Has anyone tried a bluetooth GPS as a workaround?
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I have not tried that. Great idea.
To test that, forget about all the fancy apps and just check the basic GNSS output to see whether you get a fix e.g. New Post: November Librem 5 update: Byzantium Released
It can take a long time (e.g. 20 minutes) outside to get your first fix but thereafter it should be quick - or you may indeed have poor connection on the antenna - but best to eliminate other possible issues first.
The other thing to confirm is that, assuming you are using geoclue as the source of location information for the applications, you have configured geoclue to use only the GNSS as the underlying source. You need this anyway for any kind of sane troubleshooting, but you also really really don’t want geoclue using e.g. WiFi for location information (since that involves leaking information, including your location, to the online service that maps WiFi MAC addresses to physical locations) and e.g. most people wouldn’t want it using mobile tower for location information (since that is not very accurate).
I will try this. Thank you.
I would also like to report GPS results that are ttally erratic, and of no use whatsoever for navigating.
Am I correct in thinking the GPS module just needs to be initialized and/or calibrated? Or is it something that is not so easily solved?
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This is how I initialized the GPS on my L5.
- Turn off wifi.
- Enable cellular data.
- Go outside to an area of widely clear, unobstructed view of the sky
- Keep phone away from extraneous metal.
- Quit all other applications and then open Maps app and let phone sit undisturbed for 15 minutes.
- After this time, the initialization should be complete.
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On a cloudless day?
I will give that a try as soon as we have a clear day over here.
Hope it does work (never had a phone that needed to be initialized in this way), otherwise that part of the phone is pretty much useless.
The L5 has a lot of things that it does differently. Not all of them are awesome.
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Perform what @Zimmy it saying, let me help too a little, i have 2 fancy librem 5, one Librem 5 do not have the gnss fix, the other L5 is has the gnss fix, so in my test both phones get work and precision at same time. If that Zimmy recommend do not work i will helping you a little to troubleshooting.
Thanks, Carlos! That might come in handy.
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Doesn’t have to be cloudless. What I mean by “widely clear” is that you should be away from large trees or buildings which can inhibit the GNSS signals. An open field would be good.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that when I reflashed my phone, I had to rerun the GNSS initialization procedure.
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Ok. I did a short walkabout with th L5, location on, Pure Maps running, wifi switched off. And it worked: the indicated location was spot-on within minutes.
Hope it stays that way from now on.
Once again: thanks for the advice. If this info is not in the L5 start-up guide, it should be.
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I tried your initialization procedure and let the phone sit outside in the open for two hours. My location still varies between Spain (where I am, though not very accurate) and somewhere in China, so didn’t work for me. Also makes you wonder why location in China lurks on the L5. I guess several of the parts originate from China, but otherwise my phone has never been near that part of the world!
Edit: I also notice that in the Settings app under Security/Location no app has asked for permission to use location services. Why is that?
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I know that some have had GPS issues with the phone from the factory, which would possibly explain why the initialization procedure does not work for you. Two hours would be plenty of time to initialize. Wifi must be off, mobile/cellular data on. I initialized mine by putting it on top of a large cardboard box, screen face down, outside, and the initialization was accomplished in 15 minutes. If this does not work, you should contact support.
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Yep, I had WiFi off (kill switch off) and mobile data on. Had the phone on a stone/metal table first, then alsod tried the top of a cardboard box, but not face down all the time. I will also check your procedure with my second L5, to see if they act similarly. As I recall, that other phone hasn’t been able to get a GPS fix in the past either.
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Just wanted to post an update on my March 2022 delivered Librem 5, L5vl-05. After doing a very recent reflash (last couple of days Feb 22) and the GPS initialization procedure mentioned above, to my surprise it is working now! I basically just figured that out yesterday, but was doing more testing to make sure. I checked /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf and CDMA, 3G, and WIFI location are by default enabled as well FYI (I am not sure though if geoclue is able to actually use that information or not??).
The accuracy is about what you expect using pure GPS, with no Cell Tower, Wifi, Bluetooth, type triangulation service on-top. I would say accuracy for me is about within 2-3 car lengths which should be good enough for general navigation.
I have to say i am amazed, since it has not been working before no matter what I tried in the past - in the meantime i gave up trying or thinking about it and now bam.
For my GPS to work i did use Gnome Maps default app and didn’t set anything up or had to install anything, for the WiFI MAC address i use randomly generated ones so privacy shouldn’t be as much of an issue, but i certainly works also with HKS WiFi off, i haven’t tried WiFi on to see if there is any difference.
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could you resend the link to the .deb if you have a testing arm64 build of GPXSee, I couldn’t find it. If building from source do you have build instructions for Debian Linux?
The test version of the arm64 deb on https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=home%3Atumic%3AGPXSee&package=gpxsee couldn’t be installed due to dependency issues.
could you resend the link to the .deb if you have a testing arm64 build of GPXSee, I couldn’t find it. If building from source do you have build instructions for Debian Linux?
I have built GPXsee in PureOS ARM64 chroot on my Debian x86 laptop. One of more ways, which I use for my embedded development for many different embedded projects and targest. The build should be possible exactly the same way on the Librem 5 directly but you need to install there complete Qt5 development packages which would take lot of valuable storage on the device and build would be slow.
git clone https://github.com/tumic0/GPXSee.git gpxsee-git
mkdir gpxsee-build
cd gpxsee-build
qmake ../gpxsee-git
make -j 4
make INSTALL_ROOT=../gpxsee-install install
There is result of this simple build
https://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pisa/librem5/gpxsee-pureos-arm64-230225.tar.gz
sudo -i
cd /tmp
wget https://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pisa/librem5/gpxsee-pureos-arm64-230225.tar.gz
cd /
tar -xf /tmp/gpxsee-pureos-arm64-230225.tar.gz
No warranty at all and probably even not fully clean with licence. But it is nothing more then build according to above instructions.
There is original GPXsee author’s project on Open Build Service
It could be used to obtain required files for proper Debian package build.
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