Monday, January 12, 2009

Hidden GPS in Dell Mini 9 (3G Model)

The Dell Mini 9 netbook with built-in 3G connectivity uses the Dell 5530 wireless card for connectivity. This card also has GPS functionality built right in!

To use the GPS unit in Ubuntu Linux; add an entry to your wvdial.conf that looks like this:

[Dialer gps]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM2 (or /dev/ttyUSB4 if you are using the option module)
Init1 = AT*E2GPSCTL=1,2,1
Init2 = AT*E2GPSNPD

Start the GPS unit with
# wvdial gps
then ctrl+c out.

To use the GPS, install gpsd and run it:
# sudo apt-get install gpsd
# gpsd /dev/ttyACM2

# gpspipe -r
will read raw data from gpsd and dump it to the screen, useful for debugging.

A great Free gpsd compatible mapping app is "tangoGPS", which you can grab from their site: http://www.tangogps.org.

Thanks to Barry John Williams for the AT info.

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