Talking to a GPS unit over USB

[Trevor DeVore]

On Apr 10, 2004, at 5:08 PM, Dar Scott wrote:
> On Saturday, April 10, 2004, at 12:20 PM, Trevor DeVore wrote:
>> I have this shiny new GPS unit with a USB interface and wanted to 
>> play around with communication between it and a Rev application on OS 
>> X.  I would love to be able to download waypoints.  I've never worked 
>> with USB connections (or serial) before and wondered if anyone has 
>> any experience in this area and could help get me started.  I found 
>> the open driver command and it says it can be used for communication 
>> with USB devices but there are no examples.  I did a quick search of 
>> the archives and didn't see anything either.
>
> I would expect that a GPS unit with a USB interface is set up to look 
> just like serial.  If that is not the case, you will not be able to 
> establish communications without something special.
>
> See what the drivernames() function returns.  (Don't worry if it does 
> not show the built-in modem, that is a known bug.)  You might 
> recognized something that looks like the GPS.
>
> If you find something there, it is looking good.
>
> Try opening and closing it.
>
> If that works, try reading until empty repeatedly and append the 
> results to a field.  See if that looks promising.

Rats, it looks like it isn't going to work .  driverNames() returns 
empty.  There is a serial connection cable that I can get for it.  I 
have a Keyspan serial->USB converter so I think I will pick that up and 
give it a try.

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Multimedia
trevor at mangomultimedia.com