GPS bugs on Suunto9
-
@Saketo-Nemo I just tried GPS + Beidou today and indeed it was really more precise :
So I will keep this configuration and I hope it will work well again !
(but the elevation was still very underestimated though…)Thanks for your help !
-
@bastpp
Happy to see that!
-
Hi guys, I came to check the new posts here, not much was happening. I was thinking (hard) about Fenix 6 Pro and Grit X for a replacement for my ex S9B. I was also looking at S7 at one point, but even shorter battery life and 2 platforms (Suunto and GoogleFit)…it is a nice watch but not replacement for S9.
I went the same road for a walk yesterday again for the first time with the Grit X, and results were almost perfect, following the road with the same Sony GPS chipset S9B has. V800 and Grit X were within 10 meters out of each other in total distance in shorter and longer walk, with nicely laid track. That’s with Galileo, maybe even better results I’ll get with Glonass next time as I read. No Beidou available for now.
So far, so good, but now I miss a couple of things from S9B. I knew that when I didn’t opt for F6Pro - compass and altimeter outside activity, temperature visible on the watch, sunset time, goal with calories set, backlight completely off (during buttons presses), etc.
Most of those things can be sorted out with the updates and I will keep watching which Finnish team, if and how soon, will bring some news and updates on those watches…or just offer a new one. G2, S11 or SX in case of Suunto…I am also interested if the Polar’s Vantage series will get any more updates. Everyone’s so mysterious about the updates suddenly.
-
Hey, since my topic was closed for creating another ‘bad gps’ topic, I will ask for help here. Please find my route attached. Red is how it is supposed to be - blue is what suunto 9 baro has measured. I run this one 3 times per week and tested every possible gps setting. It is always updated and I huse the best performance setting. I have it paired with suunto HR strap - but doubt it is the problem.
This example shows around 400 meters being cut from my route.
Any suggestions? -
This is forest, how the hell you know how it should be :)? Do this, run 5 time in the sam track and if tracks are the same, then your red is wrong
-
@Lukasz-Berdowski What satellites are on? There are some experiencing issues with Beidou.
-
@Lukasz-Berdowski
is your watch on the latest fw, too?living sideways
-
@zvonejan I run this route 3 times per week for 5 years now… I know where I run
See those semi transparent lines? Those are paths. The same paths are below the red line. I attach a screenshot from my run with different watch (tomtom spark) whitch was almost perfect. I havt lots of those. The only tracker that does weird shit is Suunto 9 Baro… 
-
Brad & Tele-Ho, thank you for your answers!
My current firmware is: 2.11.38
I tried beidou, galileo, glonass but all of them are performing poorly
-
@Lukasz-Berdowski Do all/most of the tracks (from whatever tracker) have the NE deflection from that first RH bend through to around the 2km mark?
-
yes, while being less notable than suunto’s, it exists. The Entire area between 1 and 2,5 km gives trouble.
One thing I want to stress - suunto is very accurate on runs/walks/bike trainings in the city. The issue exists when being around trees. I did couple of runs in another city - the tracking was great up until i hit a park. Then it went haywire -
@Lukasz-Berdowski Right. So. Going by your summary of repeated observations and perhaps as many as four Google Streetview shots …
Clearly each watch is happier with tree-partheid. From the tracks shown, both devices lose it in areas of mixed deciduous (light green in sat pic. Ash? Birch?) and evergreen (dark green: a fir of some sort?). Without the mix (NE), or with the species segregated (SE), they do better/fine. The TomTom is obviously less disconcerted by arboreal mixing. The Suunto freaks out when almost wholly surrounded by evergreens and takes some time to recover.
Different tree types’ interference may be a thing. If the S9B has a clever compensatory algorithm for adjusting to/anticipating GNSS signal quality, the varying mixture might cause more knock-on problems than the clear division.
(Or it might be track width and overhead foliage density. Or something else entirely.)
-
@Fenr1r trees are always problematic in terms of GNSS accuracy but I’ve
never(well once the watch got completely bananas but it was with older FW) observed such problems in my S5. If there is a problem it typically manifests itself with offset which is pretty much constant (ie. 10 - 20 meters off) untill I change direction or signal improves (opening in the tree line, etc.) and this is ok.But the image attached by @Lukasz-Berdowski indicates a rather big error in first 2 km of run.
@Lukasz-Berdowski have you tried soft reset, fresh AGPS sync, 15 minutes to unpack AGPS and then ~60 seconds on open area after acquiring fix?
-
@Łukasz-Szmigiel Could the S5 be dumber? Presumably (a tiny bit) more like the TomTom? The S9 suffers from its own post-processing cleverness?
Trees - yup. In the image, the wild errors really correlate with the tracks’ (in-)visibility to Google’s aerial photography (whenever in 2020 that happened): i.e., sufficient overhead coverage. That might be enough.
A bit boring and perhaps not applicable to that SE stretch from 4km, so I added the tree type factor. The SE track is partially visible but that’s still sort of a canyon effect so sat geometry is trickier for a regularly acquired series of good fixes.
Again: might be utterly irrelevant.
-
@Fenr1r S5 / S9 use the same GNSS chip don’t they? S5 is supposed to be better in terms of signal reception due to external antenna but it’s hard to judge without debug data (raw data from sensor).
Also, could it be related to FusedTrack? Or is it deactivated in performance mode?
-
@Łukasz-Szmigiel said in GPS bugs on Suunto9:
Also, could it be related to FusedTrack? Or is it deactivated in performance mode?
Just what I was wondering re prediction/compensation. S5/S9 - same firmware using that same chip in the same way, whether or not FusedTrack active?
-
@Fenr1r there’s no FusedTrack in S5. The question is - is it hardcoded that FusedTrack is disabled in performance mode or does it activate automatically if GNSS signal is poor?
-
@Łukasz-Szmigiel And it’s a good question. And if the answer is Yes (=> No to the second part): is there anything else that S9 might be doing that might be particularly affected by type of canopy? Anything that your S5/L-B’s TomTom Spark wouldn’t?
-
Wow guys, thank you so much for trying to help me understand the problem
To be honest, I don’t know if the fusedtrack is active or disabled while being on the Performance mode. If yes, that would certainly be a good explanation.@Łukasz-Szmigiel I havent done the reset, just the final 2 steps. By the way, I assume you are in Poland too, what GPS mode do you find to be the most accurate?
There is one more thing - sometimes I feel a very small, almost unnoticable watch vibration (lasting maybe a 0,5 sec) during runs but there is no message on the watch face. I was reading somewhere however, that that is the barometer
-
@Lukasz-Berdowski I usually stick with galileo. In dense forests and mountains glonass is also handy. Beidou seems to give the best response (quickest to get back on track) after track accuracy degenerates but also gives me strange offsets. Also I don’t find it so good in woodlands. Generally with latest firmware, in the open, plain gps is more than enough. But the error gets pretty significant as soon as I enter wooded area so I usually use galileo - the error is there but it’s more like an offset than a zigzag.
I’ve been also setting a description of which GNSS I use in my workouts to have a better look on it and more data.
