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

Thank you Stephen.ConnectIQ ! Looking forward for a fix!

RandyReeder over 5 years ago

Any news on a fix? I'm getting frustrated with my watch face slowly reporting weather from further and further away until I turn on the GPS again, but I hope a fix is in progress.

Coleman.Apps over 5 years ago

I've reached out to the team for an update.

tomaskafka over 5 years ago in reply to Coleman.Apps

Hi Coleman, any news? There have been several FW updates, I'm now on 6.20 with gps 2.50, but the gps drift bug is still there (and I'm getting reports from my users about it).

SRWaters over 5 years ago

I've had this problem with two different VA3 devices and have spent numerous hours with Garmin discussing it. Their official response was initially that it must be a problem with the various watch faces and widgets. When I told them that their own location finder drifted as well, they refused to believe it until I could send them video of the the drifting numbers. They've been promising to "get back to me" with a fix for nearly a year now. Since they seem either not to care about the problem or are genuinely unable to fix it, I'm thankful that watch faces like Weathergraph are now offering the option of manually inputting the location so that drift is no longer an issue.

moijs over 5 years ago in reply to tomaskafka

I have the same issue with Fenix 5.

Except this issue, weathergraph is a great watchface by the way !

Travis.ConnectIQ over 5 years ago

There is a patch to ConnectIQ that is supposed to resolve this issue. I'm not sure exactly when it will be merged and pulled up by the device teams, but there has been some progress.

Jan Čapek over 5 years ago in reply to Travis.ConnectIQ

Hi, this issue can be easily visible on my Locus Map (https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/f15dd655-e734-456e-b8f5-314d287df4a4) application which allow to user to run CIQ MapView when onboard GPS is not active. In this case, position arrow (I wish it was possible to hide it) is slowly drifting away from the map screen with some random heading.

This issue is mentioned also in this bug report:

forums.garmin.com/.../mapview-and-maptrackview-classes-are-broken---even-more-on-ciq3-1

Travis.ConnectIQ over 5 years ago in reply to Jan Čapek

We've acknowledged the issue and made a fix already, but that fix has not been released yet.

SRWaters over 5 years ago in reply to Travis.ConnectIQ

The problem is that none of the "fixes" have actually taken care of the problem! I gave up trying to deal with Garmin about this since they consistently try to pretend that there's no problem. Fortunately, several developers have created watch faces and widgets that allow me to manually enter latitude and longitude information so that I don't have to put up with the drifting coordinates supplied by my last GPS access.