Old GPS USB receiver to LCD

[dchurch24]

Hi all,

I'm [very] new to electronics, but it's always been something I've been interested in. I've controlled servos from my PC etc... and other very basic stuff, but now I want to experiment some more.

I have an old BU-303 USB GPS receiver that we used to use with a laptop in the car. It's redundent now due to a dedicated GPS device.

What I wanted to do as a starting project was to take the USB out of it and power it some other way and display the output (the NMEA messages) to a small LCD (**broken link removed**).

Is this something that is possible? I know it's not a lot of money, but would like to know if it's possible before I buy the bits that I need.

Thanks in advance.

 

[picasm]

No, It cannot be done using that LCD module, it has no external inputs.
**broken link removed**

Secondly, your GPS receiver is designed to plug into a USB Host controller which means you either need a pc or an expensive host controller interface module to interface to it.

If you are willing to risk dismantling the gps receiver, you may be lucky to find it has an accessable serial output somewhere on it's pcb that you could use to interface to a microcontroller to decode the nmea protocol.

I don't recommend you attempt this project just yet. I suggest you could start by reading tutorials about interfacing a standard lcd module to a PIC microcontroller:


Then, when you are familiar with programing pic microcontrollers, buy a cheap, used gps module from ebay that has a TTL/CMOS serial data output and write some code to parse the nmea protocol and send it to the lcd. (You will need to do some research for this!)

 

[dchurch24]

Hi,

thanks for the reply.

Ill do just that - I don't use Windows though, so I will have a hunt about for a software equivlent of the software on that link.

I've never heard of 'pic', but this looks really interesting.

Thanks again!