Happy birthday Theo

Happy birthday Theo. Today I bought a ultra cheap gps receiver for the computer from the local computer store, the thing was $25 but it did not come with any cables. It took a while but I got it figured out, so for anyone else who has a GPS-201 and doesn’t want to buy a cable from the company that made it the solution is  you need to get a female PS/2 connector and a DB9 connector from  a computer or electronics store.

The pins are PS/2:

  1. ground
  2. Vcc   +5 volts
  3.  
  4. RS232 RX
  5. RS232 TX

DB9:

  1. Ground
  2.  
  3.  
  4. RX
  5. TX

All you need is ground to ground, RX to TX, and TX to RX, and the com port you use won’t supply a 5V Vcc I got it from a external power supply, you may be able to get it from a USB port, an internal wire form the power supply, a voltage regulator powered from your car’s electrical system, or wherever you want to get it from. I plan to use this to feed GPS information into my fish finder rather than having to bring my Garmin GPS with me, I’ll find 5V somewhere.

I hooked it to the computer and ran the test program and it gave me the NEMA (I think it’s nema) information on the screen, told me what satellites it was using and the current location, speed, elevation, and time. I can’t complain for $25 plus one $3.99 cable. And one night of doing.