Re: GPS mouse

From: Tom (tom8192_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/16/04 

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 04:15:02 GMT

In article <41703bff$0$78279$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>, "Frank Bemelman" <f.bemelmanx@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
>Practically all GPS mouses are USB these days. How tough
>would it be to connect such a device to a microcontroller?
>Of course, the uC would only need to be able to handle
>the communication with the GSP mouse.

Every one of these devices that I've seen has some kind of serial-to-USB
bridge inside of it, like the Prolific PL-2303 or some other equivalent. The
GPS module itself outputs regular serial NMEA data and then this goes into the
bridge chip. On the PC side you install a driver for the USB bridge chip that
"emulates" a standard serial port under Windows.

If you're willing to open up the plastic case then you should be able to get
access at the serial Tx Rx and 1PPS lines. In this case interfacing to a
microcontroller is pretty straightforward. If you want to do this without
opening up the plastic case then the task becomes either very difficult or
virtually impossible if you can't obtain the interface specification document
for the given bridge chip.

--Tom.

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