MY GPS Is Not Working!

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Battery Power Options
There are a number of battery options for the PiGate and PiGate RMS.  AA batteries will work for a few minutes.  7AH or better AGM batteries work well.  I have tested a PiGate running for at least 10 hours on a 7AH AGM battery.  Using two in parallel and a solar panel or two should give you 24x7 capability.  Here's a link to a converter I use and recommend:

https://powerwerx.com/usbbuddy-powerpole-usb-converter-device-charger

The PiGate RMS, if it has a GUI display, uses more power than this device can produce.  With a display, it will need about 5.2 volts instead of 5 because the display will drop the voltage down to a level that is barely functional for the Pi using a standard 5v supply.  I use these converters and they work pretty well:

http://www.current-logic.com/dcdc_converter_cpt_fulree.php

You can also get these from eBay pretty cheap.



Login to the PiGate as user "pi" with the password of "PiGate12".  How to login is covered in the docs.


First, "sudo su -" to become root.


Next "ls -l /dev/ttyUSB*"


The GPS device should show up as /dev/ttyUSB0  If it does not, then you'll have to figure out what device it is appearing as.  Some will show up as /dev/ttyAMC0 or something like that.

Luckly, the Raspbian software is plug and play, so you should be able to ls -l /dev with the GPS unplugged, and then plug it in and do it again and see the new device.


The NMEA standard says a GPS receiver is support to act like a 4800 baud serial device.


So do this: "stty -F YOURGPSDEVICE ispeed 4800"

Then you should be able to do "cat < /dev/YOURGPSDEVICE"  and it will start streaming data.  If not, try setting the port speed to 9600 baud.

If you start getting data, you can do this:


cat < YOURGPSDEVICE | gpsdecode


You should get a decoded data stream that you will be able to see the data packets with the time and coordinates.


You can also run:


gpsmon YOURGPSDEVICE  like gpsmon /dev/ttyUSB0


You should get a full screen display that is constantly updated.  It should show how many sats and the GPS coords, plus the date/time.


If all this works, then you'll need to change the parameter in /etc/default/gpsd:


DEVICES="/dev/ttyUSB0"  to whatever your GPS device is.


This is covered in the docs.  Do you read that section?
If you needed to change the baud rate, you'll have to make the change in the script:


/root/get_gps_data.sh


If none of this works, get the recommended GPS receiver.  All this is what I only support the recommended device.