I’ve started going for runs from my office more frequently, which means I’m more frequently getting annoyed standing around looking at my wrist for sometimes 10-15 minutes while my Garmin 310XT acquires a GPS signal. It’s in an area with a decent number of 5-15 story buildings, but I usually walk a few blocks to the slightly more open pathway along the river.
Any suggestions on how to get it to pick up signal quicker? A thought I had was turning it on before going to work in the morning, letting it lose the signal while in the office, then hope it picks it back up quicker when I take the watch outside at lunchtime. Any other ideas/experiences I would appreciate too
I’ve had similar issues. I’ve not found letting it find a signal earlier in the day has any effect on success later. I’ve instead finished getting ready outside while it’s acquiring a signal (go out in untied shoes, turn on GPS search, put on socks, shoes, HR strap). Saves a little time, but obviously not ideal solution.
Is there a window ledge you can set it on? The battery is so good, you could leave it there an hour+ if needed.
Otherwise, get the footpod. It will start tracking you distance at the first step, and once GPS locks on, you’ll get a better map. See here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/453196402 I never wait for it to lock on, and the starting point is always ~1/8th to 1/4 mile off, but the distance comes out right since it ‘teleports’ you to the spot without assuming you just sprinted that 1/8th mile in an instant.
Is your office/desk in a location that you could get a GPS lock while sitting it on a window ledge ahead of time? I used to do that in one location that I worked and it was effective. My current location, not so much.
I live on a block with some tall buildings and have a similar problem. My 910 picks up a signal much faster if I stand in the street than if I’m on the sidewalk.
Intersections are better for signal acquisitions. You have 4 directions for it to find the satellite instead of 2.
Either way, with enough tall buildings your track is going to be off, as is your distance.
Couple of things I’ve discovered:
- When you first power on, you get the bar chart that shows “progress”. If you press the up/down arrow buttons you get a couple of extra displays. One shows an all sky chart with the rough positions of the satellites the receiver is expecting to find. The other shows a signal strength chart for each satellite the receiver can see. Initially this latter chart would show unfilled bars for each satellite - eventually the bars become solid (indicating that the position of the respective satellite is known and the receiver can use it for position calculations). The Garmins apparently use a minimum of five satellites to calculation your position.
This chart is also accessible from the GPS-satellite menu during normal operation. Where it becomes useful is that you can see the signal strength change as you move around. You can try to optimize your position to get the best signal strength.
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I’ve found that holding the receiver “upside down” (button side up) can improve signal reception (the antenna is on the bottom, so the body of the receiver can apparently block the signals while on your wrist). Also, just rotating my body can improve signal reception for some satellites.
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One of the display options for the main display is “GPS accuracy” (you can also see the accuracy on the signal strength page in very tiny numbers). I’ve found the receiver doesn’t usually show “ready” until an accuracy of 10 m is possible, although sometimes it glitches and you have to wait a bit. I use this as a guide to determine when to start moving.
Either way, with enough tall buildings your track is going to be off, as is your distance.
I haven’t found this to be nearly as big of a problem as the initial lock might suggest. I run in the middle of Dallas and DC all the time with the track being off but within reason. If there was a “get 70%” sat lock and go with it until you get something better in .5 miles" option on my 410, life would be completely different. As best I can tell there isn’t even a “start with footpod and acquire satellite ASAP” option.
Standing around at an intersection in the snow waiting for a lock is the time I remind myself that my next watch will preload satellites.
Either way, with enough tall buildings your track is going to be off, as is your distance.
As best I can tell there isn’t even a “start with footpod and acquire satellite ASAP” option.
That is the default setting. If you have the footpod, just go out and start running. If it is calibrated well, then it’ll start recognizing accurate distance instantly. Your track may be a little crazy, but once the GPS locks in, it will switch to that for better tracking. As I said above, even if your rough GPS location is 1/4 mile away and it suddenly locks on, it won’t add that 1/4 mile to your total distance, nor will it factor in that light-speed leap into your pace graph.
Bumping my own thread because I found a semi-solution. I turn it on before arriving at work, so it picks up satellites while I’m either still at home or in the car on the way to work. Within a few seconds of being in the building, I start getting the angry beep about losing satellites, but I leave it on the window ledge as close as possible by my desk. Unfortunately I’m not on the top floor and I think they’d be upset if I just snooped around a federal building looking for roof access…I have to kind of tolerate the beep during the morning every so often because it occasionally will get strong enough signal then lose it again throughout the morning.
When it comes time to take it out for my run during lunch, it took less time to re-gain the position than it does to initially get it. My thoughts on this are that when you first power it up, it’s looking for the best fix, whereas when it loses the satellites it tries to pick back up where it left off. If you’ve ever gone on a run that involved a tunnel/underpass long enough to lose reception you know it picks it back up almost immediately when you come out. I’m trying to use that to the same effect and it kind of works.
As for the accuracy of the track, yea, it’s pretty bad if I’m running in the taller buildings area but I hate doing that anyway. As I said, I will usually walk a couple blocks and then run on the path along the river, which is a lot less congested and doesn’t have any lights to stop at or anything like that. It still seems to take forever once I walk out that way to get an initial lock from the GPS though.
One last disclaimer I’d advise is that the beeping will piss off coworkers whose desks are near yours and that you have to charge the battery fully, because I did notice it went down a lot quicker looking for a signal.