I need help in making a GPS module

[binishmatheww]

Hi,

I am looking into developing a GPS module which communicates with an Android phone via a USB cable.
I am an Android engineer who is new to hardware engineering.

Any help is much appreciated.

[binishmatheww]

I want to build a device which collects location information with GPS using the internet via a SIM card.
I also need this data to be transferred to my Android device via a USB cable for realtime processing.

Currently, in one of my Android apps, I collect location information from the built-in GPS module of the mobile phone. But this is sometimes inaccurate due to hardware limitations and Operating system throttling.
This affects real-time processing in the app.

So, I want to make a dedicated GPS device which outputs the location data via a USB cable to the mobile phone so that the app could process it in real-time.

[salmanfaris]

Hi @binishmatheww , Welcome to Makergram.

I see you want to build a GPS Logger. For that, you can use any basic GPS module available in the market such as NEO-6M GPS Module or any from the list here.

After that, you need to choose a microcontroller, which can communicate with the GPS module read the GPS and translate the NMEA (data format for GPS packets) to a more usable format (you can do the post-processing in the phone too).

Then you can send the data to hone via BLE, for this you can use a BLE-supported microcontroller or use a standalone BLE co-processor. My suggestion is to go with esp32 as it has BLE support and other cores can be used for the GPS data acquisition. To do the post-processing and other things you can do with the mobile app.

You can split the project into different parts.

1. GPS Data Acquisition. (You can use Arduino IDE + ESP32/Pico W + GPS module of your choice)
2. GPS data translation (There will be Arduino lib which can make the translation easier)
3. Send Data to the mobile app via BLE (Arduino IDE + ESP32/Pico W + BLE LIB + Mobile application).

Hope you get an idea, please check and let us know. Happy building.

[binishmatheww]

@salmanfaris thanks for the reply Salman .
Is it difficult to transfer the data via a USB cable instead of Bluetooth?
Also, can we have all these data transfer modes in a single module ?

1. Transfer the data via Bluetooth if is connected.
2. Transfer the data via a USB cable if it is plugged in.
3. Transfer the data over the internet.

If we have all these modes in a single module, will it increase the processor load ?

[salmanfaris]

@binishmatheww There will be a single device, but I can't find one for now that has both GPS, GSM, BLE and USB Support.

@binishmatheww said in I need help in making a GPS module:

Also, can we have all these data transfer modes in a single module?

You can make the priority and depending on that it can switch different modes.

@binishmatheww said in I need help in making a GPS module:

Transfer the data via Bluetooth if is connected.

This can be achieved with BLE transfer.

@binishmatheww said in I need help in making a GPS module:

Transfer the data via a USB cable if it is plugged in.

It can be achieved via Serial communication or USB HID profile.

@binishmatheww said in I need help in making a GPS module:

Transfer the data over the internet.

here, we can route the data to the cloud over the phone or directly to the cloud via a GSM module or WiFi. I think it will be overkill if we use an external modem, better to cache the data and push to the cloud via phone and BLE if the live data is not needed.

[binishmatheww]

@salmanfaris thanks a lot.

[salmanfaris]

@binishmatheww All the best. Let us know if you need any help.