Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Skylar Givens on April 24, 2008 at 6:19pm

What kind of GPS device are you using? Is it connected via USB to your laptop? The USB drivers for my handheld GPS emulates a serial port so it's pretty easy to write software that talks to it. Sounds like what you're looking for might need to be custom made.

FlightGear is a free flight simulator, and it can output NMEA strings over the serial port. You can download the simulator from:
http://www.flightgear.org/

There is a page on this site that describes how get FlightGear to output NMEA strings on the serial port:
http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A20849

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Permalink Reply by Scott James on April 25, 2008 at 8:46pm

Thanks Skylar,

I will download flight gear and try it out.
After some more surfing I found some software called GPSGate.
This actually look pretty good to as you can either record your GPS data live from the GPS module or create a flight plan by entering waypoints into the software. You can then play this back (the NMEA strings) to multiple devices simultaneously such as Google earth, COM ports, virtual Com ports etc...
They give you a free 14 day trial as well. I guess I now have 13 days to fix all my bugs! :)
Here is a screen shot of setting the outputs.

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Permalink Reply by paul hubner on April 26, 2008 at 12:18pm

Scott,
I know this is not quite what you want, but I've been using Sailsofts free GPS generator to test my devices for a few years. Its nothing fancy, but has several $G strings it can output, and you can set a heading and speed.

No recording capability, but a decent generator.
http://www.sailsoft.nl/gpssimul.htm
Paul

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Permalink Reply by Scott James on April 29, 2008 at 3:24am

Yes I saw this, It looks good! Thanks Paul

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3D RoboticsPermalink Reply by Chris Anderson on April 29, 2008 at 6:43am

Paul (and Scott),

I actually prefer the FlyWithCE GPS simulator to the Sailsoft one. The Sailsoft sim just moves the simulated position in a straight line, but the FlyWithCE one can let you set it to run in circles of various size and speed, as well as adjusting altitude.

It's also free, while the Sailsoft one is only a trial that only runs for a brief time if you don't pay.

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Permalink Reply by Edan on April 28, 2008 at 9:19pm

Guys,
the easiest way to capture NMEA is using hyper terminal. Comes with XP, start the app. Give it some arbitrary name, click ok, click the Connect Using and select the port that your GPS is connected too. Click ok, set up your baud rate, data bits etc, and if you've got it right you should see streaming NMEA. To capture to text file click Transfer, Capture Text and start.
That simple.

Hope that helps you out Scott.
Regards,

Edan

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Permalink Reply by Scott James on April 29, 2008 at 3:26am

Thanks Edan, I used that method to compare different GPS modules to see if they were outputting the same data. It works Well!

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Permalink Reply by Harry on April 23, 2009 at 9:17pm

I'm using hyperterminal right now over the breakout board from sparkfun/FTDI. I know it is a nono to load the ardupilot.pde with GPS connected, but I'm only monitoring the incoming data so I guess it's ok. I dont have a fix yet, but I know that because it is showing "waiting for fix position" @ 4800 baud. Interestingly, the GPSInfo from globalsat will also connect to ardupilot and shows the same message. I might load 2.0 and see what SirfDemo shows.

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