Bug 8905 – No NMEA output from GPS

Bug 8905 - No NMEA output from GPS


Summary:	No NMEA output from GPS

Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX

Product:	Location
Component:	General
Version:	5.0/(2.2009.51-1)
Platform:	N900 Maemo

Importance:	Unspecified normal (vote)
Target Milestone:	---
Assigned To:	unassigned
QA Contact:	location-framework-bugs

URL:
Keywords:

Depends on:
Blocks:
	Show dependency tree

Reported:	2010-02-08 02:40 UTC by Adam Baxter
Modified:	2010-02-09 22:12 UTC (History)
CC List:	2 users (show)

See Also:

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Description Adam Baxter (reporter) 2010-02-08 02:40:16 UTC

SOFTWARE VERSION:
(Settings > General > About product)
2.2009.51-1.002

EXACT STEPS LEADING TO PROBLEM: 
(Explain in detail what you do (e.g. tap on OK) and what you see (e.g. message
Connection Failed appears))
1. Open terminal
2. Search for /dev/gps or similar
3. Device does not exist

EXPECTED OUTCOME:
cat /dev/gps
NMEA output
ACTUAL OUTCOME:
/dev/gps does not exist
REPRODUCIBILITY:
(always, less than 1/10, 5/10, 9/10)
always

Why is there no direct access to the GPS? Forcing developers to use the locked
down Location API severely limits the usefulness of the GPS device.
EXTRA SOFTWARE INSTALLED:

OTHER COMMENTS:

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2)
Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6

Comment 1 Andre Klapper maemo.org

2010-02-09 13:47:51 UTC

What does NMEA stand for?
Also if there are problems with the current API, feel free to file report(s)
about it.

Comment 2 Adam Baxter (reporter) 2010-02-09 14:19:26 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> What does NMEA stand for?
> Also if there are problems with the current API, feel free to file report(s)
> about it.
> 

Apologies. NMEA 0183, a common GPS data format that contains a lot more
information than the location API returns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NMEA_0183

GPSd, Kisment, MapDrive, Navit etc etc all expect data in this format. If the
GPS device was directly accessible, I could expose it over bluetooth with
RFCOMM and use it as a GPS device for my laptop, which also expects NMEA 0183
data.

Comment 3 Lucas Maneos 2010-02-09 19:40:47 UTC

The problem with interfaces like /dev/gps is that they can't be shared amongst
concurrent processes that need location information, so I think this may be
INVALID or WONTFIX.

Are there any specific shortcomings of the liblocation API?  Maemo mapper seems
happy with it, and present all the details it used to on previous devices.

For gpsd-style location, gypsy-daemon is available on device.

For NMEA output (say, for exporting over a bluetooth RFCOMM channel), a small
daemon that gets location information out of liblocation and outputs it in NMEA
sentences in a text stream might make a nice community project :-)

Comment 4 Adam Baxter (reporter) 2010-02-09 21:41:51 UTC

(In reply to comment #3)
> The problem with interfaces like /dev/gps is that they can't be shared amongst
> concurrent processes that need location information, so I think this may be
> INVALID or WONTFIX.

This is what GPSD solves. It opens /dev/gps, then applications talk to GPSD
concurrently via a local TCP port.

Comment 5 Adam Baxter (reporter) 2010-02-09 22:12:00 UTC

Although it does make porting some GPS aware applications more difficult, I
think you can mark this as WONTFIX. I expected some of the developers from the
talk forums to join in on this bug report but interest seems to have waned.