rrankins

Is anyone else having issues with the time it takes for the 8100T to acquire a GPS signal? It seems to take and exceptionally long time when leaving my garage in the morning, or the parking garage after work. I talked to Navigon tech support and they suggested doing a factory reset. I did that, and at first, it seemed that acquisition time improved a bit, but it seems to be getting worse now. yesterday, I was a few miles already on the way home from the parking garage at work before it finally got a signal.
Is this normal for the 8100T, or do I have a bad unit?
Does the 8100T just have poor GPS reception? I lose the GPS signal as soon as I pull into my garage, or as soon as I go under the building at work into the parking garage. I can't get any GPS signal in the house, even standing right in the window. Compared to other GPS units I've dealt with, the navigon reception seems really weak. The factory installed GPS unit in my Toyota Prius maintains a signal, even inside the underground parking garage at work! My father-in-laws Garmin Nuvi 260 unit picked up a GPS signal within a few seconds, sitting in the middle of the living room!

I really like the features of teh 8100T and the traffic alerts work great, but the slow acquisition time is really bugging me (especially when I'm leaving work and I haven't gotten a signal yet before the decision point as to which route to take home based on traffic conditions).

Has anybody tried using an external GPS antenna with the 8100T? If so, does it really help improve the signal acquisition time or help it hold a signal longer in garages/tunnels, etc?

Thanks,
Ray

dav

Ray, welcome to the site!
I do not have a Navigon, but I did add an external antenna to my nüvi 750 because I could not get a signal indoors.

It did improve satellite reception, but not as much as I had hoped. I can now get a signal indoors, but only if the external antenna is close to a window.

I think it is specific units, not brand or model, because most nüvi users claim good reception indoors. So that probably applies to Navigons, too.

jchoi20

hey man.

I have the same problem. It takes a good 3-5 minutes for the satellite to come in and start working. Im always left on 'gps signal is not sufficient' message or some nonsense like that.

I talked to the tech guy and had the factory reset too. It doesnt help. Im beginning to think that Navigon just sucks in terms of their signal strength.

Have you found any solutions?

rrankins

Lately, the sat acquistion has been pretty good most of the time (not "instant", but not "minutes" either). I've found it's slower if the car is in motion versus sitting still when it's been parked where the signal was lost (like in my garage or the parking garage at work).
I think the Navigon's just have crappy antenna's built in - they seem strong enough in the wide open sky, but don't seem to have a very wide search radius and lose signal easily if the line of sight is blocked in any way. For example, it loses the satellites almost immediately after I drive into the tunnel for the underground parking at work, but frustratingly, doesn't re-acquire immediately when I leave at the end of the day.
I'm still planning on trying an external antenna at some point to see if it helps.

-Ray