Archos 101 and Bluetooth GPS Freeze

[ZaXa]

I've noticed a couple of other threads around the 'net mentioning this problem. I wanted to report my progress on reporting it to Archos and to get anybody else experiencing this problem to pile on the thread.

The problem is that the Archos 101 (and other models?) occasionally freeze when using an external GPS receiver.

My particular receiver is a QSTARZ 818XT. I love the receiver and it works fine on the other 5 android devices I've tested it with.

So in trying to track down this problem I tried several options: The factory wipe of the device, setting the "Power Management" up to "Overdrive", and using an app to tether the GPS. None of those helped.

Now the QSTARZ has the ability to run at 1hz and 10hz. I always assumed if 1hz didn't work, 10hz sure as heck wouldn't, but I was wrong. 10hz works fine. I ran for a full 24 hours without issue at 10hz. So today on a whim I set up a logcat log on my pc and set the receiver back to 1hz. Lo and behold about an hour later it crashed and I got some meaningful data.

Without posting the full stack trace, it appears that, at 1hz, the tablet isn't busy enough to stay interested and something (I can't tell what from the trace, but possibly the cpu itself) goes to sleep or downclocks. The next incoming bluetooth serial packet wakes it back up again but a page fault occurs. This repeats over and over never ending (thus the appearance of a hang, no handlers left to respond to button presses).

At 10hz, the sleep/crash cycle never happens since the unit is busy keeping up with the data stream. This makes some sense to me since things like A2DP and bluetooth data transfer seem to work ok. They are higher bandwidth than the pitiful 4.8 Kbps GPS stream.

I shipped the stack trace off to Archos but I have no way of knowing if they are really going to look at it or not. It took me several e-mail exchanges until the tech support person I received would admit Archos could possibly have a fault in their firmware. I have a ticket number that I won't share publicly but we can possibly cross reference if people want to open their own tickets.

So here I have provided some data and a workaround... if you are having this problem and can increase the data output rate of the receiver, it might help your situation. Also, if you have experience this issue please post here so we can get a head count of interested individuals to show to Archos.

Thanks, Matt

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[uboltun]

Thank you for posting this. I experienced similar symptoms with my old bluetooth GPS and Archos 101. The GPS device shows that there is an active data transfer, but Archos is not responding to power button. I was able to record GPS data by turning on/off the tablet every 15-20 minutes. This way I was able to recorded data for over 3 hours, but it is not really a practical solution.

[ZaXa]

1700+ views and one reply. Hah.

The newer firmwares have improved the problem but not solved it for me.

Given the poor support I receive and the fact that it's still not fixed, Archos is off my approved vendor list.

Matt

[teo406]

There is definitelya problem with Bluetooth gps on archos gen 8. The bad thing was that I had to discover it when I needed it the most. It is working for 10 to 20 minutes and after that the software that uses the gps freeze the device. If I change from 1hz to 5hz the gps receiver, it works for more time, but still I’m not sure if it solves the problem. I cannot do any tests right now, only static tests. I think it drops the Bluetooth connection, it has nothing to do with the cpu, it’s the power management of the Bluetooth on archos device. I sent an e-mail to archos support and I’m waiting for response.
This is my first android device, have it for 1 month now, and from the beginning I found out that this operating system is a joke. If my nokia 6120 classic had wifi (symbian s60)….

[ZaXa]

Don't judge Android by how aweful the Archos 101 is. All the vendors customize it and Archos did a terrible job. Mine still crashes or hangs after several updates. They never did fix it. Some race condition somewhere. Hard to debug and I'm sure they didn't think it worth their time.

My Xoom with ICS is fantastic. I stand by my stance of never buying another Archos product if I can help it.

Matt