Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 3Testing on Linux
Comm port access
Before you are able to do anything with your GPS unit on Linux, you will probably need to make sure to grant read and write access to the port you will be testing with. Usually the serial ports are in /dev/ttys0, /dev/ttys1, ...etc
If you are using a serial to usb adapter, you may be able to find it at /dev/ttyUSB
Minicom
Out of all of the applications that I initially tried to use for serial/parallel port examination on Linux, the easiest that I found to use was "minicom". This application is hit and miss if it is pre-installed or not depending on the distribution you use. Ubuntu 8 didn't come with it pre-installed, but as you can see from the screen shots, it only takes a few minutes to get it installed and working.
The first thing you need to do with minicom is configure it to use the correct parameters. You can configure the application by using the command line switch -s
Also when you are running minicom, you can access the menu by pressing "ctrl" and "a" and then pressing "z"
Serial to USB Adapter
The adapter that I currently use, I built myself. However, I would reccomend to purchase an adapter based on the FTDI series of chips. FTDI offers excellent driver support across all platforms! Sparkfun offers a few pre-assembled solutions. They also have a great tutorial on using the RS232RL chip with Eagle in order to make your own.
Before you are able to do anything with your GPS unit on Linux, you will probably need to make sure to grant read and write access to the port you will be testing with. Usually the serial ports are in /dev/ttys0, /dev/ttys1, ...etc
If you are using a serial to usb adapter, you may be able to find it at /dev/ttyUSB
Minicom
Out of all of the applications that I initially tried to use for serial/parallel port examination on Linux, the easiest that I found to use was "minicom". This application is hit and miss if it is pre-installed or not depending on the distribution you use. Ubuntu 8 didn't come with it pre-installed, but as you can see from the screen shots, it only takes a few minutes to get it installed and working.
The first thing you need to do with minicom is configure it to use the correct parameters. You can configure the application by using the command line switch -s
Also when you are running minicom, you can access the menu by pressing "ctrl" and "a" and then pressing "z"
Serial to USB Adapter
The adapter that I currently use, I built myself. However, I would reccomend to purchase an adapter based on the FTDI series of chips. FTDI offers excellent driver support across all platforms! Sparkfun offers a few pre-assembled solutions. They also have a great tutorial on using the RS232RL chip with Eagle in order to make your own.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
 |
Add Comment
|
