| Products > Test Equipment |
| Trimble Thunderbolt - Cheating? Aging product? Total lack of technical support |
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| max-bit:
Situation: Trimble Thunderbolt Receiver ..... (GPSDO 10 MHz) Symptom: The date passed by the receiver backed by almost 20 years! Real date 1 August 2017 at the receiver display 15 December 1997....what ? |O OK Probably a bug in the software, just update the firmware and it should be OK. But no, here is the information from the support .... Mr Brad (Tech suport Trimble) Unfortunately, the unit that you have is experiencing the WNRO issue. The WNRO issue is not fixable via a fw update. the unit will need to be replaced. :palm: Can it be exchanged for another device under technical support? NO !!! Answer tech : "Unfortunately, you will need to purchase a new device" Sorry Buy it new What the Fuck ! :-- :rant: The device is IC flash and you (only) need an easy IC firmware update, but Trimble has it in the ass. ONLY BUY NEW !!! ============================================================== Conclusions : DO NOT BUY GPSDO TRIMBLE DEVICES. NEVER Include documentation "problems" of trimble devices. |
| Hydron:
I have also had personal experience of bugs in their Resolution T timing receivers. Due to Trimble making incorrect assumptions about a RESERVED field in the navigation message, when it was changed by the USNO the receivers started losing lock once every 12.5 minutes. That one was fixable via firmware flash (took a few months for the fix to be released), but that's cold comfort when you've got them inside non-internet-connected equipment in hundreds of secure sites all over the country.... |
| max-bit:
In this case, do not issue new firmware |
| Hydron:
Losing lock (even briefly) was unfortunately not really acceptable behavior in this case, so the firmware upgrade was the only solution. Thankfully the equipment connected to it could deal with it well enough that it wasn't critically urgent and could be put off until the next time a technician was scheduled to be there, but it was a close one. |
| texaspyro:
Week number rollover where the 10 bit week number broadcast by the satellites wraps from week 1023 to week 0 is a very common problem with GPS receivers. It happens every 19 or so years. Most receivers have a week number offset compiled into their firmware so that the receiver is good for 19 years until the next rollover + compensation offset occurs. The next generation GPS satellites have a 13 bit week counter, but it will probably be 10 years for the current satellite constellation to be replaced and new GPS receivers that know about 13 bit week numbers are available. Thunderbolts have been an obsolete product no longer supported by Trimble for many years. The date rollover issue is documented in their user manuals. It would be nice of them to offer a firmware update, but I can't really fault them for not offering a firmware fix for such an old product. Lady Heather has an automatic rollover detection and compensation feature built in. After 10-15 seconds of dates before 2016, it corrects the date forward 1024 weeks. You can also force the rollover mode on from the command line so you don't have to wait 15 seconds for the date to fix. Most NTP drivers and GPSD know about rollover issues and have code to work around it. |
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