Jesus H christ, people!
GIVE IT SOME TIME TO LOCK ONTO THE GPS SIGNAL.
This place is like an amusement park. It never ceases to amaze me.
"amusement park"??? I'm thinking that it's more like a Day Care Center, filled with over-indulged, Narcissistic children.
Some info on getting a GPS lock - The first lock will take some time. It varies, even with dedicated GPS units. If you're lucky, about a min but it could take longer. I've had units that have taken well over 5 min.
Why? Because the GPS receiver has to download an entire emperis table to be able to triangulate your position. The best results are obtainable when the Sats are about 45 Degrees off the horizon...If they are directly overhead or on the horizon, it takes longer to do the triangulation.
The data that it downloads is only good for 7 days. If you don't use it in a week, it discards the data and starts all over again.
There can also be a problem if you move a great distance between readings, such as Locking your position on your drive to LA Airport - then turning everything off, and not restarting it until you arrive at Dulles Airport in Virginia.
That did happen to me one time, flying from Albany, NY to Washington, DC with a stop at Newark....When I turned my GPS on at Newark, showed I had a locked signal, but the map showed my location as in the middle of a lake in Northern NY.
Another issue some may run into is "correct" altitude measurements. That is really determined by the software app. Some vendors use a "true" circle as the shape of the earth - others use a "neat" oblong shape. The earth is neither of those. Some apps will allow you to add a correction factor, if you know your true altitude....most don't.
The last issue that can show up for some users is that
it doesn't work at all inside your car, but will work outside the car. The cause of this issue is a "heated" front windshield. The only solution to that issue is an external antenna (or placing the GPS receiver outside the car). Sometimes having the receiver near a side or rear window will solve that issue. Don't know how you'll solve it with the dongle.
One app that MAY help reduce the amount of time it takes to achieve a lock is "GPSFix" in Google Play. It is supposed to keep it active, using AGPS, giving the sats and app a chance to achieve lock. Since I haven't gotten my dongle yet, I cannot verify that it works as advertised.
I do believe that the dongle will WORK AS ADVERTISED. Any issues you have are probably user issues caused by the lack of knowledge on how the GPS really works.
Happy driving
Bob
