Embed an OEM GPS Into Anything

Step 7 Programming

The real beauty of an OEM unit comes out when you decide to create custom software for it. I have to confess that I have a decent amount of programming experience. It certainly isn't trivial to write a serial buffer in order to read data into a custom application.

If you don't want to write custom software for the unit, then I would highly recommend the program gpsDrive for Linux. It will work directly out of the box with anything that is outputting NMEA 0183 sentences.

If you do want to write custom software, then you are in luck. I have attached a class that I wrote in Java that can send and receive data to the serial port. It should be mentioned that Java does not come by default with the classes needed to support serial communication. For the class that I have attached, I am making use of the open source library RXTX.

If you are skeptical and would like to see the unit and code in action, you can head over to my website and check out the video of the autonomous robot navigation project. I also have the complete source code available that was used to navigate the robot.

Most importantly, have fun with your GPS!