Arduino UNO and TinyGPS, No Velocity/Course information

I have a LS20031 GPS interfacing with an Uno using SoftSerial on pins 9/10 with a baud of 19200 using TinyGPS 12 to parse the data. I have them (apparently) communicating fine since I am getting accurate position and altitude information, however TinyGPS is showing invalid values for Velocity and Course. Has anyone else run into these issues?

Here is a trimmed down sample of the source:

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
#include <TinyGPS.h>
#define GPS_SERIAL_BAUD 19200
SoftwareSerial gpsSerial(10, 9); // RX, TX
TinyGPS gps;

float b_latitude=0;
float b_longitude=0;
unsigned long b_fix_age;
float b_course=0;
float b_velocity=0;
int b_numSats=0;
int b_gpsfix=0;
float b_altitude=0;
unsigned long int b_chars=0;
unsigned short int b_sentences=0;
unsigned short int b_failed_checksum=0;

int timer;

void gps_update() {
  while (gpsSerial.available()) {
    int c = gpsSerial.read();
    if (gps.encode(c))
    {
      gps.f_get_position(&b_latitude, &b_longitude, &b_fix_age);
      
      // statistics
      gps.stats(&b_chars, &b_sentences, &b_failed_checksum);
      
      if (b_failed_checksum >= 100)
        b_failed_checksum = 0;
      
      b_velocity = gps.f_speed_kmph();
      b_course = gps.f_course();
      b_numSats = gps.satellites();
      b_altitude = (gps.altitude() / 100);
    }
  }
}

void local_data()
{
  if (millis() - timer > 200)
  {
    timer = millis();
    lcd.clear();
    lcd.setCursor(0,0);
    if (relAltitude == 1)
    {
      lcd_print_P(PSTR("AH:"));
      lcd.print((b_altitude - Altitude_Home)* DIST_CONV);
    }
    else
    {
      lcd_print_P(PSTR("AT:"));
      lcd.print(b_altitude * DIST_CONV );
    }

    //lcd.setCursor(0,1); 
    //lcd_print_P(PSTR("NSat:"));
    //lcd.print(b_numSats);
    lcd.setCursor(19,0);
    if (b_fix_age == TinyGPS::GPS_INVALID_AGE || b_fix_age == 0) {
      lcd_print_P(PSTR("N"));
    }         
    else if (b_fix_age > 3000)
    {
      lcd_print_P(PSTR("O"));
    }
    else
    {
      lcd_print_P(PSTR("G"));
    }
    
    lcd.setCursor(0,1); 
    lcd_print_P(PSTR("LT:"));
    lcd.print(b_latitude,3);   
    
    lcd.setCursor(10,1); 
    lcd_print_P(PSTR("LN:"));
    lcd.print(b_longitude,3);

    lcd.setCursor(0,2); 
    lcd_print_P(PSTR("VL:"));
    lcd.print(b_velocity);
    lcd.print(" KM/H");
    
    lcd.setCursor(0,3);
    lcd_print_P(PSTR("D:"));
    lcd.print(gps.cardinal(b_course));
    lcd_print_P(PSTR(" NS:"));
    lcd.print(b_numSats);
    lcd_print_P(PSTR(" CE:"));
    lcd.print(b_failed_checksum);
    lcd_print_P(PSTR(" S:"));
    lcd.print(b_sentences);
  }
}

void setup() {
  gpsSerial.begin(GPS_SERIAL_BAUD);
}

void loop() {
  gps_update();
  local_data();
}

I apologize if anything is missing from the source above, this is grossly reduced from the whole file.

After some testing I discovered that the Velocity/Course information is only missing if the GPS is sending both RMC and GGA sentences. If it only sends RMC sentences then the velocity/course information come through just fine, but then altitude and quality data is lost.

Any ideas?

I don't know your GPS device but from the source code of TinyGPS it seems that there are to different formats the serial data may come in. In one format (GPGGA) you have fix data, number of satellites and altitude while the other format (GPRMC) gives you speed and course.

This shouldn't be a problem because you can calculate the speed and course yourself with the historical data you got.