Sci Fi your Pi - Prince Dakkar's patent log taking chart compass - GPS Test

nbizzell

28 Aug 2015

Previously:

Sci Fi Your Pi - Prince Dakkar's patent log taking chart compass

Sci Fi Your Pi - Prince Dakkar's patent log taking chart compass - Functional Design

Sci Fi Your Pi - Prince Dakkar's patent log taking chart compass - Route selection and indication

Sci Fi Your Pi - Prince Dakkar's patent log taking chart compass - Direction of Travel Indicator 1

Sci Fi your Pi - Prince Dakkar's patent log taking chart compass - Current Position

GPS Test

The lack of a Microstack baseboard appeared to be a bit of a stumbling block if it could not be overcome. So that was where my attention was next directed.

As I mentioned previously i had found some blog comments suggesting the GPS module could be used without the baseboard by connecting direct to the RPi GPIO pins. So i pulled out a breadboard and some wires to give it a go. The table included previously showed i needed to connect pins 8 and 10 to the MTXSRX and MRXSTX pins on the module along with hooking up power and ground connections.

The blog comments suggested this was all I needed to get it all running so I powered up the Pi installed the software. This did not work so i tried a coule more times doing the same thing and surpisingly nothing changed and it still didn't work so i went off to search for the instructions - Microstack node documentation.

I went through and installed the Microstack node software and reinstalled gpsd. I tried again but still nothing worked.

I added some more connections to the GPS module and tried again. This time adding connections from pin 0 on the GPS module to pin 7 on the RPi and pin 1 on the gps module to pin 12 on the Raspberry PI. This again drew a blank and I decided to give up.

BUT............then whilst starting to write a blog entry about the GPS unit defeating me I saw a red flashing light out of the corner of my eye. SO i went back to the RPi and ran the test script again and............success!!!!!

The longitude and latitude were printing on the screen. It appears that i was being rather impatient and did not wait for the GPS module to get going before trying to get information from it.

So the device now knows where it is just need to get it to tell the adventurer how to get where he/she wants to be next.