SAM-M10Q Breakout - Cannot acquire fix

GPS/GNSS Development Boards
1

Hi,

I have a SparkFun SAM-M10Q breakout board that I’ve been having some trouble with. I am very new to ublox modules and gnss in general so please bear with me. I’ve connected the receiver to ucenter and for whatever reason am having a very hard time acquiring a fix. In its default configuration, it does not seem to acquire any fix at all, or even find any satellites. I’ve found that if I increase the baudrate to 57600, set the measurement rate to 5Hz, and increase the output rate of the UBX PVT messages, I can eventually find satellites and acquire a fix, but it takes anywhere between 10-20 minutes and will lose the fix after around 1-5 seconds, and then take anywhere from 1-5 minutes to acquire another fix. A few minutes ago with this configuration it was able to discover ~30 satellites at once and yet it did not appear to be receiving a signal from a single one of them over a period of 20 minutes. This was all done outside with clear view of the sky on a partly cloudy day. From what I understand this module should be capable of acquiring a fix in less than a minute from cold start. If anyone could help me troubleshoot these issues it would be very much appreciated

2

I can’t say I’m a fan of the SAM’s efficacy, you need to isolate it from local noise sources, say from an MCU or GPIO clocking.

Consider a ground place of perhaps 12cm diameter where the SAM lives topside and other circuitry on the obverse.

Watch also for detuning by the proximity of the human body looming over the device or standing in a way the blocks the weak signals.

3

@jjacc522 - Welcome! It sounds like you’re doing everything right. How are you powering the board? The board expects 3.3V @ ~13mA so not much, but be sure it’s a clean (not noisy) 3.3V. If push comes to shove, we can replace the module.