GPS Receivers and RTLS

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

What have people here found in terms of high sensitivity GPS receivers that get a good fix indoors / inside of warehouses / etc?

I've so far tried:

  • GlobalSat ND-105C:

    • Pros: Small, Low power, decent fix when outside, inexpensive
    • Cons: Poor fix indoors, still needs USB adapter

  • Garmin 18x USB:

    • Pros: Long extension cable, high sensitivity, good indoor fix, not too expensive for the quality
    • Cons: Does not play well with OpenWRT gpsd and kmod garmin driver packages

  • GlobalSat BU-353S4:

    • Pros: Same format as the Garmin above, long extension cable, high sensitivity, not too expensive, works well with OpenWRT pl2303 driver and gpsd packages
    • Cons: Does not have high enough sensitivity to get a good fix indoors

Does anyone have experience with additional GPS receivers or even know how to acquire coordinates in other manners such as WiFi or BLERTLS through the use of OpenWRT packages and certain hardware?

2

Why not to use Garmin 18x PC ?

3

The only finding I made so far is, using old and cheap devices indoors is not worth the effort.
I used an ancient eTrex which was nice to get started with geocaching and did quite a nice job in terms of outdoor usage; but dropped significantly in performance when used beneath a roof, let a lone a metal one.

I loved the serial communication though.
It was easy enough to write some script to update the connected routers geolocation on a regular basis.
Good luck!

1 Like
4

@reinerotto I'm using a MiFi router with a USB port, no input for PC

5

@aiyion Thanks for the insight, I've been looking at this page for some info:

https://gpsd.gitlab.io/gpsd/hardware.html

Based on the reviews I may try something from Navisys since someone mentioned about one of the receivers that it has good indoor performance.

I have one problem with this list (which is the reason why I'm here hi hello) being that it's not updated.

6

I'm not sure if it helps, but have you thought about handling the locating process on your smartphone?
Whatever your use-case may be it's relative easy to write an app serving data running in the background.