David J Taylor wrote:
I've done some more careful inspection of the Sure GPS comms trace:
It really looks like the GPS does _not_ listen to commands by default,
instead the controlling program sends a solitary '0' char to ask for
"permission to talk".
About 200 ms later the GPS boards drop the CD (Carrier Detect) line,
and then the gps.exe program sends the private NMEA message.
As soon as the ending <CR><LF> arrives the GPS turns CD back on and
restarts the configured NMEA messages.
If this sequence is required by default, then it must also be possible
to turn off such very non-standard GPS behavior, right?
Terje
Fascinating! I wonder whether that GPS "chip" is really intended for
talking to a on-board microprocessor, and we're seeing the raw
behaviour? As the board can forget any baud rate changes (although NTP
works correctly at the default 9600 baud), perhaps it might forget any
programming changes as well? Presumably, you didn't get the programming
manual as yet?
No, that partial PDF listing is my only resource, along with the
SURE-supplied programs.
There are more tweaks to the comms protocol:
If the program sends a zero ('0') the GPS turns off CD (as reported
above) after 200 ms.
If the GPS then doesn't get any commands within the next 100 ms, it
reasserts CD and goes on as before.
(The gps.exe program will send pairs of '0' chars every once in a while,
only the first zero results in the CD toggle, the second one a little
bit later is ignored.)
It also looks like the program has to wait for a lull in the NMEA stream
before sending that '0': The gps sends all configured strings
back-to-back, then waits until the next second, while the program seems
to wait until it sees a 40-50 ms gap of silence before trying that '0'
attention request.
I.e. the proper programming setup seems to be:
1: Listen to incoming chars.
2: After a CRLF sequence, start a timer: If a new char arrives within
less than 40 ms, goto 1.
3: Send '0', start timer waiting for CD to drop.
4: If CD drops before any new chars arrive, we are ready to send our
command, so send it out before the 100 ms gps timeout.
Terje
--
- <Terje.Mathisen at tmsw.no>
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
_______________________________________________
questions mailing list
questions@lists.ntp.org
http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/questions
