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Time of Day Issue

Gary_Edstrom
over 1 year ago

Time of Day Issue: I have an inReach Explorer that I purchased going on 7 years ago. I haven't even turned it on in over a year. As I am planing on travel where I will lack cellular connections, I wanted to check it out to make sure it was still working. I got all communications functions to work such as tracking and predefined messages. The only problem remaining is that the time of day on the Explorer shows 4-5 minutes slow. I have left it turned on out under the open sky for about 20 minutes and nothing has changed on the time. Does anyone recognize the problem?

  • 0 over 1 year ago

    Like all GPS devices, the unit SHOULD get time of day from the GPS satellites. What are you using as time of day reference when you say "4-5 minutes slow"?

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to twolpert

    I have verified the correct time through at least 3 sources: My iPhone which always seems to have the time down to the second, the official short-wave radio broadcasts of GMT, and getting the time off the radio. That should be more than enough cross-checking. The 4-5 minute difference remains, even after I left the unit outside for a couple of hours while turned on. I have not been using the unit much in the last few years and never noticed when the difference started. I wonder if it has something to do with the last GPS rollover back on April 6/7, 2019? I got my unit at the beginning of 2016. This SEEMS to be a display issue only. All other GPS seem to function normally, such as preset messages and tracking points.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Gary_Edstrom

    Open a support ticket. Don't know how much traction you'll get with a legacy device like this, but it's worth a try..

    Doubt that it has anything to do with rollover. IIRC, that affected the week number. So the date would be off. Does not seem like it would affect time of day. But anything is possible.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to twolpert

    Thank you for your email reply. I realize that this is an older unit. I want to run a few more tests. If I don't find any issue affecting location detection or track point broadcasting, I may just let it slide. I found the device quite useful during my 2016 trip up the Alaska Highway. 95%+ of the time I was out of cellular range on that isolated highway. So I had it sending tracking points every 10 minutes. My sister's family back home checked into the map website to monitor my progress.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to Gary_Edstrom

    I doubt that 5 minutes is enough to make much difference in terms of time to acquire a fix. To avoid a full sky search,, the unit needs to know which satellites are overhead. The coarse almanac (the unit's idea of what satellites are overhead at any given location/date/time) doesn't require that level of time accuracy.

    You would want to make sure that times attached to sent points are accurate. Even there, though, 5 minutes is unlikely to make much difference to anybody looking at your location - even SAR.

  • 0 over 1 year ago in reply to twolpert

    I have resolved the issue! - I wondered if data inside the device had been corrupted somehow. So, on a whim, I went to Settings / Restore Factory Settings and cleared the whole device of EVERYTHING. Of course, that meant that I had to run the activation process again, the first time I have done it since the device was new. It took about 10 minutes and activated just fine. The first thing I noticed then is that the clock was now displaying the correct time. I hooked it up to my Windows computer and ran the sync application and all of my personal information has been re-loaded into the device. Everything seems to be working 100% now.