minutecast location is wrong

My fenix 5X+ is using the wrong location that is hundreds of miles from where I am and where I have never been.

This is useless. It was correct, not sure why or when it changed...

How can I change it back to my current location, or to a fixed location?

  • Maybe you were kidnapped by extraterrestrians and brought to a different place?

    Seriously, if you want support by the community here, it would be helpful if you could provide a more detailed description of your issue!

  • The Minutecast widget changed the location of the weather data about 2 weeks ago. I live in Florida. For the last 2 weeks or so, the widget displayed the weather for Baton Rouge, LA which is 300 miles away. I have never been to Baton Rouge. The widget does not have any setting to tell it what location to use. I remember an old posting (probably on this forum but I was not able to find it this time) where it was suggested to run the GPS on the watch and it would automatically reset the location  of the Minutecast widget but that did not work, until, magically, today... of course right after I posted to the forum... It would be nice if there was a setting, on the watch or on the phone, to tell the widget which location to use. I do not understand why it did not work for 2 weeks, then worked today. I use the GPS regularly for activities, about once a day. 

    TLDR; Problem seems to be temporarily solved, but without explanation (unless extraterrestrians :)

    PS: I realize the post did not mention Minutecast, even though the title of the post did. Sorry about potential confusion.

  • If I understand it right you have an issue with a 3rd party app and not with the watch? Did you contact the developer of this app (which would be the most obvious thing in such a case)‽

  • I do not know if the problem is related to the app or the watch since I cannot operate the app outside of the watch. I do have a Fenix 3X and the f5X+ and the same problem has occured on both. I did remember googling this issue the first time it happened (a couple of years ago) and I did find a helpful answer on this forum, that is why I went to the forum again but I could not find that post again. I did send messages to the developers, multiple times and never got a single answer.

  • If you start an outdoor activity and your watch gets a GPS-fix with the right position after a fex seconds, then you know that your watch is fine.

    Could it be possible that this app uses the position of the connected phone? Is the positioning switched on and the position correct on the phone?

  • It is possible since this widget needs to get the weather data from the phone in real time. I.e. if the watch is not connected to the phone, the app does not provide any data. However, the phone's position was correct at the time that the widget was reporting being in Baton Rouge. During the time that the widget reported being in Baton Rouge (which was about 2 weeks), I used the watch to track outdoor activities and the watch correctly reported being in Florida.

    You can say that the watch itself is fine, but something must provide the location information to the widget, and that can only be the watch or the phone since there is no user accessible setting in the widget itself for the current location.

    I am not saying the watch is at fault, but it is hard to separate the two. It probably is an issue with the widget, I am just curious why Baton Rouge...

    The problem fixed itself right after yet one more outdoor activity. Why it did not do it during the previous activities, I do not know.

    For completeness, during that 2 weeks period, i rebooted the watch and unpaired/re-paired it to the phone a couple of times with no change to the weather data location.

  • If you read the reviews for the app this seems to be a very common problem.  It must be a problem with the app itself.

  • I have used the AccuWeather Minutecast widget for several years and have also encountered this issue before. The issue is not related to any problem with your watch or its GPS. You can long press the Up/Menu button on your watch and then reset the widget's position, although sometimes even that doesn't change the location. I am not absolutely positive but I think that  the widget gets it's location from your phone's IP address location and not the phone's GPS location. So, if you're phone is connected to wifi that IP address location might be different than its IP address location when it is connected to your cellular network. I once tested that theory by using a VPN to change my phone's IP address location to a completely different city and state 800 miles away, and then reset the AccuWeather Minutecast widget's location. It returned the weather data from the VPN IP address location 800 miles away. I wouldn't bet on my theory but my observation has been that it makes the most sense in explaining the variance when I have encountered it.

  • "I think that  the widget gets it's location from your phone's IP address location"

    Yes, you got it!

    Verizon reports the phone's IP address location as Baton Rouge.

    Considering that both the watch and the phone have GPS, it's a bit counterintuitive... but it works even if GPS is turned off, so it looks like the widget uses the IP address if the watch GPS is turned off. It seems like in some cases, turning GPS on on the watch does reset the location, but not always. Maybe I need to open the widget while GPS is turned on. That may have been the difference the last time when it did reset to my area.

    Thank you, it makes plenty of sense!

  • Your post is a good example for  a miracle that could be easily solved if people would be able to describe their issues in a way that others can understand it. It is also a reassurance for people who are able to identify and solve issues that they will always have an advantage! Thinking