[nflug] gps

D. Joe nflug at etrumeus.com
Thu Sep 20 09:42:09 EDT 2007


Ah.  Well, you might want to search the fine web to do some
reading about how GPS works.

In a nutshell, one needs some kind of device to receive and
process the signals from GPS satellites.  More and more phones
have this built-in nowadays, but I doubt your laptop does.

After you have access to positional information, then the
software in the repositories, or built into the more
sophisticated sets, can take over, and try to overlay the
real-time incoming data with stored map data, or with data
you've previously recorded (eg, "I'm not at home now, but I have
a waypoint for home stored in the device and can tell where I am
now.  Do the math and point me in the direction I need to go to
get home.")

-- 
Joe

On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 09:34:54AM -0400, Cyber Source wrote:
> I was hoping to do this WITHOUT getting a gps handset. What is the point 
> of using the software (from the repos) if you have a handset? Forgive my 
> ignorance, I have not looked into this stuff at all, this was my first step.
> 
> D. Joe wrote:
> >On Thu, Sep 20, 2007 at 08:27:32AM -0400, Cyber Source wrote:
> >  
> >>Anyone play with gps stuff in Linux? I am taking a trip to England and 
> >>Sweden next month and would like to bring my laptop to use with gps. I 
> >>see tons of stuff in the Ubuntu repos for it but before I just start 
> >>installing and trying things, I thought I would ask our learned email 
> >>list. Can anyone point me in some direction or share their experiences 
> >>with Linux and gps?
> >>    
> >
> >I've used a Garmin GPS handset to feed an NMEA stream to gpsd
> >running on a laptop, and then have pointed kismet to gpsd to
> >give spatial information while wardriving. 
> >
> >Pretty simple stuff, but I think it counts as proof-of-concept.
> >
> >The gps handset was a moderately high-end one in its day, but
> >most of the features of it are wasted in this sort of use.  I
> >notice there are several options now for fairly featureless
> >little gps devices, <<$100, that just pump out location
> >information via USB or Bluetooth.  Just a few status LEDs, no
> >display or keypad or anything.
> >
> >  
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