SparkFun Forums

[Hummer]

Now that I've got my Lassen iQ Eval board finally working, I'd like to do more with it than just observe the data inside the iQMonitor software.

I'd really like to be able to use the board with my laptop and appropriate software while I'm flying back to the states in the near future from where I'm currently located in SW Asia. I'd really like to be able to monitor my current position on some type of scrolling map &/or picture of the terrain below the aircraft as I'm passing over that location. It will give me something to do on the long flight home.

I found the following website that lists various free gps software and I was wondering if anyone has recomendations for something that will work with the Lassen iQ board?

Thanks!

[Caffeine]

Set it to NMEA and use something like OziExplorer to plot your position.

Either that, or something which takes NMEA and makes a KML out of it for use in Google Earth. I wrote a simple one which uses a dynamic network link to always refresh google earth to keep it centered on my position.

[Caffeine]

In fact, here it is:

GEPS

It needs .Net framework 2.0

It produces 2 KML files, one is FindMe, which will always update your position, and the other is Me, which is your last position but needs to be refreshed manually.

Don't try and run it from the Zip file, extract it somewhere first. It expects to find a GPGGA (and optionally a GPVTG) message.

It's pretty simple, and comes with no warranty etc There's also an intermittent crash which I'm trying to track down.

[Guest]

Caffeine,

Thanks for the tip on OziExplorer, I've downloaded the trial version and will give it a shot. It looks like exactly what I described that I was looking for in my first post.

I do have a strange problem now though: The Lassen board was working fine with iQMonitor, but when I would try to use it with any of the shareware programs that I've downloaded, it wouldn't work with them. When I go back to try using iQMonitor, it won't work either, but it was working just fine before I'd tried to use the shareware program. I found that if went into Hardware Manager and maually changed the COM port to the next numerically higher port number that it would start working again. Even if I reset the COM port settings to the default settings, it won't work again with iQMonitor. It's as if there is some kind of setting somewhere that the shareware program has set and that I can't reset, so I have to move onto the next COM port that hasn't been reconfigured. Anyone have any ideas about what is causing this?

[Caffeine]

That is strange, never come across it myself.

It's probably more a problem with the CP2102 USB chip and it's associated driver.