Some GPS Setup

The USB GPS receiver came before the RasPi so I got it up and running on my windows machine first and tested it with the windows utility provided to make sure I was getting data.

Yep, all ok. Good start.

I then configured the VirtualPC to be able to access that USB Port. Fire up your virtual machine and look at the bottom of the VirtualBox Screen (see Image Below) you will see a little USB Icon, right click and select the 'Proliffic Technology ......' line.

That now gives access to the GPS Receiver from the Virtual Machine.

Bit of useful info. A GPS receiver collects a lot of useful info like latitude, longitude, speed and then transmits it to the PC as text over the USB connector. To be able to use that data you need to understand the format of the data it transmits and what 'connection' to listen in on to get the information you need. In the olden days they used to use an old RS-232 serial port, in modern times we use USB.

Ok that's the simple stuff out the way.

In the next post I'll show you how to get at that GPS data on your Debian Virtual Machine.