Does a GPS have an expiration date?
I have taken up riding my bike to/from work. Beyond being good for my physical health, I’m finding it to be quite the boon to my mental health, too, as it provides a pleasant, non-mentally intensive, break between home/work.
According to my GPS, I had an amazing ride home yesterday. Averaged 95 mph with a peak speed of 165 mph.
It seems that my rather ancient Magellan Map 330 GPS has gone off the deep end. In particular, it often powers up to display a time that is many hours off of “now”. This appears to cause locking on to satellites to take a really really long time.
Once locked on to enough satellites to go into the supposedly accurate 3D mode, the unit never shows 0 MPH. I can be sitting at an intersection and the unit shows my speed drifting between 2 and 10 mph.
The unit had been updated to handle the GPS time tick count rollover. Beyond that, it hasn’t had an update in many years. Of course, given that it is a 10+ year old device, I’m wondering if there are parameters that could effectively “drift” due to accumulated inaccuracy, causing the unit to yield bogus information.
Funny, this morning it seems to be behaving in a slightly more expected fashion.
Given that Garmin has announced Mac compatibility in future products, it is about time for an upgrade anyway.
Update: Odd. Now it is behaving correctly. On the ride in, it dropped to zero at intersections and my average speed was 11.4mph (which includes time spent stopped waiting for lights) with a peak of 24mph. Not bad given that I’m commuting on a mountain bike. I actually prefer commuting on such a behemoth; the goal is to get in shape and all that extra resistance does a body good.