Known Issue: Karoo - No GPS/Acquiring GPS
Pinned
Some riders may experience GPS loss during a ride. Most impacted riders report the ride starting normally and the GPS failing mid-ride. Rebooting the device or toggling between an "indoor" and "outdoor" profile can restore the GPS, but it may happen again during that or subsequent rides. The issue is intermittent and may not occur on every ride or every device. Symptoms include an "acquiring GPS" message and/or GPS-derived data fields stop updating correctly.
The Hammerhead Developers have identified a settings/software change late last week that caused the issue, and they are currently working to resolve it. Status changes and additional details will be added to this thread as they become available.
-
Official comment
Hi All,
Thanks for your patience as we worked to resolve this issue.
A new update (1.661.2545) has just been released. This fix is similar to a normal software update and will need to be downloaded and installed to apply it.
This should resolve the issue, but please let us know if you encounter unexpected behavior after the update.Comment actions -
I don't think the problem has been even partially resolved. Judging by the volume of comments that came in last weekend, the issue persists and is significantly undermining trust in the brand and the development team.
Sure, I appreciate the effort put into preparing a hotfix before the weekend. But if that patch was indeed prepared and deployed, could we get some confirmation - like a software version change or an additional status indicator?
As I mentioned in my emails, it did nothing for me; I had to restart the device every 90 minutes, which was a huge hassle on a nearly 190km ride. If I were riding alone, I could have lived with it, but in a large group of gravel riders - most of whom use Garmin - it was a bit embarrassing.
Well, lesson number one for me: turn off automatic updates and significantly lower my trust in the Hammerhead team.
-
Highlighting a couple of things here:
- The last three software updates have all had notable issues- progressively getting worse. a) The constant 'off route' notifications followed by b) The radar disconnect notifications followed by c) most concerning - GPS cutting out mid ride - leaving your customers in very difficult situations (and several miles off-route on unknown roads in my case). This sharply points to systemic issue of insufficient testing prior to public release.
- The most recent release came out just before your support staff were off for the weekend - and when most of your customers are likely to depend most on your product. Big mismatch here of potential impact vs. your ability to mitigate that impact. Search for "should I release software on Friday" for some life lessons on this. (Yes, I realize I believe you technically released the lates on Thursday - but the concern is still valid as users would not experience then problem until Friday or Saturday)
- When the issue was reported, rather than stopping the updates to stop the bleeding - it appears that you continued to allow updates for unaffected devices and instead tried to fix-forward with a backend settings patch, which didn't seem to work for many people. While we don't have any visibility to your backend architecture - it would seem that stopping the automatic updates to a known (or at least suspected at this point) bad release would have been the prudent decision. If your backend architecture can't support this - then perhaps this is a good enhancement.
- There appears to be no way to revert to a prior software version - which means your customers are completely unable to self-fix and are entirely reliant on you to fix the problem in some future date (the exact issue we are in right now). This, combined with 1, 2, 3 above - put your customers who were affected in a pretty pissed-off state as they have no way to restore to a known working configuration and need to workaround the current unreliability.
It's a good product, but truly hoping a sincere effort in improving reliability becomes your top focus. We want you to succeed - but if you build a reputation as an unreliable product when there are clear alternatives, it's not going to a long-term recipe for your success. Truly hoping that this was a short "growing pains" set of issues.
-
The GPS signal has failed again today, even on a route that was only 60 km long. The problem doesn’t seem to have been resolved yet. So far, I’ve only come across such serious software faults with GARMIN, and that was one of the reasons why I switched to HH. I really hope that the ‘old’ standard will be reintroduced and that the Karoo will be a reliable companion on my cycle rides.
-
There's no ability for a user to roll back to the previous FW.
Also, i believe that the unit receives occasional background updates, separate to the main FW update, so that might not even solve the issue. I've read a couple of posts from people who suddenly have GPS problems and apparently have not installed last week's update.
With such a big impact on so many people as soon as the fault was known they should have reveresed all updates in those few hours, in my opinion - although this is with hindsight !!
-
I followed the directives from Hammerhead - basically factory reset and all that entailed (reload maps, sensors, etc.) - and while it tracked the ride, it didn't (couldn't) load the route. Which meant I had to follow the route I'd memorized and which showed up as my personal heatmap which oddly (and fortunately) did show. I was leading a club destination ride with a dozen+ people so NOT having the route was a bit embarrassing. Oh ... significantly (and a new issue) it didn't provide radar data. That could have been a problem with the Varia setup. Though starting the "route" (which didn't start the route) did turn on both the hBontrager ION headlight and the Garmin Varia tail light. Problems aside, everything worked out. But my confidence in SRAM and Hammerhead is at an all-time low. I may just go out and buy the 1050, because this is ridiculous.
-
Got the message that the new build was complete and ready for download and installation. Downloaded and installed. Created a route. Drove the route. Tested rerouting. All appears to work as previous and expected. The radar (varia) issue I'd experienced disappeared when I removed and reloaded the connection. Appears everything is back to normal! Thank you Hammerhead for putting in the effort and getting this fix done (fingers crossed)!
-
I’ve installed it, but I’ll likely test it out this coming weekend - especially since the issue used to crop up on rides longer than 90 minutes (at least for me). I also disabled auto-updates.
Hammerhead team, please verify changes more thoroughly whenever possible - or set up a firmware rollback mechanism. Although, I suppose the GPS issue in question could be completely random and might actually require real-world field testing ;-)
I’ll be in touch after the weekend. Thanks!
By the way, I haven't had any issues with the Varia radar since practically the moment I started using the K3; early on, I just had to do a full reset of the Varia and re-pair it with the K3, and that was it.
-
Unfortunately, the issue is still happening for me on 1.661.2545.20.
I rode today, 7 October, with this version already installed and lost GPS/speed twice during the same ride.
When the issue occurred:
-
speed stopped updating,
-
distance completely stopped increasing,
-
GPS position disappeared from the FIT data,
-
ride time and HR continued recording normally,
-
Auto Pause did not activate.
The first time, GPS only started working again after rebooting the Karoo. Later in the same ride, the exact same issue happened again.
I checked the FIT file afterwards and it clearly shows that GPS position and speed data disappear while HR and other recording continue. During the first outage, the recorded distance remained frozen for more than 13 minutes.
So unfortunately 1.661.2545.20 has not resolved the issue for me.
I can provide the FIT file if it would be useful for investigation.
-
Please sign in to leave a comment.
Comments
41 comments