For some reason I have issues with my GPS tracking system I’m working on. It works well but sometimes it drops GPS signal and sometimes it takes ages to get a position lock. If you think this has to do with cold/warm boot you are wrong. As is my rig is connected to my computer, Arduino powered from an FTDI adapter that is connected to my computer with regular USB cable. This way I can open a serial monitor and read what the status is.
When I boot my computer USB gets initialized by Windows. This causes Arduino to reboot and when that happens (or a power cycle) the GPS loses its position (LED stopped blinking)
Yes the battery is charged, yes it had position lock just before reboot. I can do this many times and the result is the same.
This is a behaviour I do not want to have when it is mounted to my motorcycle.
A comparison…
I have the same chip (NEO 6M) connected to a NodeMCU with a small 0.96 OLED screen and it is currently being powered in my garage by solar-cells charging some 12V batteries.
This works 100% all the time, even if I reboot it is very quick to get position lock again.
To make things worse…
If for some reason the GPS module should be defect I of course swapped them over a few times and the result is the same.
I also replaced Arduino with another one and it is still the same result, as well as replacing wires. I’m running out of ideas to solve this one…
A 2nd option is of course to use the NODEMCU instead of Arduino. Storage can still be done on the SD card but then I need to compile a new NODEMCU kernel with FAT and SPI support I think.
A 3rd option is to use my old Raspberry PI…