AMi III Loss of GPS lock resolved
Discussion
I'm located in Auckland, New Zealand. My previous posts cover the purchase of my as-new (less than 2,500 miles old) 2018 Vantage V8S manual from AM Nottingham in January 2020 (via a UK agent), and then a 4 week full upgrade with Mike and Adrian at Bamford Rose, before shipping the car back to NZ in late February last year.
Delighted to report she has "run in" perfectly - having now completed 4 week-long 4,000 km road trips around the glorious South Island since arriving here in May 2020 - each trip beautiful alpine roads, zero traffic, lovely surfaces, great coffee everywhere, pumping the beastie - what's not to like !. Being used properly. BR upgrade path transformative, and a delight every single day (thanks Mike and Adrian!). Starting the car on open exhaust setting in the bowels of the Interislander ferry a childish pleasure each and every time - an immediate hush descends, and then somewhere a muffled voice would always ask "what the f.... was that !?" Fun starts at Picton ... Pathetic, really :-))
However, we have had one teenie-weenie niggle throughout.
The Ami III nav system as well as Apple CarPlay (Apple Maps, or Google Maps or Waze) would work perfectly, and then would suddenly lose GPS lock, with the result the GPS track would leap sideways off the programmed route, run over the odd road, and start commanding outrageous nav direction to return to route. This often happened exactly when not required (M6 by Birmingham was my first introduction, blatting through the narrow roads of Snowdonia my second ...). Usually emerged after about 30 minutes running, but shorter timeframes if running at open road speeds, or in very hot weather. Leaving the vehicle stopped out in the scorching Kiwi sun for any length of time virtually assured a loss of lock from start-up ....
What made this all the more mysterious was the pattern continued despite the required replacement of the OEM ICU module once the vehicle arrived back in NZ in May 2020 (a required change from UK module to Rest of World module - who knew?), and multiple system software refreshes at every opportunity.
Aston Martin Auckland is the only AM outlet in New Zealand. Paul Staples is the AM after market manager here in NZ - formerly hailing from a Lamborghini outlet in London - Paul loves his cars, and has the prime job - after-market manager for Aston Martin, Lamborghini and Bentley in New Zealand. Tough gig.
Paul and his team have supported my Vantage since being back in NZ, and demonstrated that Aston would not let this issue go over the past 12 months. I must say I got to the "oh, well, just stay off nav" stage, as I didn't buy and upgrade the car to play with the nav, but Paul, bless him, wanted to nail it down. Paul engaged with Aston Martin's tech support centre in Singapore, who climbed in and started making very useful technical suggestions to the service team over the months. Latterly, Gaydon became involved also. Everyone wanted to know the why .... we saw bespoke software offered and installed, we replaced the GPS antenna, and AM also kindly offered a third ICU at their expense, as the system response was clearly slower than required - all gratefully received, but nothing worked.
The Aston Martin Auckland, Singapore and Gaydon teams had not seen this level of issue before, and so stepped up their data requests, as they needed high quality data to sort the issue effectively.
I took to utilizing a wonderful iPhone app called GPS Diagnostic - this app gave instantaneous readouts of the quality of GPS signal received, number of satellites locked and in view (minimum of 4 required for a 3D GPS position at or around <5m accuracy), plus an accurate GPS fix in WGS84 format to 6 decimal places, to provide directly comparable data to the presented AMiIII system data.
Please note, the way the system works is interesting - when you connect your iPhone to AMiIII via the dedicated USB port, the system mirrors your iPhone, but critically supplants iPhone-derived GPS data with the vehicle system antenna data for more robust data, to avoid risk of being masked in a bag etc.
My data capture process was simple - once the AMi III system lost lock, I would stop the vehicle, open the AMiIII nav system, and check how many satellites in view - often at zero, with nav reported as being at DR (dead reckoning). Satellite count would continuously vary from zero to 4 to 6-8, down to 3 etc - never stable.
Despite wandering or lost GPS lock on AMiIII, the disconnected iPhone would, at the same time, show rock solid GPS lock and position.
The Aston Martin teams asked for, and received, screenshots and photos of AMiIII readouts of number of satellites, GPS position, map presentation (across OEM nav, and Apple CarPlay nav apps), as well as directly comparable screen shots of GPS Diagnostic and alternate iPhone nav presentation.
Once that pattern of data was established, Gaydon came up with the idea we likely had a problem in the coax cable feeding GPS antenna data to the ICU. That coax cable is buried in the main harness - however, opening the main harness was never going to happen while I owned the car. Not required, said Gaydon, instead we will install a new cable connector to connector to overlay and bypass the existing coax cable in the harness.
It took a week to build up the replacement cable in Auckland, and then a few more days to install and test.
It's finally done the trick - now the AMiIII system reports a rock solid 12 satellites in view always, and all nav systems are stable, fast and effective.
Was it all worth the effort? Aston Martin thought so. My grateful thanks to Paul Staples, demonstrating what true after-market support looks like, and the Aston Martin teams in Auckland, Singapore and Gaydon. Fabulous commitment and support, over many months, and very much appreciated.
Delighted to report she has "run in" perfectly - having now completed 4 week-long 4,000 km road trips around the glorious South Island since arriving here in May 2020 - each trip beautiful alpine roads, zero traffic, lovely surfaces, great coffee everywhere, pumping the beastie - what's not to like !. Being used properly. BR upgrade path transformative, and a delight every single day (thanks Mike and Adrian!). Starting the car on open exhaust setting in the bowels of the Interislander ferry a childish pleasure each and every time - an immediate hush descends, and then somewhere a muffled voice would always ask "what the f.... was that !?" Fun starts at Picton ... Pathetic, really :-))
However, we have had one teenie-weenie niggle throughout.
The Ami III nav system as well as Apple CarPlay (Apple Maps, or Google Maps or Waze) would work perfectly, and then would suddenly lose GPS lock, with the result the GPS track would leap sideways off the programmed route, run over the odd road, and start commanding outrageous nav direction to return to route. This often happened exactly when not required (M6 by Birmingham was my first introduction, blatting through the narrow roads of Snowdonia my second ...). Usually emerged after about 30 minutes running, but shorter timeframes if running at open road speeds, or in very hot weather. Leaving the vehicle stopped out in the scorching Kiwi sun for any length of time virtually assured a loss of lock from start-up ....
What made this all the more mysterious was the pattern continued despite the required replacement of the OEM ICU module once the vehicle arrived back in NZ in May 2020 (a required change from UK module to Rest of World module - who knew?), and multiple system software refreshes at every opportunity.
Aston Martin Auckland is the only AM outlet in New Zealand. Paul Staples is the AM after market manager here in NZ - formerly hailing from a Lamborghini outlet in London - Paul loves his cars, and has the prime job - after-market manager for Aston Martin, Lamborghini and Bentley in New Zealand. Tough gig.
Paul and his team have supported my Vantage since being back in NZ, and demonstrated that Aston would not let this issue go over the past 12 months. I must say I got to the "oh, well, just stay off nav" stage, as I didn't buy and upgrade the car to play with the nav, but Paul, bless him, wanted to nail it down. Paul engaged with Aston Martin's tech support centre in Singapore, who climbed in and started making very useful technical suggestions to the service team over the months. Latterly, Gaydon became involved also. Everyone wanted to know the why .... we saw bespoke software offered and installed, we replaced the GPS antenna, and AM also kindly offered a third ICU at their expense, as the system response was clearly slower than required - all gratefully received, but nothing worked.
The Aston Martin Auckland, Singapore and Gaydon teams had not seen this level of issue before, and so stepped up their data requests, as they needed high quality data to sort the issue effectively.
I took to utilizing a wonderful iPhone app called GPS Diagnostic - this app gave instantaneous readouts of the quality of GPS signal received, number of satellites locked and in view (minimum of 4 required for a 3D GPS position at or around <5m accuracy), plus an accurate GPS fix in WGS84 format to 6 decimal places, to provide directly comparable data to the presented AMiIII system data.
Please note, the way the system works is interesting - when you connect your iPhone to AMiIII via the dedicated USB port, the system mirrors your iPhone, but critically supplants iPhone-derived GPS data with the vehicle system antenna data for more robust data, to avoid risk of being masked in a bag etc.
My data capture process was simple - once the AMi III system lost lock, I would stop the vehicle, open the AMiIII nav system, and check how many satellites in view - often at zero, with nav reported as being at DR (dead reckoning). Satellite count would continuously vary from zero to 4 to 6-8, down to 3 etc - never stable.
Despite wandering or lost GPS lock on AMiIII, the disconnected iPhone would, at the same time, show rock solid GPS lock and position.
The Aston Martin teams asked for, and received, screenshots and photos of AMiIII readouts of number of satellites, GPS position, map presentation (across OEM nav, and Apple CarPlay nav apps), as well as directly comparable screen shots of GPS Diagnostic and alternate iPhone nav presentation.
Once that pattern of data was established, Gaydon came up with the idea we likely had a problem in the coax cable feeding GPS antenna data to the ICU. That coax cable is buried in the main harness - however, opening the main harness was never going to happen while I owned the car. Not required, said Gaydon, instead we will install a new cable connector to connector to overlay and bypass the existing coax cable in the harness.
It took a week to build up the replacement cable in Auckland, and then a few more days to install and test.
It's finally done the trick - now the AMiIII system reports a rock solid 12 satellites in view always, and all nav systems are stable, fast and effective.
Was it all worth the effort? Aston Martin thought so. My grateful thanks to Paul Staples, demonstrating what true after-market support looks like, and the Aston Martin teams in Auckland, Singapore and Gaydon. Fabulous commitment and support, over many months, and very much appreciated.
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