GPS devices are getting very inexpensive. USB and Bluetooth GPS devices are in the sub $35 range and the UT-41 is once such device. As part of the SSI Smart Car Initiative, low cost GPS and Mobile Internet solutions are being evaluated. G.A.L. is the perfect in car Operating System since it is small, memory and USB based, and has drop in expandability.
First I compiled gpsd from the source code. It was easy, just a get the source,
gpsd Project Home Page
configure;make;make install
I connected the UT-41 GPS to the PC and then typed the following at the command prompt:
gpsd /dev/tts/USB0
Yes that is a ‘tts’
Then I nc localhost 2947 on the G.A.L. box, hit return and at the GPSD prompt typed “r” and data began popping up. COOL!
Note: If you reboot without replugging in the UT-41 GPS, you will not see the device. To see it, do the following:
rmmod pl2303
modprobe pl2303
Then I took on the task of compiling RoadNav and GPSDrive. G.A.L. has all the needed dependencies needed for both applications. The compilation was a snap… just a typical ./configure;make;make install.
Just for the curious, the following (at least) are used:
glib-2.12.4
atk-1.9.1
fontconfig-2.4.1
freetype-2.2.1
jpeg-6b
libpng-1.2.8
tiff-3.7.4
cairo-1.2.0
pango-1.14.7
gtk+-2.10.6
wxWidgets-2.6.3
RoadNav and GPSDrive were simple to build and install but if you don’t want to experience to code rush of compilation, you can just download and install the needed modules. You can find the needed modules here:
-module references here-
RoadNav
RoadNav is an in-car navigation system capable of running on a variety of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Roadnav can obtain a car’s present location from a GPS unit, plot street maps of the area, and provide verbal turn by turn directions to any location in the USA. Roadnav uses the free TIGER/Line files from the US Census Bureau to build the maps, along with the GNIS state and topical gazetteer data from the USGS to identify locations.
Project Home page: roadnav.sourceforge.net
GPSDrive
GpsDrive is a car (bike, ship, plane) navigation system. GpsDrive displays your position provided from your NMEA capable GPS receiver on a zoomable map, the map file is autoselected depending of the position and prefered scale. Speech output is supported if the “festival” software is running. The maps are autoselected for best resolution depending of your position and can be downloaded from Internet. All Garmin GPS reveiver with a serial output should be usable, also other GPS receiver which supports NMEA protocol.
GpsDrive is written in C with use of the GTK+ graphic toolkit and runs with Linux and FreeBSD.
Project Home Page:www.gpsdrive.cc
The UT-41 is a USB based GPS.
geeks.com has this to say about it:
“This UT-41 NMEA-0183 output USB GPS receiver is a compact all-in-one GPS solution suitable for a broad range of end product applications, where fast and easy system integration and minimal development risk is required.
This UT-41 features 12 parallel channels and 4100 time/frequency search bins provide short start-up time and fast signal acquisition. Having fast time-to-first-fix and enhanced sensitivity, the UT-41 offers good navigation performance even in urban canyons. The satellite-based augmentation systems, such as WAAS and EGNOS, are supported to yield improved accuracy.
What all this means is that if you have software that can take a GPS unit, but no GPS, then this is the answer you’ve been looking for! Because the output is a GPS standard protocol (NMEA-0183), many applications work with it out of the box!”
Note: The GPS packages will be included with Kommando-Installer in a later release.