Simoco GPS Microphone Settings (Updated 20/01/11)
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 9:47 am
In the past we've recommended that both Warm Fix Idle Time AND Cold Fix Idle Time be set to zero. After advice from TMC in Oz, this has now been revised with Warm Fix Idle Time being left at it's default value of 90 and Cold Fix Idle Time set to zero. This avoids a power glitch being sent to the GPS engine when Warm Fix On Time fires.
With settings as shown in the accompanying image, it will cost you an additional 80mA from the battery over what the default values would draw as the GPS engine is now switched on at all times. This is well within the capacity of the 3000mA/H lithium ion battery and an SRP9130 switched on and left running was recently recorded as pegging out after 17 hours. I can confirm 12 hours battery duration after thrashing the Li batteries in my set for two years. I doubt that having the GPS running all the time is going to have a noticeable effect on the operational life of your batteries during a callout. As a minor addition to this post, I've included the Man-Down settings but only to say that unless you particularly need the Man-Down function, program the values as shown here or the radio will send an alarm signal every time the microphone is tilted beyond about 60 degrees from the vertical and this will happen a lot!
Also worth mentioning is the 'GPS Beeps Enabled' function. This can be programmed to give some indication as to whether your GPS has satellite lock or not but by and large is intensely irritating to the user of that radio as it beeps is it's got lock and it beeps if it hasn't. There's enough useless noise on our radios as it it without adding more.
In the case of the new model of GPS microphone developed for the SRP9170/9180 portable radios, these have a very much faster satellite acquisition times when compared to the earlier models. Because of this it might not now be quite so necessary to have the GPS engine switched on all the time and so the 'Cold Fix Idle' time could be increased from zero. However as current drawn by the GPS engine when it's left running all the time is minimal and has no effect on battery life over the duration of an average callout or longer in fact, there's no real advantage in doing this and a value of zero will result in very fast acquisition and accurate position reports.
With settings as shown in the accompanying image, it will cost you an additional 80mA from the battery over what the default values would draw as the GPS engine is now switched on at all times. This is well within the capacity of the 3000mA/H lithium ion battery and an SRP9130 switched on and left running was recently recorded as pegging out after 17 hours. I can confirm 12 hours battery duration after thrashing the Li batteries in my set for two years. I doubt that having the GPS running all the time is going to have a noticeable effect on the operational life of your batteries during a callout. As a minor addition to this post, I've included the Man-Down settings but only to say that unless you particularly need the Man-Down function, program the values as shown here or the radio will send an alarm signal every time the microphone is tilted beyond about 60 degrees from the vertical and this will happen a lot!
Also worth mentioning is the 'GPS Beeps Enabled' function. This can be programmed to give some indication as to whether your GPS has satellite lock or not but by and large is intensely irritating to the user of that radio as it beeps is it's got lock and it beeps if it hasn't. There's enough useless noise on our radios as it it without adding more.
In the case of the new model of GPS microphone developed for the SRP9170/9180 portable radios, these have a very much faster satellite acquisition times when compared to the earlier models. Because of this it might not now be quite so necessary to have the GPS engine switched on all the time and so the 'Cold Fix Idle' time could be increased from zero. However as current drawn by the GPS engine when it's left running all the time is minimal and has no effect on battery life over the duration of an average callout or longer in fact, there's no real advantage in doing this and a value of zero will result in very fast acquisition and accurate position reports.