MK7 "Random / "Stupid" Questions Thread"

[Pineapple]

I've had a weird navigational issue that can be pretty vexing when it strikes.

Has any ever noticed their gmaps navigation sometimes having much less precision when plugged into carplay? It's been an ongoing issue where the nav will lose my position, sometimes on complicated roadway situations like below ground on i93/i90 in Boston, but also sometimes on typical surface city streets. It freaks out because it doesn't know what street I'm on, assumes I'm teleporting around, and that I'm in desperate need to get back on track. meanwhile I'm missing my exit because I have no nav support.
I've had my passenger take out their nav assuming it was my phone, and their gmaps worked fine in those scenarios up until we connected it to carplay and then it too bugged. I'm not sure if being connected to bluetooth but not carplay yields different results.

 

[Kushdaiin]

I've had a weird navigational issue that can be pretty vexing when it strikes.

Has any ever noticed their gmaps navigation sometimes having much less precision when plugged into carplay? It's been an ongoing issue where the nav will lose my position, sometimes on complicated roadway situations like below ground on i93/i90 in Boston, but also sometimes on typical surface city streets. It freaks out because it doesn't know what street I'm on, assumes I'm teleporting around, and that I'm in desperate need to get back on track. meanwhile I'm missing my exit because I have no nav support.
I've had my passenger take out their nav assuming it was my phone, and their gmaps worked fine in those scenarios up until we connected it to carplay and then it too bugged. I'm not sure if being connected to bluetooth but not carplay yields different results.

I have had this happen in and around Boston as well. The tunnels get kind of weird especially because you might have surface streets above you and the GPS nopes out of the chat. I've also had the teleportation happen at the airport where it just can't quite figure things out. Both have been while I'm connected to Carplay.

 

[victorofhavoc]

Where is your phone sitting when connected? Remember that the GPS chip in cellphones is buried in the phone and because of their cheapness and security concerns they are strictly limited to 1hz polling, below 10000ft, slower than 300mph, and no closer than 3m of precision. This is done to prevent people from making cheap/homemade self guiding missiles. This means at 60mph your position can easily be 88ft off, even with perfect signal. Typically you're getting position from 5+ sattelites and these days the Russian sattelite position system is highly hit or miss for obvious geopolitical reasons, so it's more common to drop a sattelite here or there. You can also get interference from too short of a cable (high amperage while charging and transferring data will cause magnetic interference and a shorter cable limits the position of the GPS sensor and cable)

You can look into where to place the phone for better signal, use a longer cable to get it away from the cubby surrounded by electronics, or possibly put some farady beads around either end of the cable to limit magnetic interference. You can also lightly knot your cable a few times on both ends to accomplish a similar functionality to farady beads.

I've had similar issues with it, but using the wireless AA adapter solves most of them since I can sit the phone in a chest pocket, cup holder, door, or seat next to me. It can still get wonky if near big power lines, overcast days, or other interference is around.

I've had a weird navigational issue that can be pretty vexing when it strikes.

Has any ever noticed their gmaps navigation sometimes having much less precision when plugged into carplay? It's been an ongoing issue where the nav will lose my position, sometimes on complicated roadway situations like below ground on i93/i90 in Boston, but also sometimes on typical surface city streets. It freaks out because it doesn't know what street I'm on, assumes I'm teleporting around, and that I'm in desperate need to get back on track. meanwhile I'm missing my exit because I have no nav support.
I've had my passenger take out their nav assuming it was my phone, and their gmaps worked fine in those scenarios up until we connected it to carplay and then it too bugged. I'm not sure if being connected to bluetooth but not carplay yields different results.

 

[Pineapple]

Where is your phone sitting when connected? Remember that the GPS chip in cellphones is buried in the phone and because of their cheapness and security concerns they are strictly limited to 1hz polling, below 10000ft, slower than 300mph, and no closer than 3m of precision. This is done to prevent people from making cheap/homemade self guiding missiles. This means at 60mph your position can easily be 88ft off, even with perfect signal. Typically you're getting position from 5+ sattelites and these days the Russian sattelite position system is highly hit or miss for obvious geopolitical reasons, so it's more common to drop a sattelite here or there. You can also get interference from too short of a cable (high amperage while charging and transferring data will cause magnetic interference and a shorter cable limits the position of the GPS sensor and cable)

You can look into where to place the phone for better signal, use a longer cable to get it away from the cubby surrounded by electronics, or possibly put some farady beads around either end of the cable to limit magnetic interference. You can also lightly knot your cable a few times on both ends to accomplish a similar functionality to farady beads.

I've had similar issues with it, but using the wireless AA adapter solves most of them since I can sit the phone in a chest pocket, cup holder, door, or seat next to me. It can still get wonky if near big power lines, overcast days, or other interference is around.

Science!

Here's my magnetic holder:

It's only a problem very occasionally, and while it happens in areas you'd expect like underground it's also happened on pretty average streets. It's also 100% linked to being in carplay because unplugging it solves the issue almost immediately. I wonder if there's a different method of location finding depending if it's in carplay or not.

 

[victorofhavoc]

Science!

Here's my magnetic holder:
View attachment 303786

It's only a problem very occasionally, and while it happens in areas you'd expect like underground it's also happened on pretty average streets. It's also 100% linked to being in carplay because unplugging it solves the issue almost immediately. I wonder if there's a different method of location finding depending if it's in carplay or not.

There's no functionality I'm aware of in carplay or android auto to use the built in vehicle GPS vs the phone GPS when connected to a head unit. I'm pretty confident in that since cars with no native nav system and Android auto/carplay exist and work just fine.

The magnetic holder could cause a bit of issue with the sensor, but if it instantly works fine when unplugged, I'd try another cable or tying a few knots in an existing one to see if it helps.

There IS significantly more processing going on when using these systems, especially with nav enabled, which I'm sure you've seen with power draw and heat generated. When the screen mirroring is occurring there's even more processing to remotely display over the phones only port interface. That can impact quite a bit as the phone system attempts to manage power, data, image painting, etc over a single USB connection. IPhone is much more aggressive about power management than android and doesn't do as well with background processes as a result.