GPS interfacing

[froten]

Hi all,

is it easy to create a GPS project which controlled by a microcontroller? the MCU then will extract the position from GPS ciruit data and send through a serial port to another device.

any help is appreciated.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Hi all,

is it easy to create a GPS project which controlled by a microcontroller? the MCU then will extract the position from GPS ciruit data and send through a serial port to another device.

You can buy GPS modules that have serial ports on them, you can use a PIC (or similar) to read that port and send the parts of data you want via 'proper' RS232 serial to something else.

 

[Papabravo]

Yes, there are a number of GPS modules that you can acquire which have serial ports on them. The ones I used from Siemens(XT55/XT56) operated at 38.4 kbaud. That was a bit fast for an 8051 at 12 MHz. so I used a MAX3100 over the SPI port. The MAX3100 has deep FIFO on the receiver which helped immensely. Just because it's a UART doesn't mean you have to use RS-232 drivers and receivers.

Falcom makes the JP10-S and similar GPS modules used in the Siemens product. The big deal for GPS work is the choice and connection of the antenna. This will be your area of greatest difficulty and challenge. You do know that GPS receivers pull information out of signals that are below the noise floor.