Adafruit

Ultimate GPS Breakout

On the Raspberry Pi

NERP: Not Exclusively Raspberry Pi

Craig LeMoyne
Chicago Electronic Distributors
www.chicagodist.com

Tutorial excerpts courtesy
Adafruit Industries



GPS refresher, courtesy Wikipedia:

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based satellite navigation system
that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on
or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS
satellites. It is maintained by the United States government and is freely accessible
to anyone with a GPS receiver. The GPS system became fully operational in 1994.
Interesting fact: After Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 carrying 269
people, was shot down in 1983 after straying into the USSR's prohibited airspace,
President Ronald Reagan issued a directive that would make GPS freely available for
civilian use,
A GPS receiver calculates its position by precisely timing the signals sent by
GPS satellites high above the Earth. Each satellite continually transmits messages
that include

the time the message was transmitted

satellite position at time of message transmission

The receiver uses the messages it receives to determine the transit time of each
message and computes the distance to each satellite using the speed of light. Each of
these distances and satellites' locations define a sphere. The receiver is on the
surface of each of these spheres when the distances and the satellites' locations are
correct. These distances and satellites' locations are used to compute the location of
the receiver using the navigation equations.

Bill of Materials

Raspberry Pi Model A or B $25 or $35
Adafruit Ultimate GPS: $39
USB TTL (Terminal) Cable: $9
Power supply: $10
External GPS antenna: $15
(optional, but useful)
SD card: $10

Setting everything up

The easiest way to get the GPS module
working is by connecting it to the
Raspberry Pi with a USB TTL adaptor
Cable. The module can be hooked up via
UART as well.

First, solder the header pins onto the GPS
module. We then connect the TTL cable to
the GPS module as follows:


Once you plug the USB cable into the Pi, the adapter should show up as
/dev/ttyUSB0 (though the '0' may be different if you have other ttyUSB adapters
present). To list the active USB terminal connections:

ls /dev/ttyUSB*
You can confirm the attached USB devices by typing
sudo lsusb

To check the data coming out of the GPS:
sudo cat /dev/ttyUSB0

Next, run the following command to install the GPS Daemon and required packages:
sudo apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients python-gps

Then we need to tell the GPS Daemon where our module is:
sudo gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0 -F /var/run/gpsd.sock


Testing it out

cgps -s

Occasionally, you may find that you need to restart the GPS service to get a fix,
use the following command to do so:
sudo killall gpsd
sudo gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0 -F /var/run/gpsd.sock

gpxlogger is a tool for logging GPS output. Example:
gpxlogger -d -f trip.log"

It is easy to take the output and upload it to a site like gpsvisualizer.com and come
up with a map like this;


A few things to note about using the Raspberry Pi in a car:

Finding a suitable display can be a little tricky. Anything that runs on Composite
will have poor resolution. We got around this with a 4.3 NTSC display and large
text output. With this combination, CGPS worked pretty well. Here I am at the
Skyway McDonalds:

As we all know, the Pi needs a good power source. You can run the Pi off a cigarette
lighter USB dongle, but these are not all created equal. Make sure it puts out 1 amp
of power. If you really want a good solution, check out MausBerry Circuits
Kickstarter project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1312527055/raspberry-pi-car-power-
supply-ignition-switch?ref=live




The power supply maintains power
until the Pi has safely finished the boot-
down process and then removes power.
The supply is most easily installed by
connecting to 3 wires behind your radio:
the +12V(car battery), ground and ACC
(switched ignition) wires.

Other fun projects:

Wardriving with a GPS enabled Kismet server. Wardriving is the practice of driving
around scanning for WiFi networks. We cant endorse such activity, but this is a
good way to see if your networks are secure.

Kismet includes GPS support, and a quick Google search shows a lot of people that
have figured this out.



Appendix / other fun stuff

PiFM, an FM Transmitter

Did you know your Pi can be an FM Transmitter? Obviously this can only be used in
an anechoic chamber. Assuming you have an RF isolation chamber, all you need is
the code in the link below and a 20 cm wire on GPIO pin 4.

Check out the tutorial here:

http://www.icrobotics.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Turning_the_Raspberry_Pi_Into_an_F
M_Transmitter


Adding a 7 segment clock to your Pi


This is also a quick and gratifying project! This helps keep me on time.

All you need is the $10 Adafruit 7-segment display and their example code.

http://chicagodist.com/blogs/news/8464281-back-to-basics-building-a-7-
segment-display-clock-for-a-raspberry-pi