NMEAd -- GPS plugin via Xtalk

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Heres something new for u fellow carputerists (or perhaps for htpc equibbed houseboat dwellers or trailorhometheater owners), before u get too excited though: this is not navigation solution, but just simple plugin for fetching fix data from your GPS-receiver.

What u get:

- Latitude and Longitude (formatted human readably in degrees and arc minutes and seconds, accuracy is one arc second which is with bear mad-ematics give or take hundred foot, so some information might be lost but atleast value is not oscillating constantly with meaningless numbers)

- altitude (above sea level in meters)

What u need:

- Computer pluggable GPS receiver, plugin is written and tested for nokia LD-1W bluetooth GPS froggy. But i would say it will work with most things out there, doesnt matter whether u connect thingy with bt, usb or rs-232, as long as physical plug is encapsulated within COM interface.

- XtHub and Xt environment correctly setup. (formerly known as pervhub, check xpert thread for installation details and sharp or marb site for software)

- And finally some software to make use of your fetched fix data: be it either Xlobby or FlightRecorder. Incase u wanna use this plugin with Xlobby ull need to download and install xPerT.dll also.

How to use

NMEAd takes two commandline parameters as usual u can set them in your autorun.ini on xt-environment.

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NMEAd alias COMx

Where alias is xt-name for this particular instance of the device which u can use to refer to it later and COMx is identiefier of the com port to which your receiver is connected, be it virtually or physicly. If no parameters are given default values are assumed which are "Pervette" for alias and "COM5" for port.

incase u wanna insert your fix data into your XL-screen, u create a text field with following variable as the text:

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plugin>xPerT>Variable>IDlati>Pervette>latitude

Where "IDlati" is also ID of this particular button, remember to give different IDs for different fetched variables. "Pervette" is the alias u gave to the device while launching it and latitude is fix related variable to be fetched, it could also be "longitude" or "altitude".

incase u wanna record your location data to a file u could use following as configuration file for FlightRecorder (FRd)

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testi runbased Pervette;latitude Pervette;longitude

Where "testi" is filename of the logfile to be saved.

Finally here is example of logfile of one of my testruns, to preserve part of privacy i only recorded the latitude

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2008/09/14 22:12:59.414 <> Recording started
2008/09/14 22:13:01.527 <Pervette_latitude> N/A
2008/09/14 22:13:01.927 <Pervette_latitude> 0°0'0"N
2008/09/14 22:16:07.855 <Pervette_latitude> 63°7'59"N
2008/09/14 22:16:08.826 <Pervette_latitude> 63°7'58"N
2008/09/14 22:16:09.878 <Pervette_latitude> 63°7'59"N
2008/09/14 22:16:10.909 <Pervette_latitude> 63°7'58"N
2008/09/14 22:16:15.836 <Pervette_latitude> 63°7'59"N
2008/09/14 22:17:58.213 <Pervette_latitude> 63°7'58"N
2008/09/14 22:18:36.428 <> Recording ended

Notice that degree symbol (°) doesnt seem to eventually render right in xlobby end but seems to be fine in FRd files. This is something i still have to investigate.

Oh and finally download link... remember, as usual, this is beta, all responsibility of its use falls to the user.

[vaporhat]

Sounds cool. Can't wait to see this car skin when you are done!

Keep it going.

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

Keep it going.

Oh i will. Currently im making GEd or google earth device to act as companion piece for NMEAd. i have proof of concept ready, so its just matter of time

[P3rv3rt B3ar]

I just wanted to say that i made first test drives with GEd running on a tablet, and im goddamn excited about it, it turned out to be darn sweet. Ill hopefully skin it for shark later today with Xmovewindow... if that doesnt work properly, ill have to write my own embedding code which might take a little while. Anyway im hoping to have alpha release out soon, alpha because i have plenty of ideas, which have not quite crystallize as a plan yet, so originally simple plugin might turn out to be something very different eventually, and i dont want u guys to build skin around something im gonna change sometime soon. But if u r itching to test GEd early on and have time to do some testing and provide feedback u can always register for my alpha program.