Arduino Projects For Dummies

Chapter 13

Building a GPS Data Logger

In This Chapter

Understanding GPS

Building a GPS data logger shield

Collecting data with your data logger

Plotting your course using online maps and Google Earth

You’ve no doubt used the Global Positioning System (GPS) either in your car or on your phone. GPS is everywhere — literally over our heads, all the time. Designed for the United States military to aid with defense systems, GPS uses a constellation of satellites to provide precise location information to any receiver that can receive and decode the GPS signal. This task was challenging, as you can imagine. GPSs in the early days were as big as a small suitcase. But these days, you can get a GPS receiver on a wristwatch!

Only trouble is, many of the consumer products out there don’t give you the flexibility to do whatever you want with the GPS data. That’s where Arduino comes to the rescue! In this project, you can use an Arduino and a GPS shield kit to build a battery-powered GPS receiver that logs data to a mini SD card for several hours. You program your Arduino to collect the data, ...