[CentOS] USB GPS

Fri Feb 12 08:05:57 UTC 2010
Mathieu Baudier <mbaudier at argeo.org>

> 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)