Ava High Altitude Balloon Project

Credits : Thanks to Dave Akerman who’s NMEA Parser code these examples are based on.

Ok so now we have the GPS talking to the Arduino and you have some method of debugging its time to read that NMEA from the GPS and turn it into something we can use within our code.

The basic principle of an NMEA parser is to locate the NMEA sentences we are interested in , usually GPGGA and GPRMC. These two sentences contain most of the information you need for navigation, GPGGA is the main one used. This example will show how to parse the information from GPGGA.

Side note on the Ublox 8 series GPGGA is replaced by GNGGA by default to indicate the navigation information is from multiple GNSS sources (I.e American GPS and Russian GLONASS normally). So for this example we will look for $$GNGGA sentences. GGA sentences contain essential fix data which provide a 3D location.

An example of this is :

$GNGGA,123519,4807.038,N,01131.000,E,1,08,0.9,545.4,M,46.9,M,,*47

Where :

     GGA          Global Positioning System Fix Data
     123519       Fix taken at 12:35:19 UTC
     4807.038,N   Latitude 48 deg 07.038' N
     01131.000,E  Longitude 11 deg 31.000' E
     1            Fix quality: 0 = invalid
                               1 = GPS fix (SPS)
                               2 = DGPS fix
                               3 = PPS fix
             4 = Real Time Kinematic
             5 = Float RTK
                               6 = estimated (dead reckoning) (2.3 feature)
             7 = Manual input mode
             8 = Simulation mode
     08           Number of satellites being tracked
     0.9          Horizontal dilution of position
     545.4,M      Altitude, Meters, above mean sea level
     46.9,M       Height of geoid (mean sea level) above WGS84
                      ellipsoid
     (empty field) time in seconds since last DGPS update
     (empty field) DGPS station ID number
     *47          the checksum data, always begins with *

So we need to read the incoming data from the GPS module, look for a $ to indicate the start of a sentence, when the full sentence is read in go see if it is a GNGGA line. Building on the previous code we add a new procedure to read data in and transmit to the debug when a sentence is detected (or not).

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

#define GPSENABLE 2
SoftwareSerial mySerial(4, 3); // RX, TX
byte GPSBuffer[82];
byte GPSIndex=0;
void setup()
{
  pinMode(GPSENABLE, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(GPSENABLE, HIGH);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  mySerial.begin(9600);
  mySerial.println("Test Program");
}

void loop()
{
  CheckGPS();
}

void CheckGPS()
{
  int inByte;
  while (Serial.available() > 0)
  {
    inByte = Serial.read();

    if ((inByte =='$') || (GPSIndex >= 80))
    {
      GPSIndex = 0;
    }

    if (inByte != '\r')
    {
      GPSBuffer[GPSIndex++] = inByte;
    }

    if (inByte == '\n')
    {
      ProcessGPSLine();
      GPSIndex = 0;
    }
  }
}
void ProcessGPSLine()
{
  if ((GPSBuffer[1] == 'G') && (GPSBuffer[2] == 'N') && (GPSBuffer[3] == 'G') && (GPSBuffer[4] == 'G') && (GPSBuffer[5] == 'A'))
  {
    mySerial.println("GNGGA Detected!");
  }
  else
  {
    mySerial.println("It was something else!");
  }
}

Now from your software serial monitor you should see :

GNGGA Detected!
It was something else!
It was something else!
It was something else!
It was something else!
It was something else!
It was something else!
It was something else!
GNGGA Detected!

As you can see we are now detecting when we have a $GNGGA sentence and ignoring the others. So lets start extracting some data from that $GNGGA string.

We know the structure of the sentence, it starts with a $ all the fields are delimited by a comma. Firstly lets up the debug speed to 19200 as we are likely to be outputting data fairly quickly. Amend the connection speed in PuTTY to 19200 and note the change in the code below.Comment out line 31 to stop the NMEA from the GPS appearing.

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>

#define GPSENABLE 2
SoftwareSerial mySerial(4, 3); // RX, TX
byte GPSBuffer[82];
byte GPSIndex=0;
unsigned int GPS_Satellites=0;
unsigned int GPS_Altitude=0;

void setup()
{
  pinMode(GPSENABLE, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(GPSENABLE, HIGH);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  mySerial.begin(19200);
  mySerial.println("Test Program");
}

void loop()
{
  CheckGPS();
}

void CheckGPS()
{
  int inByte;
  while (Serial.available() > 0)
  {
    inByte = Serial.read();

    mySerial.write(inByte); // Output exactly what we read from the GPS to debug

    if ((inByte =='$') || (GPSIndex >= 80))
    {
      GPSIndex = 0;
    }

    if (inByte != '\r')
    {
      GPSBuffer[GPSIndex++] = inByte;
    }

    if (inByte == '\n')
    {
      ProcessGPSLine();
      GPSIndex = 0;
    }
  }
}
void ProcessGPSLine()
{
  if ((GPSBuffer[1] == 'G') && (GPSBuffer[2] == 'N') && (GPSBuffer[3] == 'G') && (GPSBuffer[4] == 'G') && (GPSBuffer[5] == 'A'))
  {
    mySerial.println("GNGGA Detected!");
    ProcessGNGGACommand();
    mySerial.print("Altitude :");
    mySerial.println(GPS_Altitude);
    mySerial.print("Satellites :");
    mySerial.println(GPS_Satellites);
  }
}
void ProcessGNGGACommand()
{
  int i, j, k, IntegerPart;
  unsigned int Altitude;

  // $GNGGA,123519,4807.038,N,01131.000,E,1,08,0.9,545.4,M,46.9,M,,*47
  //                                               =====  <-- altitude in field 8

  IntegerPart = 1;
  GPS_Satellites = 0;
  Altitude = 0;

  for (i=7, j=0, k=0; (i<GPSIndex) && (j<9); i++) // We start at 7 so we ignore the '$GNGGA,'
  {
    if (GPSBuffer[i] == ',')
    {
      j++;    // Segment index
      k=0;    // Index into target variable
      IntegerPart = 1;
    }
    else
    {
      if (j == 6)
      {
        // Satellite Count
        if ((GPSBuffer[i] >= '0') && (GPSBuffer[i] <= '9'))
        {
          GPS_Satellites = GPS_Satellites * 10;
          GPS_Satellites += (unsigned int)(GPSBuffer[i] - '0');
        }
      }
      else if (j == 8)
      {
        // Altitude
        if ((GPSBuffer[i] >= '0') && (GPSBuffer[i] <= '9') && IntegerPart)
        {
          Altitude = Altitude * 10;
          Altitude += (unsigned int)(GPSBuffer[i] - '0');
        }
        else
        {
          IntegerPart = 0;
        }
      }
    }
    GPS_Altitude = Altitude;
  }
}

Why not the rest ? Exercise left for reader 🙂