Since all GPS's output NMEA sentences and often for our projects we need to extract the actual data from them, we've simplified the task tremendously when using the Adafruit GPS library. By having the library read, store and parse the data in a background interrupt it becomes trivial to query the library and get the latest updated information without any icky parsing work.
If you're using an Adafruit Metro 328P or Arduino Uno (or older)
Make sure the switch is set to SoftSerial
Open up the File→Examples→Adafruit_GPS→parsing sketch and change the line
SoftwareSerial mySerial(3, 2);
to
SoftwareSerial mySerial(8, 7);
and upload it to the Arduino. Then open up the serial monitor.
If you're using an Arduino Leonardo..
Make sure the switch is set to SoftSerial
Change SoftwareSerial mySerial(3, 2); to SoftwareSerial mySerial(8, 7); as above, and also change
useInterrupt(true);
to
useInterrupt(false);
Because due to strange internal-details stuff, we cant use Software Serial, interrupts and also echo the output via USB at the same time on Leonardo.
You'll want to wait till you get a fix so stick the GPS out the window or use an antenna
In this sketch, we can either use interrupts and call GPS.read() within a once-a-millisecond timer (this is the same timer that runs the millis() command) or we check GPS.read() in the main loop constantly. Then in the main loop we can ask if a new chunk of data has been received by calling GPS.newNMEAreceived(), if this returns true then we can ask the library to parse that data with GPS.parse(GPS.lastNMEA()).
We do have to keep querying and parsing in the main loop - its not possible to do this in an interrupt because then we'd be dropping GPS data by accident.
Once data is parsed, we can just ask for data from the library like GPS.day, GPS.month and GPS.year for the current date. GPS.fix will be 1 if there is a fix, 0 if there is none. If we have a fix then we can ask for GPS.latitude, GPS.longitude, GPS.speed (in knots, not mph or k/hr!), GPS.angle, GPS.altitude (in meters) and GPS.satellites (number of satellites)
This should make it much easier to have location-based projects. We suggest keeping the update rate at 1Hz and request that the GPS only output RMC and GGA as the parser does not keep track of other data anyways.
Page last edited March 08, 2024
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