GPS is really fun to play with in your projects. But when [Trax] decided to build a GPS chip into his design the fun ended abruptly. Above you can see the section of the board devoted to the hardware. Unfortunately this PCB fails to provide any GPS location data whatsoever.
His design uses a Low-Noise Amplifier between the Venus634FLPx GPS receiver and the antenna. After populating the board he was getting no satellite fix. He tried replacing the antenna, and also two different antennas connected without the use of the LNA. He could get NMEA data, but still no fix. After checking and rechecking he finally went to the chip manufacturer for advice. They came back with some helpful suggestions, but he’s bogged down in trying to figure out if there may be problems with his antennas, and with the need to spin another PCB to test some of the proposed fixes. Take a look at his write-up and leave a comment if you see something that he might have missed.
Even working with develpment-board-GPS hardware has its ups and downs. [Jeremy Blum] tried to track his possessions as they were moved across the country in a PODS container. As a Fail-of-the-Week extra, check out how his hastily assembled tracking hardware failed to work past the first few hours of transit.
Fail of the Week is a Hackaday column which runs every Wednesday. Help keep the fun rolling by writing about your past failures and sending us a link to the story – or sending in links to fail write ups you find in your Internet travels.Filed under: gps hacks, Hackaday Columns
