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Open Vehicle Monitor System (OVMS) reporting stale GPS location

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Stuart

Roadster#326, ModelS#1409
Supporting Member
May 23, 2009
85
5
San Jose, CA
When I installed the OVMS (firmware 2.6.5) in my Roadster (1.5) a couple of months ago, all seemed to be working fine. It reported the correct battery level. It reported the correct location — parked in my garage.

But, since then, I’ve noticed that the location never changes. It always says it’s parked in my garage, no matter where it really is. Do I have some OVMS setting configured wrong? It would seem that it worked at least once — otherwise how would it show the correct location of my garage?

Does anyone have any troubleshooting hints for me?
 
OVMS for Tesla Roadster just uses the car's GPS and picks up the co-ordinates off the CAN bus.

I suggest you take your car for a drive and have a look at the altitude and direction shown on the little VFD. Make sure they both change. If they do, then the car GPS is working fine. If not, then that is the source of your problem. 90% of the time it is the Tesla Roadster GPS antenna mounted in the front wheel arch.

If your car GPS is working, then you could also try to unplug OVMS, wait a few seconds, then plug it in again.
 
For unrelated reasons my Roadster is at the Sunnyvale service center right now. I asked them to check if the Roadster GPS antenna in the front wheel arch is properly connected, and this is what they told me:

For the GPS system it does not go through the CAN system, that is a separate system. To get the OVMS to work an external antenna would have to be added to the vehicle

Is the Sunnyvale Tesla service center giving me correct information?
 
For unrelated reasons my Roadster is at the Sunnyvale service center right now. I asked them to check if the Roadster GPS antenna in the front wheel arch is properly connected, and this is what they told me:



Is the Sunnyvale Tesla service center giving me correct information?

Not for GPS. To connect the OVMS to to Internet/mobile phone network, yes... But the GPS is read from the vehicle.

Does your GPS in dash work?
 
For unrelated reasons my Roadster is at the Sunnyvale service center right now. I asked them to check if the Roadster GPS antenna in the front wheel arch is properly connected, and this is what they told me:

Is the Sunnyvale Tesla service center giving me correct information?

No, but they wouldn't be expected to know anything about OVMS or how it works. I'm not surprised that they don't know the car GPS position is on the can bus - I guess that their view is the antenna in the wheel arch has a cable running to a car module.

The key question is: does the GPS in the car work? On the VDS do you see heading and altitude shown correctly and does the car remember location-aware charging settings? If yes, then the car GPS is working, if no then that is Tesla's issue.
 
No, but they wouldn't be expected to know anything about OVMS or how it works. I'm not surprised that they don't know the car GPS position is on the can bus - I guess that their view is the antenna in the wheel arch has a cable running to a car module.

The key question is: does the GPS in the car work? On the VDS do you see heading and altitude shown correctly and does the car remember location-aware charging settings? If yes, then the car GPS is working, if no then that is Tesla's issue.

I got the car back. They had checked the GPS system and reported that they found nothing wrong. Perhaps in the process they did unknowingly reseat a loose antenna connection, or something like that. When I drove it the touchscreen did correctly report heading and elevation, and the OVMS app is now correctly displaying the location too. We may never know what, if anything, was wrong, but it seems to be working now.