GPS Buying Guide
Above your head, right now, at an altitude of about 20,200 km there is a system of navigation satellites. There’s 35 of them, 24 active at any given time. It cost millions and millions of dollars to put those satellites in the sky and link them appropriately and you know what they’re doing?
They’re helping you find that place your friend told you about that one time.
The GPS, or Global Positioning System, is accessible from almost everywhere on Earth and provides exact coordinates of your current location so that you can figure out where you are. Combine that information with a good map and there’s nothing you can’t find. But what if you want that uncanny sense of direction in, say, your pet robot? Good news, GPS modules are small, light weight and inexpensive. They’re also pretty easy to use.
There are a ton of GPS modules on the market these days and it can be hard to figure out what you need for your project, hopefully this guide will demystify GPS a little bit and get you on the right track.
Actually, tell you what: Go read about GPS on Wikipedia, it’s a great article to get you familiar with the technology. Our job is to teach you how to use it… Now how do we actually use it? It’s gloriously simple. Every GPS module works the same: power it, and within 30 seconds to a minute, it will output a string of ASCII characters like this:
GPGGA, GPGLL,
GPGSA, GPGSV,
GPRMC, GPVTG
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