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Two Ways To Use GPS With Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Whether you're wardriving, vacationing or building a Car PC, a Global Positioning System is a handy tool. Interacting with your GPS via your PC makes for an even better GPS experience. As a Linux user, GPS/PC integration can be somewhat sketchy. Vendors don't write software and drivers for Linux; it's probably safe to assume that the good folks over at Garmin would say something along the lines of "Lih-what?". Have no fear! Using your GPS with Linux isn't impossible! Check out this review over at LinuxForumsDOTorg of two fairly robust GPS navigation programs for Linux."
I've recently gotten Garmin GPSMan 60CS as a gift and so far I was unable to get any Linux programs to talk to it (over the USB cable that came with it). Did anybody have any success with getting Linux talk to any Garmin GPS units over USB?
There is a script that comes with GPSDrive which allows downloading maps from some web sites, but those maps are copyrighted by the respective vendors (one of whose name starts with an M ;-)), and the script clearly mentions that the legal liability is with the user who downloads the maps. For the same reason, they cannot be distributed.
Us ham types've been doing GPS navigatin not only of our own vehicles, but others as well for over 12 years now! I use a package called 'Xastir' and an on the air protocol called APRS.
Basicly, take a GPS receiver and a laptop (Not just linux, xastir will run on Windows too), a TNC and a VHF radio - use pretty much any map you'd care to use (local or online), current weather information, satallite imagry, NWS alerts, warnings, etc, etc, etc... See your track - find your way, see forest fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes....
The only limit is imagination
Just wanna check on someone? Use your web browser and visit Findu - plug in their callsign and see where they're at.
And no, you don't need a ham license to play along. Just to feed data into the world wide Information System.
Kinda neat to zoom in on 'the old country' and watch my firends in the UK on thier way to work as I'm get'n ready to call it a day, then keyboard to keyboard messaging with 'em along the way.....
And no air time fees
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
I would agree with not putting Linux on a GPS device, even if it was capable. Embedded systems are fairly hard to hack for a good reason: If you mess it up, it will be a serious problem.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
I am a starving student and all these GPS receivers seem out of reach (even the cheapest seems to be over 150$). Is it tough to build one on your own? Anyone with relevant experience? Any pointers would be appreciated.
This past summer, a friend of mine took it into his head to build a caseless PC.
This plan was to have two modes; a mode for work (IE: throwing it in his backpack), and a mode for play (mounting it on an RC car he built himself).
He began finished the latter while I watched him, utilizing his own hacked together power setup to provide rechargable battery power to the device for a period of time he has yet to test fully. He then proceeded to install Linux on a 128 MB CF card, using an IDECF converter [I was amazed it existed, but there you go], and a few small utilities for run. A 500 MHz processor powered it.
Now, the relevant part of this is the RC car it was on. He wanted to control the car using the motherboard mounted on its back. He wrote a simple program to send pulses along a parallel converter of his own design to the various wheels, as they responded to pulse frequency by operating specific ways...pretty standard.
Then, he wanted to use a GPS to make it drive around the campus. He wrote his own software for the GPS device another friend of ours provided, NMEA-0182 with a few vendor extensions, IIRC. The device sent over serial, and it was a fairly simple bit of work to make it interpret the coordinates properly...the hard part was mapping the area. =)
The point of all that is, good GPS devices usually use a standard output interface, and protocol. And it is, honestly, not that hard to write your own program to interface with it. I still have the source code to the program he wrote...it's easily under 1000 lines, and possibly under 500.
So, if you'd like to use a GPS device to steer your projects...write your own software. =)
It's only an insult if it's not true.