GPS Dongle - Astroberry

[Doug64]

Hi,

Can anyone provide me with details of a GPS dongle that works with Astroberry.

I'm fed up seeing Warsaw and I have been unable to change the virtual GPS to show my location.  I've changed my Geographical Location and rebooted my system but it just keeps showing Warsaw and flashes up 'waiting'.

The GPS will be handy when out and about.

Thanks

Doug

Edited May 15, 2020 by Doug64

[fozzybear]

have a look at your /etc/location.conf file and change the settings to your locale...

mine is like this

[default]
latitude  = 49.3901
longitude = -1.5327
elevation = 30
 

Dam just gave away my location nothing to steal from me anyway.... I,ve got 10 Rottweilers  by the way and all police trained....

 

[stash_old]

Your Phone if it has a GPS or Ublox 7/8

[fozzybear]

3 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Your Phone if it has a GPS or Ublox 7/8

As @stash_old quoted I use a ublox and works ok with mine  usb external one and works

[Doug64]

51 minutes ago, fozzybear said:

have a look at your /etc/location.conf file and change the settings to your locale...

mine is like this

[default]
latitude  = 49.3901
longitude = -1.5327
elevation = 30
 

Dam just gave away my location nothing to steal from me anyway.... I,ve got 10 Rottweilers  by the way and all police trained....

 

Hi, 

 

Tried this and it stated permission denied

Doug

[RadekK]

I promise that I will add nice looking GUI to edit location in the next release!

In the meantime run

sudo nano /etc/location.conf

When asked enter astroberry password.

When finished editing your location use Ctrl+o to save and Ctrl+x to exit. Reboot and you will be at home 😉

[Doug64]

9 hours ago, RadekK said:

I promise that I will add nice looking GUI to edit location in the next release!

In the meantime run

sudo nano /etc/location.conf

When asked enter astroberry password.

When finished editing your location use Ctrl+o to save and Ctrl+x to exit. Reboot and you will be at home 😉

Thanks

Doug

[Doug64]

Hi,

Yesterday evening I bought two GPS apps for my phone (ShareGPS & NetGPS) to try with Astroberry.

I followed some posts/videos on how to set these up and I managed to connect them to Astroberry.

When I started Ekos using a test profile with the  NMEA driver everything loaded and a fix was obtained however when the information came up in Ekos the longnitude details were wrong instead of it being -2.xxxx it was showing 357.xxxx. the time and  date were also wrong.  It did exactly the same with both GPS Apps.

Does anyone know why this is happening.

I've nearly got it sorted but something is just not right.

Doug

[stash_old]

Blame the Multitude of ways in which lat/long are being used/represented by different software.  Think Kstars uses degree's from east(or is it west) so it uses 0-359 not the DD:MM:SS or DD.DD.

So subtracting 2.xxxx from 360 you get 357.xxxxx

Not saying there is not error just I found it confusing too originally.

[RadekK]

Yes, as @stash_old said KStars uses positive numbers for longitude i.e. 0-359 instead -180 - 0 - 180 (don't ask me why). However it does not influence anything except introduces some confusion.

Regarding the time - GPS provides UTC time with no time zone info.

[Doug64]

Hi Radek & Stash,

Ok, so the below is correct and I've managed to set up the GPS app on my phone to work correctly with Kstars / Ekos

 

 

 

Do I need to change anything else within Kstars/Ekos for the GPS information in Astroberry to change to show my location and the GPS info.  At the moment it is just flashing away with the words 'waiting'.  

May I have to disable Virtual GPS.

Doug

 

[stash_old]

15 hours ago, fozzybear said:

I,ve got 10 Rottweilers  by the way and all police trained.

 And I have 1 hairless pink Chiwawa that eats Rottweilers(all 10) for breakfeast - Police trained or not - and then spits out the bones to make an Astroberry Focuser.

Also its a trained thief and has a nick name - "The Pink Panther" LOL

[RadekK]

3 hours ago, Doug64 said:

May I have to disable Virtual GPS.

Yes, you are almost done. Just disable Virtual GPS by running: sudo systemctl stop virtualgps.service && sudo systemctl disable virtualgps.service

[Doug64]

2 hours ago, stash_old said:

 And I have 1 hairless pink Chiwawa that eats Rottweilers(all 10) for breakfeast - Police trained or not - and then spits out the bones to make an Astroberry Focuser.

Also its a trained thief and has a nick name - "The Pink Panther" LOL

LOL, I have a Border Terrier that will lick you to death.

[Doug64]

19 minutes ago, RadekK said:

Yes, you are almost done. Just disable Virtual GPS by running: sudo systemctl stop virtualgps.service && sudo systemctl disable virtualgps.service

Thanks very much for your help.

Astroberry is great and just what I want but it has been a massive learning curve.

I had to start learning some basic coding  and have started to work my way around the software and all the protocols etc.   Once up and running the softwate appears to be very similar to software I've used in the past.

Thaks again for all your hard work

Doug

[Doug64]

35 minutes ago, RadekK said:

Yes, you are almost done. Just disable Virtual GPS by running: sudo systemctl stop virtualgps.service && sudo systemctl disable virtualgps.service

Hi Radek,

I've just done the above and rebooted my Rpi4.

After stopping the virtual GPS I went back into KStars/Ekos and started my test file with NMEA drivers selected.  Ekos loaded everything correctly and I got a GPS fix for my location however the GPS Information did not change it just kept flashing up 'waiting'.  I kept my GPS on for about 20 minutes with a 60 second update and still the GPS information failed to change.

So I'll either have to move to Warsaw or forget about it, I take it wont interfere with anything in Kstars / Ekos.

Once I have the initial GPS fix for Ekos can I stop/disable the GPS app on my phone as it is very power intensive.

Thanks

Doug

[stash_old]

1 hour ago, Doug64 said:

Hi Radek,

I've just done the above and rebooted my Rpi4.

After stopping the virtual GPS I went back into KStars/Ekos and started my test file with NMEA drivers selected.  Ekos loaded everything correctly and I got a GPS fix for my location however the GPS Information did not change it just kept flashing up 'waiting'.  I kept my GPS on for about 20 minutes with a 60 second update and still the GPS information failed to change.

So I'll either have to move to Warsaw or forget about it, I take it wont interfere with anything in Kstars / Ekos.

Once I have the initial GPS fix for Ekos can I stop/disable the GPS app on my phone as it is very power intensive.

Thanks

Doug

1. There is/was a setting to do a refresh only every XXXX secs - why need to do more than 1 I will never know - any how setting this will get the fix and time from your phone then disconnect phone.

2. Display location file details you changed - if its in the wrong format or hasn't been saved it will revert to Warsaw.

3. Still problems put in a error report on Astroberry GITHUB with all details - debug/logs/screen print etc anything that might help.

[RadekK]

Let's step back. It's all about how GPS works in linux system. Let me explain this

To provide system-wide GPS info (location + time) linux system uses GPSD service. It grabs raw data from GPS device and provides it to whole operating system and applications that need this information. KStars is one of such applications, Astroberry panels (GPS and Astro) are the other ones. If you go this way whole system and both applications will get proper GPS data - Astroberry panels directly from GPSD service and KStars using INDI GPSD driver (note the driver's name).

What you have done is using your phone as a GPS data source, raw data in NMEA format. You read this data with INDI GPS NMEA driver (note the driver's name) directly to KStars, not using system-wide GPSD service. This means that system or any other application is aware about GPS data. This way you get proper GPS location and time in you KStars but just cannot expect other apps to work this way (namely Astroberry GPS and Astro Panels). See What's difference between INDI GPSD (this driver) and INDI GPS NMEA drivers? section of GPS driver's description.

The only way to handle GPS system-wide, including Astroberry panels, KStars or any other application that uses GPS data is using system-wide GPSD service with either (1) GPS device connected to it or (2) virtual GPS simulating GPS device. In the latter case you have to set your location manually as described in Astroberry FAQ:

Quote

What is the source of location data in GPS Panel and Astro Panel accessible in sliding panel (when connected with web browser)?

The panels use GPS readings for your location. If you don't have GPS the panel uses virtualgps provided with Astroberry Server. You can set your static location by editing /etc/location.conf file or using Preferences/Geographic Location menu. After the change reboot or restart virtual GPS by running: sudo systemctl restart virtualgps.service

I have not tested it but you can try combining the two approaches i.e. phone as a GPS data source and system-wide GPSD service:

1) Edit gpsd configuration file by running 'sudo nano /etc/default/gpsd' and set DEVICES="" to DEVICES="tcp://phone_ip:port"

2) Replace INDI GPS NMEA driver with INDI GPSD driver in your profile

3) Reboot to activate the changes

Note: phone_ip:port should be the same as used in NMEA driver - this is network source for gps data served by your phone.

[Doug64]

Hi Radek,

Somehow and I don't exactly know how I've managed to get my phone NMEA GPS picked up by Kstars/Ekos, it identifies my location which is the main thing I want and the GPS panel is also showing Liverpool where I live which is fine with me.

Now that I've got this working I will leave it as it is.

I've got a couple of back-up SD cards with everything on them and I will use one of these over the next couple of days to try using my phone as a GPS data source and system-wide GPSD service as per your comments above, we will see what happens

Doug

[SplintUK]

I downloaded Astroberry for the first time this week onto my old RPi 3 that was sat in a drawer. In no time I had it talking to my HEQ5 and Canon DSLRs. I bought a £5 real-time clock on amazon and had that up and running in 10 mins and today my £20 usb gps dongle came and I had that up and running with GPSD in in about 10 mins too. (Last step too 5 mins to work out, remembering to add the GPSD to the indi server config on the left before connecting to the Pi) 
 

Im really impressed with astroberry so far. 

the GPS dongle Is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B07LBWF1P7

[SplintUK]

And now I have it working with SkySafari on my phone and iPad too. I was thinking about spending £300 on a SkiFi 3 last week until I tried Astroberry, now I can just use my Astroberry, awesome.  Am I starting to sound too much like a fanboy now...😎

[RadekK]

There are some pitfalls too, but keep going 😉

 

Edited May 21, 2020 by RadekK

[CedricTheBrave]

 

On 21/05/2020 at 01:39, SplintUK said:

I downloaded Astroberry for the first time this week onto my old RPi 3 that was sat in a drawer. In no time I had it talking to my HEQ5 and Canon DSLRs. I bought a £5 real-time clock on amazon and had that up and running in 10 mins and today my £20 usb gps dongle came and I had that up and running with GPSD in in about 10 mins too. (Last step too 5 mins to work out, remembering to add the GPSD to the indi server config on the left before connecting to the Pi) 
 

Im really impressed with astroberry so far. 

the GPS dongle Is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B07LBWF1P7

i have the same gps dongle which appears to work fine 

i have switched off virtual gps and added the selection in ekos edited the file to show the /dev/ttyACM0 and the gps data looks good 

changed the indi settings to select GPS

however the button in geographic that says get location is greyed out! 

any ideas what I have missed? its usually something stupid

 

[SgtBunny]

Sorry for the dumb noob question but is the elevation in meters or feet?

[CedricTheBrave]

meters