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Question about GPS Time-Sync

Obi Wan Kenobi
over 4 years ago

Hello Garmin lovers

I have a technical question about the gps time synchronization. Sometimes if I switch on gps, and the time was running behind (maybe 1sec), the time was correct after exiting gps. But sometimes the time is not corrected by the gps. Also the timesync functionality has no effect on the incorrect time. Just to make clear I don’t want to speak about a bug. The watch is quite accurate over all. I’m just curious about the technical background for this phenomenon.

Can it be that there is a minimum time the gps has to be enabled to sync the seconds of the watch?

Thanks for an explanation

  • +1 over 4 years ago

    Good question. First, for everyone's knowledge on how updating your time should work on your Instinct series watch:

    • Each time you connect to GPS, regardless of how you acquire GPS, IE: through your systems time menu, acquiring GPS to save a waypoint, or acquiring GPS for any outdoor activity - your time should be updated through the GPS satellites being acquired.
    • Also, if you sync either through the Connect Mobile APP on your smartphone or sync on your computer through Garmin Express, the time is set correctly too.


    @Obi Wan - Regarding your specific examples given and question asked:

    Why is your Instinct Solar time not always updated by the GPS satellites? I would love to have an answer for why you are not always seeing the time update. It should always update your time. When you say, 'the timesync functionality has no effect on incorrect time." - If you are saying when you go to your Settings > System > Time > Sync with GPS menu, the time should always update to the correct time once GPS satellites have been acquired.

    There is not a time difference minimum that should impact whether your time updates each time you acquire GPS satellites.

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin - Chris

    @Chris: Thank you very much for your clarification about the time synchronization.

    For the small time difference (<=1sec)  I see 2 possible reasons:

    • My reference Clocks (2 radio controlled clocks, who correct their time every hour and are always in sync) are not 100% accurate.
    • …Or the time difference I see comes from a signal processing / Multithreading behavior, even if I wouldn’t expect much multithreading on a low power consumption device like the instinct solar.

     

    By the way you can see another time shift if you not press any button for a longer period of time. The time is corrected again when switching to another app or to the menu and back.

    Here I expect that the “watch face” runs on another (low power consumption) cpu, which runs out of sync with the time of the main cpu.

    But as I mention it before. The behavior is far from a bug and the watch is very accurate over all.

    So it is just a philosophical discussion :-)