, navigation, and all other functionality not dependent on date and/or time will continue to work normally

What is GPS Week Rollover?

The GPS satellite system communicates the date via a week number that is limited to 1024 weeks (about 20 years). On April 6th, 2019 the week numbers broadcast by the satellites will “rollover” to zero. If GPS receivers don’t account for this rollover in their software, it will calculate the wrong date and/or time. 

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SONY PYXIS. IPS-360

That should be in a museum !     I seem to remember that they would only work stationary, they wouldn't work for a moving vehicle/aeroplane/somebody walking

Edited by FlyBoy1960
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If you own ANY electronic device that is still operating after 20 years, you definitely own a museum piece! The average lifespan of most electronic devices today is around 5-6 years.

The fact that most now come with a sealed battery compartment, should give you some indication of the planned lifespan of the device.

I'm still running Windows 7, and I got advised the other day, when I encountered a small website problem, that my system became obsolete in 2019, when MS officially withdrew from supporting it.

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You might be surprised to find that the largest percentage of ATM's still use the Windows XP OS. MS support for XP ended on April 8, 2014. I've got a Samsung Galaxy Note 4, which phone was released on Oct 21, 2014 - but I bought my Note 4 in 2016, and it was already superseded.

I like the Note 4, mostly because it has a replaceable battery - but I keep getting told it's totally obsolete. I've gone through 2 screens (smashed them, and replaced them myself), I'm on my 2nd battery - and it still works just fine for me.

But I know the day is rapidly coming when I will go to use it for something, and it won't work, because the technology in it has been left behind.

I've already discovered I can't use Telstra small-cell networks because the Note 4 doesn't have the latest VoLTE technology abilities - even though it's a 4G phone. When travelling in rural areas, I often get a Telstra message saying I'm in a small-cell area, but my phone won't connect to it. 

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I used that Pyxis to find my way around Australia. It worked fine, but only gave the coordinates. 

No moving map, then !. So had to bring along my IBM laptop to get the nap With the coordinates as a curser.

The rest was " old school " paper maps & charts.

ALSO

Have a very old & unused " Sinclair micro pc " . Just couldn't be bothered with it, as superceded,  before looking at it.

spacesailor

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On 07/06/2022 at 7:27 PM, spacesailor said:

I used that Pyxis to find my way around Australia. It worked fine, but only gave the coordinates. 

Ah the memories....  I'm fairly sure it was a Sony Pyxis that I borrowed for my biggest-ever flight, from Perth to Broome and back, waaay back in about 1992.  Yes, it only displayed lat and long coordinates, and it went through batteries like there was no tomorrow!  It was only powered up a few times each way, just to make me feel reasonably comfortable that we were where I thought we were.  Apart from that it was paper charts and dead-reckoning, with a bit of help from VOR and ADF - never dreamed then that we would end up with more or less free GPS in our pockets.  I well remember looking out over the desert on the leg between Newman and Broome, wondering at the wisdom of what we were doing.  I was a very low-time pilot, and it is very remote out there.  But we made it (obviously), and I'd do it again in a heartbeat if the opportunity ever arose again.

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