VA3 + F5 FW bug! ActivityInfo.currentLocation drifts away 10s of km per day

Hello, I am debugging my Weathergraph watchface on VA3, and I found that the location provided by Activity.getActivityInfo().currentLocation drifts away over time by 10s of kilometers per day on Vivoactive 3.

The drift starts from a real location of last activity, but then a fixed offset over time is added, so that after a day without GPS lock watch returns a location that might be 50 km away - and I get reports that app is showing weather for a wrong location.

Locking GPS returns the location back to my real location, but then it starts to drift again in a seemingly random direction and speed again.

I logged locations returned by ActivityInfo and visualized it on the map, please check the attachment.

This seems like a serious bug in a GPS firmware.

SW versions:
Vivoactive 3 silver
SW 5.50 (latest available)
GPS version 2.30
TSC 2.10
Sensor 6.00
WHR 20.03.31
CIQ 3.0.3 community.garmin.com/.../1428858.png

Top Replies

Stephen.ConnectIQ over 5 years ago +1

Hi tomaskafka It looks like the issue is still in progress with the device team. I've reached out to the device team to see if they have any more info.

All Replies

tomaskafka over 5 years ago

According to my bug reports, this is happening widely on VA3 and sometimes on Fenix 5 - it is not an isolated issue.

jim_m_58 over 5 years ago

What FW is being used? I've seen this on the va3, but I thought it was fixed in the 5.50 FW. Maybe not in the APAC FW yet?

tomaskafka over 5 years ago

It's 5.50, latest I can get on my European VA3 (I noticed 5.60 is available elsewhere).

However, I have seen this on Fenix 5 during last 2 weeks, so it appears to be not fixed yet.

jim_m_58 over 5 years ago

5.60 is apac and I think actually a bit older than 5.50.

Stephen.ConnectIQ over 5 years ago

tomaskafka Like Jim has said, we have seen this before on the VA3. The fix is in progress but it has not been released yet. We did not know however that this is also found on the fenix 5! Thanks for bringing that up. I did successfully reproduce it on a Fenix 5 and I will start the ticket
Have you only got reports for this on the Fenix 5? how about 5s, 5s+, 5+, 5x, or 5x+?

Thanks

jim_m_58 over 5 years ago

I don't know it it matters, but in addition to the main FW, check that your GPS is 2.xx and not 4.xx. I don't see a drift on the va3, but I have 2.30 GPS there.
The 2.xx GPS where where Galileo was added.

tomaskafka over 5 years ago

Stephen.ConnectIQ Hi Steve, I'll be glad to check the logs I have, but it would help to have a mapping from settings.partNumber (the only identifier available to app) to watch models - as far as I know it is not public, I have gathered a few ids from the forums but most of the list is unknown.

Weathergraph updates weather once per hour, or if the location changes by more than 30 km - which is rare. So one should expect to be about 24 updates per day, unless many of watches are travelling all the time - or drifting. So I checked the logs and computed average number of updates per watch and day for each model. Here are models that clearly stand out from others:

006-B2697-00 (fenix 5)
006-B2700-00 (VA3)
006-B2888-00 (645m?)
006-B2544-00 (???)
006-B2691-00 (forerunner 935?)

jim_m_58 I have 2.30 gps version on VA3.

jim_m_58 over 5 years ago

Actually, mapping PN's to devices is not hard to do.

In the SDK directory, in the bin folder, is devices.xml
Search for a part number, and you'll see what it is, even ROW or APAC

BTW, I don't think going 30km is that rare, even in an hr. Lots of people do that every day between home and work or if they drive for a living, and the va3 has some kind of "auto activity" where it was start GPS and start recording. You'll likely see more than 24 updates/day for people.

Maybe just stick with 1/hr even if the location changes? They can alway just start a GPS activity so the WF will see a new location if they need it sooner.

tomaskafka over 5 years ago

Hi ConnectIQ guys, it's a month and there has been an update for VA3 (5.50 -> 5.70), but the bug still isn't fixed. Will it be released?

I meanwhile found another place where this bug manifests - when I go to Save location, normally I see "Wait for GPS" screen. However, when the GPS is drifting, I get a location immediately (even inside house with no GPS signal), and I can watch the drift in real time - every seconds the reported gps coordinates update and they keep going in the line in random direction.

SW versions:
Vivoactive 3 silver
SW 5.70
GPS version 2.30
TSC 2.10
Sensor 6.00
WHR 20.03.31
CIQ 3.0.3

Stephen.ConnectIQ over 5 years ago

Hi tomaskafka It looks like the issue is still in progress with the device team. I've reached out to the device team to see if they have any more info.