GPS untit for geocaching on Dell Mini 9

[nbotticelli]

Hello,

I am working on putting together a summer tech camp for 5th grade students using Edubuntu on the Dell Mini 9.

Next year as part of our laptop initiative all of our sixth grade students in the district will be receiving a netbook to use with them throughout the day and they will be loaded with Edubuntu.

Last year I taught a summer camp where we also used Edubuntu but it was more focused on taking apart and building new computers (towers) but this time it will be more application based and we'll be using the netbooks so that when school starts I will already have plenty of sixth grade students who will be resident "experts".

One of the activities that I am planning on doing is geocaching. Luckily we are in a rural area with a large park and woods to explore around in.

What I would like to try is to install (usb?) GPS units in the Dell Mini 9 and use them to do geocaching on without a seperate GPS unit. I want it to be installed "inside" the netbook.

My question is what kind of GPS unit would be the most compatible with the Dell Mini 9 and Ubuntu, and what kind of software is out there that would enable to use it for geocaching.

Thank you!

-Nicco

[nbotticelli]

Okay, maybe the better question should be what is a good usb GPS device for Ubuntu in general?

Anyone?

[notwen]

This link (http://mydellmini.com/forum/integrated-gps-on-my-mini-9-t167.html) might be worth a look, hope it helps. =]

[Godly]

This link (http://mydellmini.com/forum/integrated-gps-on-my-mini-9-t167.html) might be worth a look, hope it helps. =]

Great article. If that doesn't help, I don't know what will. Sounds like a project for this weekend! :P

[nbotticelli]

I checked out that article, looks good. That's actually exactly what I would like to do. Hide the usb GPS unit inside the mini 9.

Looking more closely at the article though the person doing the mod is using XP Home. So the next question is, does it run on Ubuntu? The website where the gps unit is from says it's compatible with linux, but it looks like it is Redhat Linux.

Does anyone have any experience actually using a usb gps dongle on an ubuntu machine for geocaching?

[notwen]

Does anyone have any experience actually using a usb gps dongle on an ubuntu machine for geocaching?

That I cannot comment on, perhaps create an account over at mydellmini and get in touch w/ others who have experimented w/ GPS/GPS software for Linux. Interesting project, please keep us updated and best of luck. =]

[Antipode]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd like to say that I ordered the same GPS unit with no problems in Ubuntu. It's a Prolific PL2303 chipset, and is pretty much plug n' play. with GPSDrive and tangoGPS. I'm having a bit of trouble getting it to work with Google Earth, but I'm not that far into this little project yet either.

As a note, the serial baud of the device is 38400, or so says the broken English of the manual.

[River7471]

Anyone have any idea why my BU353 GPS puck works with TangoGPS and not with any other linux based program?

I can't get it to work in OpenCPN, Roadnav, and other linux nav programs.