radioman

Hi all,

I am new to the forum but NOT GPS.
I have been playing with GPS for 10 plus years..

This is mainly Bluetooth GPS from Teletype - GPS (www.teletype.com) but recently with iPhone and Holux and Orange gadgets.. Also with GPS in various mobile devices - iPAQ and more recently HTCnTyTN 2...

Now - I have recently been lucky to get a Sony Vaio VGN-Z51XG/B - this is running W 7 Ultimate.

It has Qualcomm Gobi WWAN 9222 for HSPA - which works fine. It appeared to be locked to one provider until I found an unbranded 'One Click Internet' program. (NOTE this post IS about GPS!!)

Looking at Qualcomm site, Gobi appears to have WWAN AND GPS functionality - which makes sense, as I think Sony have just put a mobile phone chip in a laptop.

However Sony don't advertise the GPS bit. It appears disabled!
==========================================
However I find the following in Device Manager:

Modems - Qualcomm HS-USB Modem 9222

Network Adaptors - Qualcomm HS-USB Ethernet Adaptor 9222

THIS IS THE REAL ONE:

Ports - Qualcomm HS-USB Diagnostics 9222 (COM6)
Ports - Qualcomm HS-USB NMEA 9222 (COM5)

Thus - the drivers to see the Gobi GPS appear to be loaded, and I can connect to COM5 (and COM6) - but can't see NMEA (or other) data....
This is with simple Holux GPS programs, terminals or full GPS applications that work fine with a Bluetooth external GPS.

I have searched the Registry and there is no obvious key to edit to enable the GPS - but I am DAMM SURE it is there...
I have also checked system services and there does not appear to be a GPS related service....

Does anyone have a clue about how to get the GPS data ... or am I missing something...

Cheers and thanks - and sorry for a fairly technical first post!!
Merry New Year!!

PS EDIT sorry if this is the wrong sub-forum!

tHeFleUr

Apparently it is possible to use the GPS included with installing the Sony software SmartWi (from sony US). It unlocks the GPS. Hope this help.

tHeFleUr

Or you can also use Putty to connect to it with making a serial connection to the COM port.

Mohur

You can try this method perhaps (below). Connect your device via USB to a system.

Open terminal and try the following. (I use ubuntu)

It should show up as
/dev/ttyUSB0 if it is the first serial USB device. Then set the speed:

$ stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0

You might have to check the permissions and ownership of the
/dev/ttyUSB0 device. Under Fedora it shows up as owner "root" and group
"dialout".

Then to read the data you can just do:

$ cat /dev/ttyUSB0

The daemon application is called gpsd and is available as a regular
package. It will read the GPS device and parse the data for use by other
applications. This can be easily downloaded using the Synaptic Package manager.

When you 'cat' the file out, if you see NMEA messages,.. then we are good.

-M

jinyuandong30

you use linux,you can do!but can you use it for xp or win7?thanks!

Mohur

My recommendation is that you try install Ubuntu in a separate partition. It isn't such a Big deal at all. It can be done in under 15 minutes. You can perform the same task using a Live Ubuntu Linux CD as well without installation. Just remember you need to install 'gpsd' daemon in order for this to work on both cases. The command is 'sudo apt-get install gpsd' in Ubuntu.

However, if you really want to use Windows XP (not sure about Windows 7), you can try the following, but I cannot guarantee if this method works, as I have not tried this. Here goes.

In Windows XP,
Start > Programs > Accessories > Comunication > HyperTerminal
Open HyperTerminal.
Enter any name (ABC) for the new connection.
For the next dialog window, ignore all but the last one. It says 'Connect Using',
Click on the drop down menu and select 'Qualcomm HS-USB Modem 9222'. I am not sure if this modem will be present there. I say this ONLY because from the comments above, Radioman said that under Device Manager he found this Qualcomm device was listed under modems. Or select the appropriate COM port as the COM port if the Qualcomm device is not listed as a modem. According to Radioman above, the COM port for NMEA is COM5. Click Next.
For the next dialog window,
Set Bits per second as 9600 baud, and leave the rest as default settings.
Click apply and then ok.

Then after a small pause, you should be able so see NMEA messages being dumped into the terminal window. I am not sure of this. Usually, for the Qualcomm Gobi 9222 chip, for testing purposes, the NMEA testing is done this way on the Windows side.

Good luck to you.
-M