[Xastir] Xastir and GPS

[Jason KG4WSV]

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Andrew Errington
<a.errington at lancaster.ac.uk> wrote:

> (instructions seem to assume you have a GPS connected to a radio or TNC).

Not exactly.  Most GPS interfaces are of the "this is a standard NMEA
GPS variety".

You see special instructions for the cases where the NMEA data from
the GPS is somehow interleaved or multiplexed with the APRS data.
Those scenarios require more explanation.

> I have a Linux laptop with a USB soundcard and a USB GPS.  I have Xastir and
> soundmodem.  I want to configure Xastir to periodically send my current
> position (reported from the GPS) as an APRS packet via soundmodem.  How can I
> do this?

First, configure soundmodem so you can send and receive.  This, in my
experience, is non-trivial.

Next, make sure your GPS can speak NMEA over a serial port.  Find the
name of that serial port (e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0 for a typical USB/RS232
adapter) and create a GPS interface in xastir.

-Jason
kg4wsv