AAO+GPS After reading an article on GPS, "Find your way with tangoGPS" by Dmitri Popov dated November 12, 2008 in Linux Journal <[URL]http://www.linux.com/feature/152468[/URL]>. I decided that was what I wanted to do - to install one of the GPS devices on my own Acer Aspire One (AAO.) Mine was the first comment by "anonymous" at the end of the article. Luckily for me, the third comment by another individual contributer who also signed as "anonymous" alerted me somewhat as to what I would have to do to get the GPS device working. I ordered a GlobalSat BU-353 USB GPS Navigation Receiver by a Taiwanese company, Globalsat Technology Corp from Amazon.com. As GPS devices go, the BU-353 is an economical way to get into GPS. The BU-353, including the shipping was around forty dollars. It comes with a manual and software drivers for Windows and OSX on a CDROM. No drivers for Linux; although, on the USGlobalSat website <[URL]http://www.usglobalsat.com/p-62-bu-353-w.aspx[/URL]> there is a Linux Driver file one can download. I did download the zip file containing the Linux USB driver. My AAO came with Linpus Linux, a subset of Fedora 8. I considered installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) that uses Ubuntu 8.04.1 as its base, or possibly Fedora 10 which Christopher Dawson (zdnet.com) <[URL]http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2018[/URL]> wrote highly of, but I decided to stick with the originally installed Linpus Linux. My reasoning being that if one is going to use open source software, one needs to be open-minded; just because one is unaccustomed to one particular interface doesn't mean one can't be flexible and learn another one also. Not only that, but everything on my AAO just worked - the wireless switch and indicator, the built-in camera, the fan, the SDHC memory device in the left-hand slot used to augment the SSD. Then again, maybe I just rationalized my thinking into the path of least resistance. So the next thing needed was a testbed with which to experiment and get the BU-353 operational in Linux without the possibility of inadvertently tweaking the AAO OS into an unusable state. With that in mind, I downloaded and installed Fedora 9 (didn't take the time to locate Fedora 8) onto one of my older machines equipped with a Tyan MB, 850 MHz AthlonXP, and 768MB RAM which I figured might be more or less roughly equivalent to an Atom N270 and 1.5GB RAM. Once the Fedora 9 was installed, what was needed then was some application software. Searching the Package Manager for "GPS" lead me to GPSD, XGPS, and XGPSspeed which I downloaded. The original article by Mr. Popov had some good tips and links as to where to find some freely available opensource maps, as well as tangoGPS. I discovered one thing about both Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.10, they are both full distributions, so the driver for the BU-353 is already available. I was able to get GPSD running with no problem. With the BU-353 plugged in (wait until the red LED is blinking at about once per second,) then from a terminal window, sometimes referred to as a console, run this command as root, "gpsd -n -N -D 2 /dev/ttyUSB0", you should immediately see some responses in the terminal. You can now start up the applications; xgps will show the GPS satellite locations and whether your device is receiving a signals (red circles vs clear circles). It will also show your coordinates, elevation, and speed. This completes this step to getting the GPS device running on a testbed system. I also got to run on a system loaded with Ubuntu 8.10 without encountering any problems. What I finally realized was that even after having used Linux on my primary machine for the past couple of years and priding myself as a knowledgeable Linux user. I just didn't know how to download the source code, set up the environment to compile, and install the Linux driver for the BU-353. The Linux driver software that I had downloaded from the USGlobalSat website, pl2303.c was originally written by an anonymous donor, but it had been updated by none other than Greg Kroah-Hartman, one of the keepers of the kernel code. So I began researching how to compile from source, which if you have not done before, is not as simple as some folks would lead you to believe; truly, this is the domain of the Linux-enlightened. I never did compile the code (maybe some future rainy-day project), but I did download the kernel drivers for my particular version of Linux which I was able to use (see next paragraph.) During this same time, I found some helpful information and tips in the both the Ubuntu Forums (search on BU-353 or gpsd), and Acer Aspire One Forums, especially <[URL]http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=10077[/URL]> the first reply by Japser really gave me some insight as to how to download and install the pre-compiled driver module, pl2303.ko. This in turn led me to research and find out some more about "insmod" and "modprobe" which is how I finally got the correct driver loaded. By the way, it works great now; I took my running AAO+GPS upstairs last night, and gave a demonstration of it to my spouse. What next? I think I'll use my newly acquired GPS capabilities to contribute to the OpenStreetMap Project. I noticed that some of the streets in my neighborhood are misplaced or missing, and maybe I'll submit some geo-tagged photos of some points of interest in the town where I live. I would like to thank all those who have blazed the trail before us, and to those who have traveled parallel paths in getting to where we are now. Links: Original article, "Find your way with tangoGPS" by Dmitri Popov on November 12, 2008 (9:00:00 AM) [URL]http://www.linux.com/feature/152468[/URL] Referenced blog by Chris Dawson of zdnet.com [URL]http://education.zdnet.com/?p=2018[/URL] Referenced links from within the article: [URL]http://www.navit-project.org/[/URL] Navit is a car navigation system with routing engine. [URL]http://www.gpsdrive.de/[/URL] GpsDrive is a car (bike, ship, plane) navigation system. [URL]http://roadnav.sourceforge.net/[/URL] Roadnav is an open source street navigation solution. [URL]http://www.tangogps.org/gps/cat/About[/URL] tangogps is an easy to use, fast and lightweight mapping application for use with or without GPS. [url="http://software.opensuse.org/search?baseproject=ALL&p=1&q=tangogps"]http://software.opensuse.org/search?bas ... q=tangogps[/url] (Be sure to download the correct package for your installed distribution) Freely available maps for download: [URL]http://www.openstreetmap.org/[/URL] [URL]http://www.openaerialmap.org/[/URL] [URL]http://www.maps-for-free.com/[/URL] To get the kernel drivers, follow this trail: [url="http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=10077"]viewtopic.php?f=58&t=10077[/url] [url="http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4800&start=10#p37023"]viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4800&start=10#p37023[/url] [url="http://rapidshare.com/files/156029097/linux-2.6.23.9lw-aspireone.tar.bz2.html"]http://rapidshare.com/files/156029097/l ... r.bz2.html[/url] Website for USGlobalSat BU-353 GPS USB Receiver: [URL]http://www.usglobalsat.com/p-62-bu-353-w.aspx[/URL] Cheers, (Latitude 39.791500 N Longitude 76.951815 W)
