GPS Logger Shield on Arduino Uno

[JPCUC]

Hello,

I am having some trouble to get data from the GPS Logger Shield mounted over Arduino Uno. I have read the documentation and I thought It was pretty stright, but I might be wrong and skipped something and did not realize. I solded those pins that have direct conection to the Arduino Uno board. Now I am trying two codes the first one “Basic_Passthrough_Software.ino” and the second one “TinyGPSPlus_GPS_Shield.ino”, but I have not data from on the console after uploading the code (In the second case it shows 0 for all the data repesented). The UART switch is set to SW-UART.

The GPS LED (blue one) stays on when I am outdoors, and blinks when I move the board Indoor, but not data on the console.

Thank you for your help,

Best Regards,

J. Perez

[El_Duderino]

Hi J. Perez,

It sounds like you have a hardware issue going on here. Can you please take a few photos of the top and bottom of your GPS Shield along with photos of how you are connecting it to your Uno and attach them to your reply? Please do your best to make sure they are clear and well-lit.

[JPCUC]

Thanks for your answer,

I soldered again those headers that could look worse. After that I checked all of them one by one with the multimeter and the the GPS board mounted on the Arduino UNO and it looked ok (Low resistence from the header to the bottom of the arduino pin and not touching each different connection.

I am uploading the pictures in order to better see the connections.

BR,

J.Perez

[JPCUC]

Some more pics

[JPCUC]

Last picture

[JPCUC]

The Arduino UNO is not a new board, I used already some time ago. Actually, I am using two old arduino UNO boards. I hope this is not a problem.

[n1ist]

The level shifter on the GPS logger shield depends on IOREF. Try jumpering IOREF to 5V on SJ3 (labelled IOREF-Sel on the bottom of the GPS logger).

Also, the solder connections don’t look too good; you may want to remove the excess solder with solder wick or a solder sucker and try again.

/mike

[El_Duderino]

Thank you for taking and including those photos and thanks to Mike for helping out here. As Mike mentions, the solder looks to have some cold joints or bad connections. Try reworking all of your solder joints to make sure you have good connections with no gaps between the pins and pads. [This section of our Troubleshooting Tips Tutorial has some examples of good solder joints and tips on reworking to fix them.

Also, you will definitely want to set the IOREF jumper to 5V as Mike suggested since your Uno does not have an IOREF pin. If you have never worked with solder jumpers before, [this tutorial goes over how to use them along with some tips for soldering to them.](How to Work with Jumper Pads and PCB Traces - SparkFun Learn)](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/sparkfun-troubleshooting-tips#bad-solder-joints)

[JPCUC]

Thank you Mike and TS-Mark,

I soldered the IOREF jumper and everything works fine. I am sorry I didn’t realize when I read the guide.

I also will buy a better soldering iron since the one I have do not allow being really precise making good connections.

Thanks for your help,

BR,

J.Perez

[El_Duderino]

That’s great to hear setting the IOREF jumper fixed the issue! Just a quick tip about reworking. You may not need a better iron and instead may want to look at getting a flux pen like [this or trying some different solder wire. The flux pen will help the solder reflow when you try and rework the solder joints. We use rosin-core solder like [this for all hand soldering on SparkFun boards and it works great to create clean solder joints since it has a flux core to help with reflow.](Solder - 1/4lb Spool (0.020") Special Blend - TOL-10242 - SparkFun Electronics)](Chip Quik No-Clean Flux Pen - 10mL - TOL-14579 - SparkFun Electronics)

[JPCUC]

Thank you for the advice, I’ll really take into account.

BR,

J.Perez