Wrong location / place by GPS - Location Services - GNSS - Maps

[Anna]

Hi guys,

I am not really sure whether this is a hardware or software issue:

Gnome-Maps (or Open Street Maps in the Browser) never gets the location right.

When I am at home, Maps shows some address in Frankfurt, Germany (200 km off); when I go out, the marker never moves on the map but only jumps to slightly closer places once in a while: to the middle of the Rhine (10 kms off), some address in Bonn (5 km off) or some adress in Cologne (35 kms off).

No matter where exactly I am, it is always that particular park in Cologne, that particular spot in the Rhine and so on.

Is there anything I can do?

Best, Anna

[Gribouille]

Hello Anna,

I've the same problem, roughly 100 km between my real position and what is shown by Maps. I've already seen only few hundreds meters between both, but it was very, very rare.

[vongillus]

Hi guys,

I am not really sure whether this is a hardware or software issue:

Gnome-Maps (or Open Street Maps in the Browser) never gets the location right.

When I am at home, Maps shows some address in Frankfurt, Germany (200 km off); when I go out, the marker never moves on the map but only jumps to slightly closer places once in a while: to the middle of the Rhine (10 kms off), some address in Bonn (5 km off) or some adress in Cologne (35 kms off).

No matter where exactly I am, it is always that particular park in Cologne, that particular spot in the Rhine and so on.

Is there anything I can do?

Best, Anna

Hi Anna,

I never tried yet the GPS on my Pinephone, I will do it to see how it behaves. But I think GPS implementation is right now very limited because it's cannot use A-GPS if I remember correctly. So it means a very long time until you get your position the first time. But still I am a bit surprised that the location which you get is so bad. May be your location doesn't see enough satellites to get a precise position.

So I vote for a software/firmware issue. No idea if someone is working on that at the moment.

Hope it helps...

[JimSmith80]

Try following the instructions given here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPS for utilizing the GPS. It took a few minutes to lock on to my location, and  I had to stand in the middle of my driveway to do it, but it did work. It appeared to be accurate to with 30 feet or so.

[Anna]

Try following the instructions given here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GPS for utilizing the GPS. It took a few minutes to lock on to my location, and  I had to stand in the middle of my driveway to do it, but it did work. It appeared to be accurate to with 30 feet or so.

Do you mean trying these commands?

Code:

mmcli -m 0 --location-status
mmcli -m 0 --location-enable-gps-raw --location-enable-gps-nmea
watch mmcli -m 0 --location-get

All of them result in

Code:

error: couldn't find modem

Yeah, @vongillus , it is quite strange indeed that the positions are, on a global scale, sort of close and yet completely off the mark. I cannot imagine that satellite coverage is the problem since this is a relatively densely populated area (and, perhaps more importantly, one with sufficient purchasing power), where I never experienced any problems locating my whereabouts with Symbian, Android, IOS or TomTom.

[JimSmith80]

Anna, it looks like you are probably not imputing the correct modem number. Try running mmcli -L first. The output of that will give you the correct modem number. Running just mow on my phone mmcli -L output : /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/1 [QUALCOMM INCORPORATED] QUECTEL Mobile Broadband Module. So I would run the following:

Code:

mmcli -m 1 --location-enable-gps-raw --location-enable-gps-nmea

watch mmcli -m 1 --location-get

The modem number can change anytime any time the system goes to sleep or is rebooted. Hope that helps.

[dukla2000]

There is a long/older thread on GPS here, that I tried to follow but never had enough interest to work out what the conclusion was or actual capabilities are.

[fdlamotte]

Anna, it looks like you are probably not imputing the correct modem number. Try running mmcli -L first. The output of that will give you the correct modem number. Running just mow on my phone mmcli -L output : /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/Modem/1 [QUALCOMM INCORPORATED] QUECTEL Mobile Broadband Module. So I would run the following:

Code:

mmcli -m 1 --location-enable-gps-raw --location-enable-gps-nmea

watch mmcli -m 1 --location-get

The modem number can change anytime any time the system goes to sleep or is rebooted. Hope that helps.

You can also be independent of modem number by using any :

mmcli -m any --location-enable-gps-raw --location-enable-gps-nmea

[Anna]

Anna, it looks like you are probably not imputing the correct modem number.

Thank you! That seems to have been the problem indeed. The modem number seems to change every time the screen lock takes over and afterwards the location gathering is back to where it was before. So I guess I should follow your advice, @fdlamotte.

Anyway, the

Code:

mmcli -m 0 --location-enable-gps-raw --location-enable-gps-nmea

command did change the results of

Code:

mmcli -m 7 --location-status

from

Code:

------------------------
  Location | capabilities: 3gpp-lac-ci, gps-raw, gps-nmea, agps-msa, agps-msb
          |      enabled: 3gpp-lac-ci
          |      signals: no
  ------------------------
  GPS      | refresh rate: 3600 seconds

to

Code:

------------------------
  Location | capabilities: 3gpp-lac-ci, gps-raw, gps-nmea, agps-msa, agps-msb
          |      enabled: 3gpp-lac-ci, gps-raw, gps-nmea
          |      signals: yes
  ------------------------
  GPS      | refresh rate: 0 seconds

Also

Code:

watch mmcli -m 1 --location-get

now yields some alien language I assume to be GPS coordinates.

The behaviour of maps, however, is still as described above: The location is very much off the mark.

Thanks for the link, @dukla2000. I had not found the thread (since search terms for some reason have to have to be at least four-letter-words and "GPS" is not.); reading it will be the next thing I do. (I hope the conclusion won't be that it simply does not work.)

[arno_nuehm]

hello there,

in my case, it took very long to get a primary accurate location using gps - ten minutes with a non-locked phone - but it worked very well. so well indeed, that i could use my phone to navigate while driving then.

but as dukla2000 said, there is a whole thread about this. and there you may find the hint, that the inaccurate location is probably due to gsm location services, not gps.

cheers