Suunto Vertical GPS Problem?!

[ChrisA]

@GiPFELKiND well its for sure not „the watch“ as a product itself, since anybody else who posted here is just getting one of a kind GPS readings from the Vertical. I would guess either your special unit may be faulty, or some settings were not as they should be, like others already commented or there are circumstances concerning the GPS signal at that moment in that area, we just don’t know

[Brad_Olwin]

@GiPFELKiND What GPS battery made are you using? It does not look as if you had performance mode.

[A Former User]

@GiPFELKiND can you share a link to the gpx or fit file? It might reveal what was going on.

Was there only a problem with this ride or others too?

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

This is not an acceptable track from the vertical watch. I’ll help you as much as I can if it’s a hardware problem. Try another run.

[GiPFELKiND]

@twekkel suuntoapp-Running-2023-05-20T05-08-21Z-route.gpx

Here is the track…and the GPS file

[GiPFELKiND]

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos here is the fox track record with my watch suuntoapp-Running-2023-05-20T05-08-21Z-route.gpx

[GiPFELKiND]

@Brad_Olwin Shure it was performance mode where can I see if I had perhaps the wrong mode?

[GiPFELKiND]

@altcmd no was definitely performance mode, the thing is the first part from my run was all okay… I sent new pictures so you can look for. Right map is all okay in the woods left side so bad…

[A Former User]

@GiPFELKiND thanks. This is the ‘GPX route’ version, without timestamps. Can you share the ‘GPX workout’ too?

What I see (without timestamps) is large gaps between gps lat/lon fixes. Reason, very, very poor reception (under trees?) or very high speed, or bug, or hardware issue. Maybe the ‘workout’ link helps diagnosing the issue it a little better.

[GiPFELKiND]

@twekkel Workout comes --> here suuntoapp-Running-2023-05-20T05-08-21Z-track.gpx

[A Former User]

@GiPFELKiND this helps a lot. For most of the time I see a recording every 1 second, but there are some gaps… without recording timestamp or location.

Activity was about 56 minutes and moving time was 10min less, 46 min. So my guess is ‘autopause’ is enabled, which will stop recording at very low speeds (<2 km/hour) and once you move again it will pick up again. I can imagine that every (near) stop temporary the GPS fix isn’t that good (power saving?), which explains the poor track. For MTB in dense forests I would definitely recommend to disable autopause.

Does this make sense to you?

[GiPFELKiND]

@twekkel So, I’ve now looked again in the settings, and autopause is disabled. what program/software did you use to read the data so well?!

[A Former User]

@GiPFELKiND as a complete linux nerd, I used vi/bash/grep/sed/awk/gpsbabel … gpx files are just text files (and you can use any text editor), so you can lookup the timestamps and check if there are 60 for each minutes and there aren’t.

Take for example minute 05:53:xx … only 20 timestamps (and track location lat/lon) are written for that minute. I assumed that would be because of autopause. Hardware failure looks unlikely to me, but something prevents the SV to write every second like it should in ‘performance’ mode.

In low battery conditions I’ve seen tracks starting of with 1s recordings and then switching over to every 1 minutes (endurance). That is not the case here.

Not sure if very dense forest (GPS fix lost?) can cause this kind of behavior. First half of the track seems spot on, only halfway it shows this phenomena.

[Dimitrios Kanellopoulos]

@twekkel keep in mind that gps recording is not the same as polling of 1s. That means that even if the 1s frequency is used it does not mean that it will record every 1second if on second xx the quality of the signal is not acceptable.

Also keep in mind that gpx files are xml files and it’s not so well structured for data.

[A Former User]

@Dimitrios-Kanellopoulos if XML isn’t structured, what is?

Indeed a very poor GPS signal might have prevented to write accurate lat/lon. So for now I “blame it on the forest”.

[GiPFELKiND]

@twekkel

[GiPFELKiND]

@twekkel look there the beginning with good tracking is in the woods… The rest when terrible tracking open field without trees

[GiPFELKiND]

@GiPFELKiND

[GiPFELKiND]

@GiPFELKiND any questions!?

[A Former User]

@GiPFELKiND if this was a one time bad track, I wouldn’t worry about it. It can happen, although this particular example is pretty bad with so much open field.

Even with the best GPS watch out there, SV, it isn’t always perfect. If this issue persists with other activities also, I would go or a warranty claim. Upcoming firmware update (June?) might also improve the situation.