Earthmate Serial Not Working

**Chairboy** · 01-05-2005, 12:36 AM

Aaaargh! Reams of bad information abound on this thread!

Fact: The SERIAL Earthmate does not support NMEA. This consumer GPS is essentially unique in this unfortunate aspect.

Fact: Serial Earthmate uses something called the Rockwell Binary Protocol to communicate with GPS programs.

Fact: Very few programs communicate with this.

There are no RBP->NMEA converters that I know of, last time I checked, there was a serial device that would do the conversion, but it cost more then a good USB GPS.

Suggestion, unless you're hip to only using Street Atlas, consider getting another GPS.

How do I know all this? I have a serial Earthmate sitting in my garage.

**0l33l** · 01-05-2005, 01:02 AM

http://www.hamhud.net/ka9mva/earthmate.htm

**mattdisaster** · 01-05-2005, 10:50 AM

Chairboy:
Thanks so much for clearing this up, maybe someone should make a sticky in here "Everything you wanted to know about gps's" So poeple know about what brands do what and common questions. I know I had no idea about the earthmate other then, well that it was just a great gps.

0l33l:
Thanks for the link, I read it and it looks like the guy might be onto something, though he hasn't finished it. In which case leaves me back to square 1 with a gps I can use unless I use their ****ty apps. But I could be wrong I just woke up I'll re-read it again to make sure. Thanks alot guys for all the help!

-matt

**0l33l** · 01-05-2005, 11:00 AM

Originally Posted by mattdisaster

0l33l:
Thanks for the link, I read it and it looks like the guy might be onto something, though he hasn't finished it. In which case leaves me back to square 1 with a gps I can use unless I use their ****ty apps. But I could be wrong I just woke up I'll re-read it again to make sure. Thanks alot guys for all the help!

-matt

Some guy did succeed in converting his, just search google. That was one of the first links I found

**mattdisaster** · 01-05-2005, 11:05 AM

Awesome! I'l search it now, but I did find this on the top of the page, a sentence translator that turns the earthmate to nmea.
http://www.byonics.com/gst-1/
Thanks again for all the help!

-matt

edit: I just searched and I think we were talking about the same site, haha. Thanks again!

**Chairboy** · 01-05-2005, 02:45 PM

For the $37 it costs, plus shipping, plus wiring it for power, you could get a USB GPS instead. It's worth considering, especially since it'll probably be of higher reliability, be self powered, etc.