Anyone ever used the iGPS-500 under CentOS 5? Any recommendations on a USB-based GPS that "just works"?
Ray
Ray Van Dolson wrote:
Anyone ever used the iGPS-500 under CentOS 5? Any recommendations on a USB-based GPS that "just works"?
I do not have personal experience but I hear the Garmin models work well. I have a serial port Garmin model that works well with gpsbabel, and I believe the setup for USB is similar.
http://www.gpsbabel.org/os/Linux_Hotplug.html
has instructions for fedora - I'm guessing the fc{5,6,7,8} instructions are what would work in CentOS.
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).
When you connect the USB cable it is identified as a /dev/ttyUSB0 device that you can use with GPSBabel. You need to give the proper permissions for your user on this device (I had an udev rule for Fedora, but on CentOS I did not yet too time to set it up again).
From the GPS unit itself you can activate an 'USB mass storage' mode
which will make the internal SD card appear as an USB mass storage (like an USB stick). This is very handy if you want to retrieve automatically generated track files in GPX format or update the maps (although I recommend using a card reader for that: much much faster).
A bit OT but still making sense in this answer: you may be interested by the excellent community developed maps of OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.org/ , licenses and production mechanisms similar to Wikipedia), which can be downloaded in Garmin format: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Map_On_Garmin/Download (or the Garmin maps can be generated using http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mkgmap)
Most of the above probably applies to all other recent Garmin devices but you should double check.
You can also have a look at the GPS review from OpenStreetMap users here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GPS_Reviews (but you won't find much information on supported OSes, esp. CentOS)
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)
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.
Guess I'm not most. I use my GPS to collect data on reptiles and amphibians, dump the data to gpx, pass it through http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/elevation to fix the elevation (which can sometimes be considerably off in the unit, especially with tree cover), and provide georeference data when I submit the data to the nafha database.
I don't do any mapping with the computer, unless you count finding spots that look interesting in google earth and uploading them to the unit for me to then find out in the field.
Lot of people just like me, too.
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
-
John R Pierce -
Mathieu Baudier -
Michael A. Peters -
Pasi Kärkkäinen -
Ray Van Dolson