Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2014/07/01

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Subject: [Leica] Firmware M240
From: pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 17:34:19 -0700

Nah, John.  GPS satellites do not discriminate by hemisphere.  They are 
in orbits inclined about 55 degrees to the equator, which means they get 
farther south than even you. :-)  And farther north than most 
Canadians--which reminds me, to all Canadian Luggers, hope you had a 
Happy Canada Day!

Seriously, if you've done the firmware update, it may have reset the 
last known position of the camera (to a default of Wetzlar, maybe?).  
Which means it has to "see" at least four satellites clearly before it 
knows where it is again. Usually there are 7-9 satellites visible at any 
one time, but they transmit on frequencies that are absorbed by things 
that contain water (ie trees, human bodies, etc.), not to mention 
building walls and such. So you need to have a clear view of some open 
sky for its initial setup, and the more, the better. After that, some 
GPS' will use the last known location as an initial guess in its 
algorithm, which can help fill in the blanks when less than four 
satellites are currently visible. Others don't, and these can be 
especially difficult to use indoors, in urbans downtown areas, or in 
areas with a lot of RF interference.

Take the camera outdoors where you can see a lot of sky, and wait a few 
minutes, and I suspect all might be well again. I remember when we came 
back from a trip to Florida with our GPS. It was raining a lot, so I 
didn't take it outside to reset its location.  Then we had to go to a 
friend's country house which is so far out in the sticks that its Zip 
code is EIEIO.  The GPS "remembered" its last known position, and 
insisted that it was in Florida for about 15 minutes, until it saw 
enough satellites to realize that it was now a bit north of Seattle.  :-)

--Peter

----------
 > Yes, but you are in the northern hemisphere which has quite a few more
 > satellites ;-)
 >
 > john
 >
 > ________________________________________
 >
 >
 > On Jul 1, 2014, at 3:34 AM, John McMaster wrote:
 >
 > > I find the GPS very unwilling to lock a signal in Wellington, will be
 > > curious to see how you find things across the ditch....
 >
 > GPS worked pretty well here even before the new firmware.
 >
 > LiveView no longer works on my M ;~(
 >
 > Regards,
 > George Lottermoser
 >
 > http://www.imagist.com
 > http://www.imagist.com/blog
 > http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist



Replies: Reply from hopsternew at gmail.com (Geoff Hopkinson) ([Leica] Firmware M240)
Reply from john at mcmaster.co.nz (John McMaster) ([Leica] Firmware M240)