EB-85A - Failure to locate GPS Sats

GPS/GNSS Development Boards
1

Got my EB-85A today. Heated up the soldering iron amd made a connector set to work between the EB-85A and the EM406 RS232 board. I’m using a power supply that has 4.9 volts DC filtered halfway decent. I fiddled with all the settings but I cannot get it to sync with any satellites correctly. It gets the time and it sees some satellites but no Long and Lat is showing up. THis is all done outside. The NMEA sentences GPGGA, GPGLL, GPGLA, GPGSV, GPRMC GPVTG are a configured to send at least one fix but the Long and Lat are all zeros. The date and time shows up correctly (GMT) but the time zone is missing. 'Course the software is not showing the correct daylight saving time offset either.

Any ideas? I’m stumped.

2

I had the same problem with an EM406… got time, saw satellites, wouldn’t get LAT/LON…For me I was running the unit at too high of a voltage…(4v) Once I backed it down (3.3V) it worked fine…

You might try a voltage closer to 3.3V median to the specs… I know the EB is spec’d at 2-5v ± 10%, but having had a smilar experience, it’s the only thing I can add. Other than that, you could have ESD’d the receiver or but a bad unit. Or it could be in some reset mode/Almanac hunt and just taking FOREVER.

BTW. I too just received an EB85A…I will try mine out and let you know what I encounter.

SW

3

Thank you. I’ll modify with a 3.3 DC vReg. I’ll let you know too.

4

Nope 3.3 VDC didn’t do it either.

I think I’m gonna return it, both eTek Support and Sparkfun Support say to return it.

5

Did you find out what the problem was? Did a replacement sort it?

Like the look of these units and will be looking to pick one up for use with the 6dof imu.

6

Waiting for SparkFun to replace it.

7

Still waiting for SparkFun to replace it.

Patiently

8

SparkFun testing revealed that a lock was achieved in less than 25 seconds.

During the development of the ETEK EB-85A evaluation board, SparkFun has observed that noise on its power supply rail can prevent a lock fairly reliably.

SparkFun Support has been very helpful with this.

9

I looking for people who have had any luck with the EB-85A. Especially power supply design and use of the second serial port.

I’m still stumped.

Support at E-Tek Navigation is useless.