Ada Fruit GPS Ultimate Breakout Board for PineA64

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Addendum:  GPS Made Easy  by  Lawrence and Alex Letham:

https://www.amazon.com/GPS-Made-Easy-Pos...1594851034

Letham's book GPS Made Easy: Using Global Positioning Systems Outdoors  5th Ed  is the primary source for understanding the use of GPS receivers in the wild; used by experts, and highly recommended by experts. 

This book is my favorite GPS book;  if you can afford only one, this is it !

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I ordered my 'active mode' external antennae and adapter for the ada fruit ultimate gps breakout board.  I will be posting my pics and testing data here in a few days.  This active antennae system is extremely sensitive and recommended for GPS use indoors, or in the cabin of a plane, boat, or  shack...

PS.  We have solved the battery clip problem.  If you solder the battery clip to the breakout board do so only  at the edges of the clip, and then coat the clip edges with a generous blob of 30 minute epoxy resin to each clip tab.

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The following table of data is a cut|paste view of the output from the GPS codes I have posted here. I thought I might make a small explanation of the output; although, it should be self explanatory, but if you're new to gps receivers then a little explanation can go a long ways.

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time: 095319.000   date: 040916   N: 4402.4399   W: 09226.0817   El: 367.8 M

    sats: 07   type: GPS fix   mode: Auto 3D  >3 SVs used

                  SVn: ('El', 'Azi', 'dB')
               ----------------------------
                   23: ('58', '186', '29')
                   26: ('21', '055', '30')
                   08: ('37', '159', '29')
                   09: ('67', '258', '22')
                   27: ('50', '108', '28')
                   07: ('40', '296', '27')
                   16: ('49', '050', '32')

time: 095319.000   date: 040916   N: 4402.4399   W: 09226.0817   El: 367.8 M

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The time(s) above are UTC (Greenwich time, Coordinated Universal Time).  In this case 9 hours 53 minutes 19.000 seconds.  The date is September the 4th, 2016 and the location is 44 degrees 2.4399 minutes N. lattitude, and 92 degrees 26.0817 minutes W. longitude.  The elevation above sea level for this auto gps 3D fix is 367.8 meters.

The table shows that greater than three(3) satellites were used to compute the auto 3D gps fix. Seven(7) satellites are in view each with a relative signal strength of between 22dB and 32dB. For each SVn numbered on the left, there are three numbers (elevation, azimuth, and signal dB). The elevation of each satellite up above the horizon is in degrees, with 90 being directly overhead. The azimuth (or bearing) is in degrees around clockwise from North (which is Azi 0 or 360; 90 is East, 180 is South, 270 is West). So, in the table above satellite (23) is 58 degrees 'up' above the horizon, and 186 degrees around clockwise from North... or almost directly South. 

Each of the satellites may be positioned on a circular sky-chart and tracked over time. Its fun, and easy, as long as you have some tool to parse out the satellite information from the NMEA sentences; that is what my codes presented in this thread accomplish-- the output of which is displayed above.