Thursday, June 19, 2008

Using the Gosget GPS Data Logger in Linux via Wine (Ubuntu 8.04)

I managed to get the Gosget GPS Data Logger S1 to work under wine on Ubuntu 8.04 using (roughly) the following steps:

  1. Plug it into a usb port, Ubuntu will hot-plug it as a serial port automatically (probably /dev/ttyUSB0).
  2. Set the baud rate on the serial port:
    stty 115200 < /dev/ttyUSB0
    (I'm not sure if this is persistent after a reboot or not...)
  3. Create a "com" port in wine:
    ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 ~/.wine/dosdevices/com1
  4. Put in the CD and run the installer in Wine:
    wine d:\PC\DataLogUtility\DataLogUtility.exe
  5. Run the Data Log Data Downloader via wine, put in the com port, connect, set a download folder and you'll be able to get .nmea files from the data logger.
  6. To convert the .nmea file to a .kml file I used gpsbabel -i nmea -o kml source.nmea dest.kml.

Figuring that out gave me a headache, hopefully this post will save someone else one. Please note however, that I'm writing the commands from memory so there may be something (hopefully harmless) wrong.

Also, if you switch the data logger into "G_Mouse" mode, it's possible to use gpsd to get GPS data in real-time. I switched the data-logger into "G_Mouse" mode via a Windows machine, but I presume the Data Log Data Downloader can do that via wine too.

And, gpsd and gpsbabel are both in the Ubuntu 8.04 repositories.