[CentOS] USB GPS

[Pasi Kärkkäinen]

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 12:29:25AM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
> Mathieu Baudier wrote:
> >> Anyone ever used the iGPS-500 under CentOS 5?  Any recommendations on a
> >> USB-based GPS that "just works"?
> >>     
> >
> > I use the Garmin GPSMAP 60CSx on CentOS.
> > This is a very good device (but more for "offroad" activities).
> >   
> 
> there's two generic families of GPS's, simple antenna+radio-only units 
> which just report position over USB (or on older ones, rs232 serial), 
> and fancy handheld units that have mapping and tracking and all kinda 
> bells and whistles such as the various Garmin units
> 
> most folks who want a GPS to connect to a computer are probably more 
> interested in the simple kind, as they want to use the computer for any 
> mapping etc.  most all simple GPS's speak in NMEA, which just transmits 
> a constant stream of simple ascii 'sentences' with the current location 
> and some metadata.   fancy GPS's like the garmins can speak either 
> simple NMEA or their own Garmin protocol  which supports mapping, 
> waypoints, etc
> 
> typical NMEA output is...
> 
> $GPGGA,123519,4807.038,N,01131.000,E,1,08,0.9,545.4,M,46.9,M,,*47
> 
> (12:35:19 UTC, 48 deg. 07.038' N, 11 deg 31.000' E latitude), quality 1, 8 sats, etcetc
> 
> 
> most any NMEA USB simple GPS should work, they all emulate a USB serial 
> port on the PC side, and just spew their NMEA stream over this 'serial' 
> port.  for instance, this 
> http://www.amazon.com/GlobalSat-BU-353-Waterproof-USB-Receiver/dp/B000PKX2KA  
> which uses thee excellent SIRF GPS chip, uses a Prolific PL2303 
> USB-serial adapter chip, which I'm pretty sure is easily supported on 
> linux (havent tested it, hwoever)
> 

PL2303 USB-serial adapters work for me on Linux.. I'm mainly using them
to configure switches/routers or occanional serial console dumping.

I think I have some Belkin branded PL2303 based usb-serial adapter.

-- Pasi