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Connected up U-blox NEO 6M module

A project log for An NTP server using GNSS for time

A straightforward project to use an old Raspberry Pi

ken-yapKen Yap 07/15/2020 at 12:470 Comments

The module arrived today. It comprises a small breakout board for the module and a ceramic antenna.

I soldered a 4 pin header to the board, plugged it into the RPi breakout board and made the power and serial data connections following the instructable in the list of links.

I had to figure out how to start the gpsd service. At first I thought I had to enable the gpsd service with systemctl. Running the ncurses command line client cgps showed no connection to the module.

When I tried to run gpsd at the command line it said that the TCP and UDP sockets were already used. A quick look with lsof (which I installed on the fly) showed that systemd was holding them open. Huh?

A search of the Internet showed that this was indeed supposed to be the case, systemd listens on the Unix socket and network sockets and if a connection is made, it starts up gpsd.

So reenabling and starting the service running cgps eventually elicited a response from the module. There was no location fix, it stayed at mode:1 all the time.

{"class":"VERSION","release":"3.17","rev":"3.17","proto_major":3,"proto_minor":1
2}
{"class":"WATCH","enable":true,"json":true,"nmea":false,"raw":0,"scaled":false,"
":9600,"parity":"N","stopbits":1,"cycle":1.00}]}
{"class":"WATCH","enable":true,"json":true,"nmea":false,"raw":0,"scaled":false,"
timing":false,"split24":false,"pps":false}
{"class":"DEVICE","path":"/dev/ttyAMA0","driver":"NMEA0183","activated":"2020-07
-15T12:48:30.763Z","native":0,"bps":9600,"parity":"N","stopbits":1,"cycle":1.00}
{"class":"GST","device":"/dev/ttyAMA0","rms":0.000,"lat":3750000.000,"lon":37500
00.000,"alt":3750000.000}
{"class":"DEVICE","path":"/dev/ttyAMA0","driver":"u-blox","activated":"2020-07-1
5T12:48:31.464Z","flags":1,"native":1,"bps":9600,"parity":"N","stopbits":1,"cycl
e":1.00,"mincycle":0.25}
{"class":"TPV","device":"/dev/ttyAMA0","mode":1}

 
I will have to move it to a location nearer a window.

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