Re: [gpsd-users] Newcomer, with a question

[David J Taylor]

Newcomer to this list and GPSD in general, with a question way down at the 
end.


The story is this.  On my little sailboat, I find that I tend to use my 
Android tablet (or even my Android phone!) more than I use my perfectly fine 
chartplotter, even though the chartplotter has the biggest screen of the 
lot.

I guess I like the human interface more; panning and zooming is more 
intuitive.  Also, entering routes and waypoints is a whole lot easier on the 
little devices, if only because I can do it all at home.

But panning and zooming on these devices is also slow; the reduced 
horsepower is an issue.  Also, the accuracy of my position using the 
internal GPS is not nearly so good as the fancy unit attached to the 
chartplotter.

So my plan was to use a Windows tablet running OpenCPN and connect the 
external GPS to the tablet via WiFi.

Sadly, that otherwise excellent (IMHO) plan took me down any number of 
ratholes .. virtual COM ports, UART->TCP bridges and so forth.

Then I looked closer at OpenCPN and discovered that the virtual COM port 
thing is now effectively built in to the software.  Looking closer still, I 
discovered that newer versions of OpenCPN support GPSD, which looks like 
pretty much exactly what I want!


HOWEVER, what I don't want to do is have a largish PC running Linux on 
board; this is a _small_ sailboat.

So, what's the smallest Linux device with enough poop .. RAM, processing 
power, etc. .. that will do what I want; receive serial GPS info and 
rebroadcast it via WiFi?


Thanks for any thoughts.
Alan
==================================

Alan,

I would look at the Raspberry Pi, even the low-end Raspberry Pi Zero W would 
do that job.

 https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w/

On a slightly related topic (precise timekeeping with NTP on the RPi) I have 
some notes which might at least trigger some ideas about connecting GPS 
devices:

 https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-NTP.html
 https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-quickstart.html

Cheers,
David
--
SatSignal Software - Quality software written to your requirements
Web: http://www.satsignal.eu
Email: address@hidden
Twitter: @gm8arv