Qualcomm and Rand McNally GPS signal blocked! Please help!

Im not saying not using it. Im saying throw it out the window and run it over.

 

Im leaning towards the electrical side of the truck. Either both are trying to feed off each other's timing signal for your Rand GPS and the QC GPS fighting each other and unable to resolve somehow. Signals do travel along wiring among other things for better or worse.

Take off the rand and it's computer etc shut all that off. Do you have the QC back? Great. Go forth and enjoy.

However.. if you have a big enough battery on the laptop itself you should have no trouble with GPS attached to it via rand software etc. We had a rand GPS (Still do...) via serial port on our Laptop plugged into a inverter plugged into the 12v up front. The tractor's QC is completely self contained and totally seperate unit focused on a Geo Syn Satellite via a approx K band signal which is way way up there in freq range. You have to be in a bridge, tunnel or block the SW sky with a high rise to kill the QC's ability to be connected to space and it's network.

There are two common frequency bands that all cell phone carriers use. The Cellular band commonly referred to as 1900 uses the frequencies 1850-1990. The other band is PCS which is the 800 MHz band uses frequencies in the 824-894 range. Most of our cellular phone signal products work on one or the other.

Qualcomm is operating on something like 12 to 14 gigahertz to and from space. They previously attempted to do the service from truck to cell tower over 800 mhz trunking but pulled the plug source material here.

Full text of "How Fleet Operators Keep Track Of Their Trucks"

 

I would check to see if the Qualcomm is configured to use satellite before making any assumptions about such things. Qualcomms can be configured to use cell signal, Wi-Fi, satellite, or any combination of the three.

 

Always try the simplest solutions first, if it was working one day and nothing changed when it stopped working.. more than likely the device received a software update that changed a setting. It’s usually a matter of finding the setting and changing it back. Software updates go through a QA but sometimes they miss things.

 

See that is where there is a definate failure in my knowledge. QC had tried to do Celluar in the 80's off the 800 mhz freq until Motorola pulled it. In my time it's strictly satellite. No other signal.

QC has mutated into a color screen with bigger capabilities since we last used it in our day back in 2001. For what it was worth, more than adequate for what we had then. We used our own laptop and gps to provide our own location services based on the physical addressing. No need to have constant phone calls from pay phones anymore (Throw those away.) and a good dual band cell was there in case of a real problem too big for a free form message.

It is a safe bet that drivers today would generally not have access to tools or apps to determine the situation of a wifi signal, celluar etc. I can map my router in my home and build it's coverage map here on this computer with certain software. But I don't think such a app will work very well in say a truckstop filled with signals, everyone of them talking on a slightly different header ID.

 

Some places you literally need to call the customer. #### dispatch. They don't know about that low bridge or closed road that requires you to take a street where no trucks are allowed while construction is ongoing. The customer usually does. A lot of the spread jobs I have to do now have addresses like "west of i35, north of 287, east of ovilla"

That's a pretty big ### area to be just driving around and possibly having to flip a ##### off the pavement into a median and drop a load precisely where they want it. Half of my loads aren't to an address and half of them are to an address that's a block away from where the silo actually is. And being local now driving a daycab, I'm still a little unsure on the clearance of my truck and trailer exactly... I have a lot of low bridges to contend with. What do you do when you see a bridge that's 12'4?

I did a unturn with police assistance and my dispatch was calling my asking me why I was late. They laughed when I told them I couldn't go under the bridge that is literally the only way to this silo. #### happens. Call the consignee and you'll know it's the only way in and dudes in identical trucks do it all day every day.

 

Sure.

That is one reason we carried a updated low clearance book and checked our route.

The phone calling where necessary was important. Usually when running late to get a new appt time.

I can improve on the directions bit. When we call a customer we generally want to talk to the man in charge of traffic or the person actually dealing directly with his trucks. Not the giggly secertary who dispenses directions like turn left at the gas station and drive until you see corn and then turn right. WTF? We need hard data such as route numbers and road corner names etc.

If we were unable to get that then we fall back onto the GPS and check against it with our books. I think the biggest address in our life time turned out to be the football stadium in Arlington Texas. They occupied like a dozen city blocks LOL. which door do you want? That was interesting. The 50 yard line was not far from any of them which was a eyeful for us back then and we are not football fans.

 

A Qualcomm (Omnitracs) unit still needs to be able to see GPS satellites, to determine speed and location, if it can't, it won't function, and a non-functioning omnitracs is a pain in the ###.

 

There were times we picked certain spots around the USA to get some sleep without being bothered by anyone. Once you blocked the SW sky out, no one can get through that way. We essentially vanish from the earth.

Now if you want it to work and it's not working, it's a real problem. It's even amazing to me thinking back to the old way of trucking with the pay phone on hold a hour with dispatcher as they shuffle papers and locate the revelant trip information. I think we burned off about 2 to three hours daily and nightly just parking and using the pay phones back then.

Enter the satellite. Wife would be typing away at that thing in the pax seat while we rolled. I hear you cannot do that these days. In the end the QC was a big asset being a deaf man, no phones needed or the billing associated with a ATT credit card back then.

But when you are trying to get 4 hours sleep after a 700 mile dash to the produce market and the #### thing BEEPS with some irrevelant fluffy be well safety message, I get pyromanic minded wanting to burn the company building down around the safety suit lol.

 

Some of us are more familiar with such places.

Very true of this forum. .... I have experience with bad, or marginal cell signals. Often got out of the truck to get a good signal. Even walked around. Stayed in one spot. Yes, the truck will interfere with signals. Shouldn't be a whole lot though. ????
I would suspect something leaking on it's transmit. Interfering in that cab. Even when not in use. Cell phones are always checking. This problem takes some troubleshooting by a good electronics tech.
You would be surprised. Get one of these meters to check signal strength. The ones the radio signal pollution people use. I have the simplest one. You'd be surprised how much you have all around and through you on signals these days. It's a whole bunch. You also have WiFi, and Bluetooth, to throw into the obvious others. You do have other things in that cab transmitting pollution. Any LED light bulbs will transmit pollution. You have plenty of stuff creating RF pollution from that dashboard. Even a bad electrical connection can transmit RF pollution.