I have a Pi 4 in my truck that records OBD-II data from the truck’s ECU. I use an old iPhone on my dash to display some of this data live. I have been using a Garmin GPS III+ connected over a serial to USB cable. The Pi was using gpsd to read data from this and record it along with the OBD-II data. I’d like to eliminate some of the cabling I have strewn about in order to connect everything and the Garmin’s screen is starting to die (and the iPhone can run Google Maps).
I’m looking for recommendations for a solution like a Pi GPS hat or a GPS dongle.
Requirements:
Re-use my already installed external GPS antenna which has a BNC connector. The truck roof is steel which makes an external antenna necessary. I’m fine using some adapter to go down to SMA or U.FL.
Works with a Pi 4.
Does not need any additional power cabling.
Works with gpsd.
Thanks for any suggestions and/or experiences you can share.
Says, “Supports NMEA, UBX, and RTCM protocols over UART or I2C interfaces.” I know gpsd was reading NMEA from my Garmin over USB. Looks like I should be able to do something like this.
If you are going the ublox NEO route then do consider the 9 series for your solution. It may be a bit more expensive (5x 6 series) but the accuracy is way better plus the other features means no second guessing required after your decision.
SparkFun has some nice options for the 9 series plus of course the Cadillac version too! Very few other vendors offer similar options.
I ended up getting a ZOE-M8Q and was up and running with some Arduino sketches on my Thing Plus C in no time. However, I tried getting it to communicate over i2c with my Pi 4 and could not get it going. It wasn’t clear to me if I needed to put the ZOE-M8Q into a certain mode with an Arduino sketch first and then hook it to the Pi, or if some Python example scripts I was trying were all that I needed to make it work. I also discovered discussion about [problems with i2c clock stretching on the Pi 4. Around this time my brain was full and I had to set this aside for awhile.
I will revisit this and see if a ZOE-M8Q connected directly to the Pi will work. If not, I might just have software run on the Thing Plus and send that GPS data to the Pi over wifi. That might actually be easier for me to implement.
Very few other vendors offer similar options.