construction

formed on its sim-

ple user-interface.
When you connect
the 9V adaptor to
the circuit, LED1
glows to indicate
the presence of
power supply in
the circuit. Wait for
some time, say, 5
to 10 minutes, for
initialisation of the
GPS module. After
the initialisation,
Fig. 5: An actual-size, single-side pcB for the pc-based gps receiver you can run the
software to start
receiving the data.
The steps are as
Fig. 4: program output of the pc-based gps
follows:
receiver 1. Open the ex-
ecutable (.exe) file
which are second, third, fifth, fourth created right after
and sixth fields, respectively. the compilation
of the C# code. A
Software ‘GPS Display’ win-
The position conversion software has dow appears on the
been developed using a high-level screen (refer Fig. 4).
programming language. It’s basically a 2. Select the se-
.NET desktop (Windows Form) appli- rial COM port by
cation customised such that it can run clicking the arrow.
on any PC having .NET framework 3.5 Fig. 6: component layout for the pcB 3. Choose COM
or higher version. The code is written port to which you
in C# .NET language and compiled on map from www.mapsofworld.com/ have connected your GPS module from
the .NET platform on Microsoft Visual lat_long/india-lat-long.html the drop-down menu.
Studio 2010. The screenshot of the pro- If everything’s fine, you will re-
gram output is shown in Fig. 4. Construction and testing ceive the latitude and longitude right
The GPS receiver receives the lati- An actual-size, single-side PCB layout on your PC screen. Otherwise, switch
tudinal and longitudinal data from the of the PC-based GPS receiver is shown off and switch on the circuit again,
satellite. This data provides you the in Fig. 5 and its component layout in wait for some time and repeat the
exact position of the receiver on the Fig. 6. above steps.
Earth’s surface in real time. With the This part is relatively simpler Once you have the coordinates on
latitude and longitude information, and user-friendly as the software your screen, you can pick up a world
you can view the location from the gives all the steps needed to be per- map and locate the place yourself. In
standard map. The latitude and longi- case you want to see the exact standard
tude data obtained can also be entered efy Note time, refer the time obtained in this ap-
into any freely available software such plication, which entirely depends on
the source code of this project is
as itouchmap available from http:// satellite navigation.
included in this month’s EFY DVD
itouchmap.com/latlong.html, where The author is in the third year of integrated dual-
and is also available for free down-
you can view the exact point of the degree course in electronics and communication
load on www.efymag.com website.
location on earth. You can also get the engineering at IIT, Roorkee

program.cs
/* using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq;
* GPS based location tracker using System.ComponentModel; using System.Text;
*/ using System.Data; using System.Windows.Forms;
using System; using System.Drawing; using System.IO.Ports;

www.eFYmag.cOm electrOnics FOr YOu | OctOber 2012 113