Using the arduino infrastructure can be dirt cheap! The arduino itself is
just an Atmel atMega microcontroller with the arduino bootloader burned into
the bootloader section of the controllers flash. For embedding you can buy a
DIP atmel atmega328 chip already burned for less than $5. There are several
vendors on eBay that sell the chips and arduino clones. The "nano's"
(arduino with onboard ftdi usb serial) and "Pro Mini's (without the usb) go
for around $12 and $9 respectively and have the power supply regulators and
clock already done for you. The hardware and software are all open source.
Dale NV8U
-----Original Message-----
From: Keenan Tims
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 10:27 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Fwd: Re: Contact: Jupiter GPS questions
There is an MSP430 port of GCC that works fine, and mspdebug is able to
write the code to the chip via the programming hardware that comes on
the Launchpad boards. TI also provides several free IDEs with code size
limits, if you prefer that route. Definitely not as easy for a beginner
as an Arduino - the chips are more complicated and the documentation a
bit more arcane - but there's still a good community around them and
decent tools available for free. There's also the ST 'DISCOVERY' series.
Much more powerful chips, on a board, with a USB programmer still around
the $10 mark, but coding for ARM is again another step up the difficulty
ladder.
Plenty of options that will work to send a few bytes of serial at power
on, but for a complete beginner I'd say just spend the extra money and
get an Arduino or chipKit because they're super easy to get going on.
Such a project should be a couple hours of work, even for a beginner.
Just figuring out how to set up the compiler and linker properly and
init the chip can be a week's work for a newbie on ARM...
The other option, of course, is to modify whatever you're using for APRS
to send the string. I don't think you mentioned which tracker / software
you intend to use, but it maybe be possible.
Keenan VE7XEN
On 2012-10-19 6:45 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Hi TJ,
The Jupiter receivers I have are the standard part, and like you I have
found detailed design info hard to come by.
All I can suggest for your issue is to use a small microcontroller to send
the commands to the receiver at power up, then go to sleep until the next
power cycle.
I have been using Silabs' Toolsticks for hacks of that nature. There is an
example of such hack with my GPS monitor project.
You do not need to buy any software (the Silabs IDE is free, and you can
use either the free and limited Keil demo C compiler, or the free and
unlimited SDCC C compiler.)
I have C code for talking to a Maxim DS1629 RTC, and you could use my GPS
monitor project as a starting point.
Even though the GPS monitor only listens to the Thunderbolt, there is
software support for sending messages as well in the source code.
The F330 Toolstick is about $10 and the programmer is about $20.
Alternately, TI has cheaper kits for their MPS430, but the C compilers are
not free, and writing in assembly is not my idea of fun.
I am sure those familiar with the PICs will suggest their favorite
solution as well.
Didier
PS: I take the liberty of sending this to the time-nuts list, as there may
be other people interested to chime in.
Sent from my Droid Razr 4G LTE wireless tracker using MailDroid.
-----Original Message-----
From: TJ Fiel <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 3:41 PM
Subject: Contact: Jupiter GPS questions
Name: TJ Fiel
Email: [email protected]
Subject: Jupiter GPS questions
Message: Hello KO4BB,
Many thanks for making so many resources available through your
website. I'd never seen Labmon 7 before and it cured several
problems with previous versions.
I'm attempting to use a Jupiter serial GPS receiver with APRS. This
is an OEM version made for Etak/Sony about 1999, p.n. TU40-D310-011.
It uses the Rockwell Scorpio DSP (11577-11) but implements few
features. I've never found a datasheet or even a pinout for this
chip. Conexant stopped producing this chip about ten years ago and
now they don't appear to answer their phones. Apparently they never
released chip level data to the public for this DSP, only for
built-up GPS modules.
My biggest issues are automatically forcing NMEA out at startup and
possibly adding an RTC. Any insights you can give will be greatly
appreciated.
Best wishes and thanks,
TJ Fiel
IP: 71.34.158.74
HOST: 71-34-158-74.clsp.qwest.net
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