Datasheet

Use 'gpsd'

You can always just read that raw data, but its much nicer if you can have some Linux software prettify it. We'll try out

gpsd which is a GPS-handling Daemon (background-helper)

Installing a GPS Daemon (gpsd)

The first step is installing some software on your Raspberry Pi that understands the serial data that your GPS module is

providing via /dev/ttyAMA0.

Thankfully other people have already done all the hard work for you of properly parsing the raw GPS data, and we can

use (amongst other options) a nice little package named 'gpsd', which essentially acts as a layer between your

applications and the actual GPS hardware, gracefully handling parsing errors, and providing a common, well-defined

interfaces to any GPS module.

To install gpsd, make sure your Pi has an Internet connection and run the following commands from the console:

And install the software as it prompts you to do.

Raspbian Jessie systemd service fix

Note if you're using the Raspbian Jessie or later release you'll need to disable a systemd service that gpsd installs.

This service has systemd listen on a local socket and run gpsd when clients connect to it, however it will also interfere

with other gpsd instances that are manually run (like in this guide). You will need to disable the gpsd systemd service

by running the following commands:

Should you ever want to enable the default gpsd systemd service you can run these commands to restore it (but

remember the rest of the steps in this guide won't work!):

Try out 'gpsd'

After installing gpsd and disabling the gpsd systemd service as mentioned above you're ready to start using gpsd

yourself.

Start gpsd and direct it to use HW UART. Simply entering the following command:

... which will point the gps daemon to our GPS device on the /dev/ttyAMA0 console

Try running gpsmon to get a live-streaming update of GPS data!

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients python-gps

sudo systemctl stop gpsd.socket

sudo systemctl disable gpsd.socket

sudo systemctl enable gpsd.socket

sudo systemctl start gpsd.socket

sudo gpsd /dev/ttyAMA0 -F /var/run/gpsd.sock