it will take place on April 6, 2019 I was just wondering If someone buys a GPS receiver now and manufacturer is not going to support the firmware in six years from now before the date, than the receiver might become a garbage on April 6, 2019.
I do not believe manufactures do not care about this problem now though, what do you think ? May be it is worth to ask the dealer before buying ? This is even more important for equipment bought off ebay.
GPS has only 10 bits to store the week. if I were the manufacturer I would do something like this inside the receiver
[inlinecode]if(currentWeek-lastWeek)<0 { adjust the currentWeek }[/inlinecode]
I remembr the last time we had a rollover the GPS companies started sending out notices on how to deal with it. I had a Garmin for my plane that I had bought in 1990 (still is in my plane and still works) and all I had to do was turn it on, tell it where it was, and let it sit for a while to download new ephemeris data and all was well. I strongly suspect that the GPS receivers will deal with it the same way. Now all the control & processing software may be a whole nother story. But you're right - 6 years will creep up on us quickly and with recent stuff like the TGO - TBC debacle I wouldn't have much confidence in the manufacturers. They will see this as a profit opportunity.
I think ( not 100% sure) you had the garmin which already new what was going to happen, ephemeris have only 10 bits for the week, so receiver can not figure it out from them.
What Trimble did with TGO is a good lesson for us - they want to keep us buying and they feel no shame and new week roll over might be just a good business opportunity for them 🙂
I operated a Trimble 4800 on an NGS station during the last rollover; no detectable problems.