real time kinematic GPS receiver
Nov 18, 2009 gps navigation, hacks
Real time kinematic GPS receivers are the ones used by pros to do land survey jobs which can provide down to 1 centimetre accuracy. Now you don’t have to spend a fortune on one of these since you can build your own thanks to researchers at Tokyo University.
All you need is a cheap beagle board, the instructions here and lots of free time and patience…
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Palm Pre tweets GPS coordinates
Aug 27, 2009 gps navigation, hacks, phones
Do you want your Palm Pre to tweet its location on a regular basis? Now you can. But you’ll have to do some “hacking” as one might call it. Before anything you’ll have to setup SSH and dynamic DNS on your Pre. Does that mean anything to you? OK, here is a simple test. If the next line scares you, maybe you should not mess with your Palm Pre:
< ?php
$gps = `luna-send -n 1 palm://com.palm.location/getCurrentPosition {} 2>&1 | cut -d, -f4,5 | sed -r ’s/[^-\.0-9,]//g’`;
What? You can write shorter regular expression that does the same thing? Well… here are the rest of the instructions.
hack your Nokia N95 for better GPS reception
Aug 2, 2009 gps navigation, hacks, nokia
Do you have problems with your GPS reception on your Nokia N95? How about some soldering skills? If you’re brave enough you can open your N95 and remove the default GPS antenna and instead stick in an 8″ speaker wire in there and wrap all over your N95 before closing it back up. You should follows the instructions and read comments here though.
The poster of this hack claims you can get a satellite lock in 5 – 10 seconds – even indoors. However doesn’t share if this is after a cold – or a warm – or a hot start.
Give it a shot – why don’t you?
iPod Nano GPS hack
Apr 28, 2009 gps navigation, hacks
We haven’t been talking about any decent “hacks” lately. Well we just found one thanks to hack-a-day. Even though the hacker claims this is not all that complicated we advise you take his words with a grain of salt. After all the guy did end up writing a “graphics driver” to display the latitude and longitude on iPod’s screen.
Combining a reference design board containing a Nemerix GPS with an Atmel ATMEGA324 micro-controller (and of course assorted supporting components), I had the hardware tools to spit-out data to the iPod. However the iPod will not accept just any serial data stream. The data has to be formatted to display on the iPod screen, which made this project a challenge and appealing to me.
For all the details please check out this site.
AarLogic C10/3: Linux OS breadboard with GPS
Mar 31, 2009 gps navigation, hacks
Let’s take a break from all those ready to use, nicely finished GPS navigation systems and tracking devices and have a look at this tiny Linux machine with an embedded GPS receiver. It is called AarLogic C10/3 and with this, the possibilities are endless!!! (provided you have at least a BSE from an accredited university and the time and energy to actually build something out of this).
You can make your own sat nav device, vehicle tracking system, or even a satellite guided missile!
The breadboard includes a Quad-band GPRS module SiRF Star III GPS receiver, USB, RS232 and ethernet interface. It comes with 4 Mb NV memory standard but can be expanded a lot since you there’s also an SD-card reader.
The heart of the PC is two ARM processors, responsible on one hand for the GSM component, and on the other for applications executable under Embedded Linux. The processor module, including the GSM component, is also available for purchase separately. Despite its small surface area – roughly the size of a matchbox – its 160-pin socket provides a wide array of connectivity options. Aside from keyboards, digital cameras and reading devices, this also includes WLAN, Bluetooth and GPS components.
You’ll be pleased to hear that there is a free test server available visualisation of the geo-data.
It measures 104mm x 63mm (4″ by 2.5″) and costs €192.00. …
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unlock GPS on Verizon HTC Touch Pro
Dec 27, 2008 gps navigation, hacks, phones
If you’re a Verizon customer and own a HTC Touch Pro you’re going to enjoy this one. We’ve got some information on how to unlock the GPS capabilities of this device. We already talked about Verizon unlocking the GPS themselves but there’s no reason to wait for them now, is there?
You can find all the detailed instructions here at ppcgeeks which goes something like this:
1. download lllboredlll_VZW_GPS_Fix_v2.cab AND PPST1.46.cab and put on your storage card or any folder on your device
2. install PPST1.46.cab
3. use gsfinder,total commander or File Explorer to navigate to \windows\ppst.exe4. click on ppst.exe and go thru the prompts
5. reset your device as needed
6. NOW install lllboredlll_VZW_GPS_Fix_v2.cab
7. use gsfinder,total commander or File Explorer to navigate to \windows\ppst.exe
8. reset your device as needed
9. Dial *228 option 1
(the above step is the steps I did, option 2 also works but I needed to prove it takes a full update without rewriting data)
10. reset your device
11. Install HTC GPS Tool if needed12. I would suggest a soft reset… do what you want on this one
13. Open up HTC GPS Tool. Set Chip to Q 7500 and mode to Cold Start (left soft key for those who dont know) then set baud to 4800 and open port.
Of course as usual, if you give this a try come back here and leave a comment for others…
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gps for your dell mini 9
Oct 8, 2008 gps navigation, hacks
If you had your eye on the Dell Mini 9 but were holding off because it contained no internal GPS receiver you no longer have an excuse. Thanks to Tom you can now add your own GPS receiver with A-GPS support to your Dell Mini 9. You’ll have to spend some extra cash on the receiver (only $30), and have a quite a bit of soldering skills we’re guessing. And of course some free time.
…I then started moving the Bluetooth adapter and removing the old mounting provisions for it, since they were now in the way. There was enough room, but just barely. If the GPS was another 2mm thick, it would not have fit. The GPS completely fills the space between the Bluetooth adapter and trackpad. There is a lot more space on the bottom of the laptop in the unused WWAN card area, but the GPS needs to be on top so that it has a view of the sky. A unit with a separate antenna may provide other mounting options, but I decided it would unnecessarily complicate things…
GPS spoofing
Oct 3, 2008 gps navigation, hacks
An article came out yesterday on how GPS signals could be spoofed and incorrect time and location information could be sent to GPS receivers that are responsible for everything from the power grid all the way to banking system.
…The second, more sinister, method is called spoofing. In spoofing, the intended target doesn’t know that the signal received from a GPS unit is wrong: A spoofer creates a false GPS signal that passes as a real GPS signal, and an incorrect time or location appears on the intended receiver…
However military GPS signals are apparently immune to these attacks thanks to their encryption methods making sure GPS guided smart bombs don’t end up going after wrong targets.
“The military GPS signals are protected against spoofing by using a secret encryption, so that only receivers with that encryption technology can access the signal,” said Langley. “There is no such protection for civilian GPS use.
adding GPS to ASUS Eee
Jul 19, 2008 asus, gps navigation, hacks
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Got a soldering iron, a few extra hours, and an Asus Eee PC? Here is DIY project for you. Adding a GPS to your ASUS Eee PC. All the information and some nice pics are over at this site and the GPS kit necessary is right here..
DIY GPS logger and tracker
Jun 29, 2008 gps navigation, hacks, tracking
If you are into DIY GPS gadgets of various kinds we got a new project for you.
This new GPS logger uses an Arduino board and has supports different GPS receiver modules. On the backside of this board is an SD card slot where it can record the coordinates in a simple text file. The total runtime of course depends on your battery and it can vary from 5 to 20 hours depending on how often you want to get position updates. There are some good instructions on this site including example code…
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