Aided start means that you provide the module with an initial fuzzy location that you've received from somewhere else. Usually this means triangulating the location by cell towers and/or wifi mac addresses. After you have at least an idea about where on earth you are, it's much faster to get the GPS fix.

Hi am really enjoying your comments, and perspective, all good stuff - keep up the good work, I look forward to the next post bag.

Neato! Will be great to see how you sort this out.

What can I say, Julian you are a treasure, please keep up the good work.

my postman has been visiting my house a lot since I started watching these videos, in getting addicted to buying electronic stuff even tho I haven't got a clue what most of it does lol

Another interesting video. Thanks Julian.

Thanks for the bag and the nice board names ;-)

Cheers on your 50th episode of Postbag, hoping for another 50 more in the future. Any word on a scary halloween episode, just thought I would ask ۞ Anyways Thanks or Cheers for all the great video's 朱利安.

The postman ran after he delivered the parcel, he may think that it is the house of a mad scientist! Greetings my friend and friends who are regulars here.

The first time you use a standalone GPS it first has to find the satellites, then it has to download data about the positions of the satellites, from the satellites. It need to know where the satellites are on the sky in order to calculate you position This is done at 50 baud and takes a long time. You have to wait 30-60 minutes. GPS on phones get that data (satellite position) over the internet and get a lot quicker fix..

@romasromas73

7 жыл бұрын

BersekViking considering satellites are moving at insane speeds, and we have to wait 30-60 minutes to get a satellite position, doesn't that make the received position pretty much useless? I don't really understand the purpose of this initial setup. Could you explain?

Long thin skinny ones, Short fat slimy ones Julian's just gone into his garden to eat some worms! On a slightly more practical note ...... whoo-hoo! I have recently taken delivery of a pair of, similar, GNSS receiver modules and was not looking forward to all the legwork I was going to have to do to familiarise myself with their operation. The U-Centre user guide is 69 pages long and that's just the beginning! Thanks Julian, I will follow your progress closely.

I very interested in the precision of the GPS module and as such, very much looking forward to a review of the thing :)

Not read all the comments Julian so don't know if anyone else has raised this, but for general reference there is a difference between an acronym and an abbreviation. What you were referring to as acronyms were mainly abbreviations. An acronym is a special form of abbreviation that can be read as a proper word. RADAR and SONAR are acronyms whereas RSPCA and NSPCC are just abbreviations, ROSPA = acronym, GNSS = abbreviation but GONASS = acronym. Hope that clears things up.

I bought one of these GPS modules back in June,and was rather impressed by it's ability to get a solid lock while indoors. (I'm sure the WAAS/EGNOS helps with that). One snag I ran into was that sometimes it would forget it's settings. I'd use the u-center software,and set it up for NMEA,4800bps,and the next time I'd plug it into another PC/system,it would revert back to it's 'default' settings..so I'd have to plug it back into my PC,run the u-center software again,and reconfigure it all...and if I was lucky,it would remember it that time. Other than that,I was rather impressed with the little thing. It's fairly sensitive,the software is kinda spiffy,and it has a lot of features. Also,it's pretty cheap.

@PhattyMo

8 жыл бұрын

+PhattyMo I have discovered the issue. For some reason I can't get it to store the settings in the NV memory.It will only store them in the modules internal Battery-Backed RAM. The small supercap? thing on the module is only enough to keep the settings stored in the RAM for a couple days,if the module remains un-powered for that duration. I fixed this by replacing the backup cap-thing with a small 2.4V Nimh battery on one module,and a CR2032 type 3V coin cell (+diode) on another. They remember the settings for a good long while now,haven't had any problems since.

Great intro!

Hi Julian The U-center is a very powerfull tool. U can easily make a backup from your Modul and than play arround with the parameters. Faster update speed, move the data to google earth or G-maps and much much more. I think there was something wrong with your setup or u have not wait long enough to fix some SATs. Sometimes it can takes *half an hour* if u fire it up first time ! (First Download the almanach data.) Here I got 4-7 SATs IN the room close the Window everytime, so I don't think your wall block so many SATs. Check your setup / Antenna. I use an much older U-Blox LEA4 Modul for my copter too. But now Iam interested in this new modules too.

I recommend downloading Realterm, Julian. It's a free serial monitor and decodes everything from RS232, I2C & SPI, to the kitchen sink. I've run into problems with just the arduino monitor when trying to communicate with more than one device at a time or using virtual bluetooth COM ports.

Just gave this a thumbs up Julian. You can probably guess why ;) It is definitely worth getting familiar with these units so you can trim out some of the irrelevant data being sent and hence free up the host MCU's data read time. The HDOP is intriguing, It essentially reports the accuracy and quality of the fix in terms of a circle of uncertainty and in the APM Mission Planner application this figure is graphically represented on the map. You really should have chosen the blue pill Neo :) Pun intended. I have to confess, I have not done much with GPS lately. Too tied up in the FPV miniquad race scene where GPS is not needed.

"ichosei-love" I chose, I love.

@JulianIlett

8 жыл бұрын

+ink fink Doh, I should have spotted that :/

@EdwinNoorlander

8 жыл бұрын

I spot it to. 👍🏻

@TheRipdub

8 жыл бұрын

Julian Ilett Haha I totally understand why you didn't though. "ichoseilove" has a lot of similar letter arrangements to common east Asian words.

@kyoudaiken

8 жыл бұрын

+Julian Ilett That's sneaky marketing. You do not notice it but you already understood. :D

sometimes when you first start up a gps unit it can take up to 30 mins to get a first fix. especially if it is in a new location from the last time it was turned on. i find that when i order car gps units from China.

Interesting items Julian. I'm new into Arduino and I'd really like to see you implement the data coming from the GPS that'll be displayed on the screen. I've no idea how i should do that with for example a temperature sensor. :)

+Julian Ilet The ebay sellers name is "I Chose Love"

50 is cause to celebrate, it's a standard impedance value for RF, as is 75 and 300. you could even consider it appropriate for a video that has an RF product in it.

The battery is possibly to ensure the GPS does not experience a sudden power loss prior to being correctly shutdown. A loss of power during internal memory writes can cause permanent corruption rendering the unit inoperable

Hi, I am having problem with my NEO-7M. It is not saving GNSS configurations. It is OK for few minutes (upto 30mins.) and after that it resets to default (baud rate to 9600 and etc.) As from the datasheet configuration can be lost or reset to default in three following cases: A power cycle A hardware reset A (Complete) controlled software reset I have checked, none of them corresponds to my case. As, I am not resetting in unit in software, as it resets itself after sometime being disconnected from the power. Backup Battery level is OK at 3V.

yea Postbag ;) Nice stuff. By the way alice from eBay has a very long delivery time. ~30-35days (i still waiting for my order, This is my second purchase from alice) From other sellers i receive the package ~ 10-14 days, also Free shipping to Poland.

@kamil004

8 жыл бұрын

+Jeff Morris I also have no idea, other parcels from China, Hong Kong, etc. receives max 14days. by Alice always after 30 days

@ismzaxxon

8 жыл бұрын

I found the same. Twice as long as other suppliers in the same area. They don't keep stock....they order from others, then post.

It is possible, and fairly common in old high end systems, to get GPS antennas which are powered over the same line. It's a DC offset which is then used to boost signal at source to reduce the noise ratios.

Have you checked out the Ublox NEO-M8N BN-800 from BangGood? Support for GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS and SBAS

Hi I bought a similar GPS module, but not the same. I hade the exact same problem with bad reception. The antenna is a patch antenna and the back of it is the ground plane. On my module the back wasn't connected to ground at all. After connecting it to ground the unit worked fine. I have a friend that works with antennas so we measured the response of the patch antenna and it doesnt work for glonass, dont know if you have the same but wouldnt be surprised. I would take the lid of the back of the antenna to verify that the ground path is correct.

You just answered a question for me. Thank You. None of my business. My gracious Kudos to Mrs. Ilett. Her name wouldn't happen to be Alice, would it? ;-) I am sure her name is "Mrs. Julian Ilett". Carry on Good Man. Love your Videos!! You are WAY smarter than me, and people call me a genius. They don't know genius. I am in the US after all. (English Decent, Mayflower).

I noticed at one point you were powering the GPS with 5v instead of 3.3v. I'm surprised it didn't fry because those devices are pretty intolerant of anything over 3.6v

Can you try to connect it via SPI or I2C?

thanx Julian, plz review Chuwi VI10 tablet with dock keyboard one day.

When you see strings like $GPSGGA or $GPSVTG it means that you are usually dealing with NMEA 0183 data. NMEA 0183 = 9600 kbit/s, 8/N/1, single talker, multi listener protocol, 3,3V (but 5V tolerant) GPSGGA is the position, the reason you are seeing 99°99'99" is because it isn't fixed.

on a quick glance of the data sheet, would it be feasable to just connect the usb data lines to the chip directly, power it and communicate over usb?

@superdau

8 жыл бұрын

+Marineio In principle, yes. But the USB functionality and which messages are transfered over that port has to be configured for the module. Although, what's the point? ;) You won't use a module like this with anything that has an USB port anyway and a serial connection is actually much less problematic (not special driver needed for example).

hello my name is erick need to know if the GPS can be used to Quadcopter or other things can only utilzar Example cars trucks motorcycles

I have a 6m that I bought from ebay china about a year ago. After waiting a month for it to arrive, I plugged it in and it didn't work. I then proceeded to throw it in a draw until yesterday where I took the effort to check the solder. turns out, the soldering job was pretty poor. I fixed it and now it works...Just with the metal can on top being torn out. I have no idea what to do with it now

HI Julian - not sure if anybody has mentioned it but try Mikal Hart's library for the Arduino - arduiniana.org/libraries/tinygpsplus/ Don’t fiddle too much with u-center until you know what you are doing, I killed a 6M. Another module worth looking at is Skylab SKM53 available on eBay. Its really compact and antenna is attached. Make sure you buy the breakout board as the pins are not breadboard friendly.

When you fire up a gps reciever for the first time, it needs to be n clear view of the sky and it will take up to about 10 or 15 minutes to get its first fix. Then it happens really quickly after that...

I think it just takes a while for GPS to do first search when i came back from new york after using my gps there it took about 10 mins for my phone to get signal back in uk .

Hey... Can i get the norad id or any idea that will show me what satellites are connected at the moment. Basically i want to know the satellite name or any id along with gps values or gnss value ... Please help

Hello i am uyes here i have got GPS module with compass ublox 7M and i m using it with APM but the problem is that its not calibrating in Mission Planner its not taking samples can you please help me in this situtation .

you are a 'fresh man'

So you tried to run the GNSS evaluation software ( for the Russian Glonass ) and the interface shows American flags for the sattelites and in the configuration menu GPS was enabled and GNSS disabled. Why oh why it's not working ? 😋

I broke 700! Julian. You need to visit your older videos. Does not KZread inform you of new activity? Love Your Work. Love Jennifer Lopez, oops...that was for another post...Love Alice1101983.

@JulianIlett

5 жыл бұрын

Keeping tabs on 800 videos would be hard work :)

Is it safe to use chinese microcontrollers with expensive hardware?

thanks for your video and knowledge and i though this youtube channel ( iforce2d) about 9 mo. he did a video with gps simular to your video . anyway hope it helps.

Yeah first comment !!! Great video as always Julian !!

Pal, you have forgotten the pig who emerges as the leader of Animal Farm after the Rebellion. LOL....

@RobB_VK6ES

8 жыл бұрын

+TheOldmankk I immagine Animal Farm is NOT on the general reading list in China:) The pig reference most probably relates to the persons astological year of birth. year of the dog, pig etc.

Julian, I believe most modern GPS receivers should receive a signal indoors - even away from a window. You may have just needed to download the ephemeris data from a cold start (which can take ~12 minutes if memory serves). Perhaps your power issues were interrupting this download.

@JulianIlett

8 жыл бұрын

+adrianhatesjazz Thanks Adrian - I'll connect it back up and leave it for a while.

@adrianhatesjazz

8 жыл бұрын

+Julian Ilett Sorry, correction, it's the almanac data that requires 12.5 minutes. There may be an option to add a battery backup so you don't have to start from a cold start each time.

@iforce2d

8 жыл бұрын

+Julian Ilett From what I've seen so far, I would be surprised if you couldn't get some kind of fix even at that position by the wall. The first time though will be very slow, probably 5-10 minutes. You may be aware already, but it's the way the signals are processed which causes it to take so long, and why you can get a much quicker start next time by starting the search from near the last used location, and why it consumes so much battery on a mobile device. It's quite ingenious actually, strings of pseudo-random data are broadcast from the satellites, and the receiver has to align the incoming streams with each other so that the data matches, then it can tell the relative distance between them.

@superdau

8 жыл бұрын

+adrianhatesjazz Can the battery backup even be disabled? If it's installed, it's used I guess. +Julian Ilett The first fix can take some time. The receivers "remember", where they last were (which for yours was most likely somewhere in China ;) ). Together with the Almanac-data (contains status and coarse orbits of the satellites), which are useful for a few weeks, the receiver knows which satellites to listen for. If the Almanac is very out of date, or the last position is very off (more than a few 100km), the receiver will search for the wrong satellites and it can take quite a long time for a fix. The almanac data are transmitted with a very low datarate (50bit/s, yes fifty bit not bytes per second), so with bad reception (bad weather, trees or walls in the way) I sometimes had to wait almost half an hour.

If you want a free decent serial monitor for all pc ports, use "putty" freeware

how to add GPS in arduino drone ???

MWC = MultiWiiControl = Atmega open source quadcopter control projekt

use obs for this kind of recording love your videos

I have a nano clone but I can't use it. I can't get the driver to work on Windows 8.1. So I'm a little hesitant to get more clones.

@RobB_VK6ES

8 жыл бұрын

+Beginner's Tech I had similar issues. I suspect you have fallen victim to FTDIgate. do a search for FTDIgate and similar terms to find ways to get the device working again. Interestingly two of my nanos refused to work even after the countermeasures but after reflashing the bootloader they came good again. I can only assume I had somehow corrupted the original bootloader code messing about in the dark immediately after the damaging drivers were released.

NMEA is used for lots of things. It's standard ASCII and therefore is very easy to read with a PC. I think you had the baud rate wrong..... and NO these things don't take 30-60 minutes to acquire a lock. That's BS. If that's happening it's configured wrong or a bum unit. I've built enough quad-copters with them to know that! Initial lock might be a few minutes to get three satellites..... after that it's almost instant until you move the GPS many miles away from where it got that first lock.

99 hdop is 25 times higher then I've ever seen hahaha didn't even know you could hit that number. I don't believe any quadcopter will fly above 1.5 unless you change that value and risk big issues. Indoors here I am about 1.8 , I'm curious why yours is so high.

All I can say is WOW in capital letters.

I wonder if its fake, would like to do a compare between an original and a Ebay version.

Hey Julian, just ask your kind wife to correct me but as far as I know: In Asian countries, a pig is not considered as an insult or something. Moreover they adore pigs. :D So I can understand why an Asian person would pick "pig" as a name.

why don't you use a screen capture software to make vedio from monitor?

neo-6m,7 modules not working in indoor

you should buy on aliexpress too.

Question: You have always been careful to not give out your address in the videos, but it seems you just gave out GPS coordinates to your home. Are you not concerned about that? Just trying to look out for your privacy.

@JulianIlett

8 жыл бұрын

+Jonathan Mulzer Yes, I'm aware of the issue. Because the module never got a fix, I don't think any of the received data had my location in it. I think I spotted a configuration screen where positional offsets can be loaded in. So for future videos I can make it look like I'm on the island of Gozo (which is where I'd like to be).

@jonathanmulzer17

8 жыл бұрын

Julian Ilett Good man, and good luck on relocating to Gozo. :)

@tech-rich

8 жыл бұрын

+Jonathan Mulzer I don't think he did. The only coordinates on display were gibberish.

@SayWhatNow92

8 жыл бұрын

+Jonathan Mulzer and the telephone area code for his local council (written on his bin)

I always see u having issues with short cables and not being able to use the computer for serial reading. why not get a cheap laptop or make an arduino program using your mini oled or LCD displays to display the serial data

3:41 Your mail order bride was 11 years old?

I see some issues here. First, this ceramic antenna is really bad one. It require bigger ground plane, not cut on dimensions as is ceramic, but should be much bigger. Second, this metal box should be RF amplifier, which seems not working - even outdoor no much satellites, actually that sporadic reading, I can't call it reception at all. Another issue, someone programmed number of GPS and GLONASS up to 255 satellites??? While maximum channels are 32? Set some average of 14-16 for GPS and GLONASS, 3 for SBAS and 3 for QZSS, but later you may disable SBAS - some people complaining about wrong elevation reading if this option is set. I have some random cheapo GPSS, and removed ceramic antenna, then soldered two dipoles, with 1/4 lambda delay, so that it receive RHCP. For this really crappy GPS (which is clone of NEO 6N), got plenty of satellites indoor (!). I will try to post link here of my video about that, but I am afraid that it will end in "Likely spam" by KZread bot.

`MY GPS modules all work sitting on the inside windowsill, so your garbage bin lid should be good enough.

i think you just leaked your cords

64 is the decimal representation of 111111, so may be if you want to celebrate your video should have #111111 instead of #64 :-D

Product ratings on ebay? A year long dream finally coming true? Let's see how long it stays, because I guess some of the sellers won't like that... On the other hand, sellers selling crap on Amazon don't really care either. They just relist the item so all the ratings are gone.

get you with the chinese waifuu :P lol

Oh, and in Asia a animal name is a honor. Like elephant or tiger.

Er, Julian...Wouldn't it be a Good Thing℠ if you took the time, while waiting for something to arrive, to peruse the datasheet??* Slight chide, but: The GSM battery aint for the flash but for the module's RTC. Datasheet here:tinyurl.com/py4rarb See section 1,12,2 Glonass is also worth looking up. GPS (The American system) is really designed IMHO to be accurate for Americans, and People They Don't Like Much. Glonass,the Russian jobbie is more oriented to polar planes, like, er, well, archipelago's and the like (again, for People They Don't Like Muchivichski) (Canadians, being in the middle seem to be immune - no surprise there! JOKE!) * Actually reminds me of when I was a kid - studying electronics HARD, yet, while waiting for my Sinclair MK14 kit, I already knew the thing inside-out

@JulianIlett

8 жыл бұрын

+Andy Crofts Yeah, there are one or two errors in this video (TCXO is of course Temperature Compensated Crystal Oscillator), but Postbag is kinda realtime - what's this, what's the minimum I need to know to get it working, right now. When I build the GPS project (with the Nokia 5110 display), I'll know much more about this thing and hopefully make fewer mistakes :s

@electronash

8 жыл бұрын

+Julian Ilett The battery also stores the almanac data in most GPS modules, which is sent via the satellites every 30 minutes or so (at least it used to be). Or maybe it is only every 30 seconds now? I do remember the older sat navs / waypoint GPS modules taking a very long time to start when the battery was flat / missing though. The almanac data tells the module the (last) position of all the satellites, and helps the module have a quick TTFF (Time To First Fix) when it comes out of standby. ;)

the number i celebrate is 69 :)

@_who_cares_1123

7 жыл бұрын

RC and FPV Jonathan XD