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