Hi folks, I was wondering, is the Astroberry ISO already set up to recognize GPS hardware? I just a got a U-Blox 7 GPS/GLONASS GPS stick, whose instructions claims no need for a driver in Linux, but the real world can always be different.

So do these USB GPS sticks work out of the box with Astroberry, or is there some terminal voodoo ritual to go through?

Thanks

Hello,

Yes and no. Yes, no drivers are needed. No, Linux was never plug and play. Setting GPSD up is required. Assigning a tty asynchronous port thru UDEV is required. These requirements are what I did to get GPSD working. In INDI, use GPSD for this device.

For my OTA, I have two dedicated asynchronous communication needs. U-Blox 7 and AstroEQ require explicit UDEV commands that talk KERNEL and SUBSYSTEM. These UDEV commands allow these devices to claim ttyACM0 and ttyACM1 for each one.

The UBLox is good for position, time, and elevation. I am satisfied with its results.

INDI attempts at device management are a great start. But RPI has 3 builtin UART ports, ttyAMA0, ttS0, and ttyACM0. Anymore ttyACM have to be explicitly introduced to PI. The ttyUSB use is for other Linux distribution with different UART hardware. The PI architecture is limited. Getting two UART devices working is maximum to me. Resources are slim with the PI.

In my working RPI3B+, I show 56 different areas I looked at to ensure PI was explicitly recognizing the U-Blox. Geany is your new friend. Save the original before editing is a good practice. Be careful. Enjoy the ride.

Hello,

I just got my U-Blox to work with my RPI4B. I only needed to edit the /etc/GPSD file. This was after I created two 99 rules. One was for the U-Blox. The other for the AstroEQ. Creating rules for both ensures the same port is assigned to each device. This makes editing /etc/GPSD easier. This file requires consistency. It is working right now.

Thanks for your reply. So to the terminal and speak in tongues as I suspected.

Can Astroberry get GPS data from your laptop or phone while you log into it? I can log into it from a Windows laptop where all I have to do its load the U-Blox 7 Windows driver and go.

Thanks.

Hello,

Would it be wonderful if osmosis worked with every technology we integrated in our project? Yes, but... anything built today takes instructions to operate. Technology cannot read minds at this level. What we have are islands of technology where we are the builders of bridges.

No, terminal talk is not necessary at all. Geany is a SWIWIG app default installed. Use File Explorer, yellow folders, to graphically find and right click to read. If you want write access, use terminal and open Geany under sudo. You will find /dev/GPSD from root. You will also seek /lib/ udev/rules.d. At this folder, you can create a specific rule of consistent port behavior for the U-Blox. This is it.

This is the rule and the configuration. Copy, paste, and save. You can use my configuration as a template. Everything shown must syntax correct or rules and configurations don’t work. Fat fingering is too easy. Compare, Compare, and compare again, then write.

C-P-S works under VNC. WEB Access does not permit transfers between sessions under Windows.

I keep separate rules for specific things. I keep copies safe. Each folder presented in this reply is a system OS folder. Updates may obliterate that special configuration that took hours of research. How is INDI and PI supposed to read our minds. In times past and a different build, rules.d was in two different places. Now, rules.d is in one place.

Step 1:

# GPS RULES for UBLOX Device
ATTRS{idVendor}=="1546",ATTRS{idProduct}=="01a7",ENV{ID_MM_DEVICE_IGNORE}="1"
ATTRS{idVendor}=="1546",ATTRS{idProduct}=="01a7",ENV{MTP_NO_PROBE}="1"
KERNEL=="ttyACM*",SUBSYSTEM=="tty",ATTRS{idVendor}=="1546",ATTRS{idProduct}=="01a7",ATTRS{iProduct}=="u-blox 7 - GPS/GNSS Receiver",SYMLINK+="UBlox-7GPS",MODE="0666"

Step 2:

# Default settings for the gpsd init script and the hotplug wrapper.

# Start the gpsd daemon automatically at boot time
START_DAEMON="true"
ENABLED="yes"
GPSD_SOCKET="/var/run/gpsd.sock"


# Use USB hotplugging to add new USB devices automatically to the daemon
USBAUTO="true"

# Devices gpsd should collect to at boot time.
# They need to be read/writeable, either by user gpsd or the group dialout.
DEVICES="/dev/ttyACM0"


# Other options you want to pass to gpsd
GPS_BAUD=115200
GPS_FIXFILE=/var/run/gpsfix
GPSD_OPTIONS="-n -D 1"