Tinier GPS

After an enforced absence from the Margaret Street workshops, I’m bracing myself for a final push to get some serious making done in preparation for an exhibition coming up at the end of April.

Although I’ve not been able to get at the woodwork equipment, I’ve not been idle and have been working away at improving the code and GPS set-up that I’ll be using to animate the objects I’m producing.

I’d like to say I’ve built on the improvements I made whilst in New York, however it’s probably more accurate to say I’ve torn it all down and started again from scratch…

Here’s the kit I’ve been using up until now:

1 x Arduino clone (RBBB); 2 x bare bones Arduino clones; 2 x GPS receivers; OpenLog

Having initially tried and failed to satisfactorily read from the two GPS receivers via serial, I’d switched to using multiple Arduino units communicating over I2C. All built off the tutorials and examples made available at the wonderful Lady Ada site (and a lot of help from other generous people!).

A year and a lot of learning later, I thought it would be worth a second attempt at a one-microcontroller set-up. Having used Mikal Hart’s TinyGPS library for the Chin Up Chapeau, that seemed a promising way to go. And here’s the result:

One RBBB Arduino clone alternating between reading two GPS receivers via TinyGPS and SoftwareSerial (also based on work by Mikal Hart, available with V1.0 of the Arduino IDE).

I’ve been testing it over recent weeks and the results are a very close match to the lines I was getting with the original original set-up using two PDAs and mscape.

A walk through the city centre earlier today (click for larger version)

It’s not all about cutting things out, though: I’ve also added in a transistor to control a solenoid. Tomorrow I plan to insert it all inside a large wooden drum and see what happens…