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Writing GPS Applications in .NET: Part 1
Jon Person is the author of the award-winning “GPS.NET” software now in use in over two thousand GPS applications in all industries, from geocaching to disease outbreak prevention. Jon runs his co...
The Core of An Interpreter
The first step in making an NMEA interpreter is writing a method which does two things: separating each sentence into its individual words and examining the first word to figure out what information is available to extract. Listing 1-1 shows the start of the interpreter class.
(Listing 1-1: The core of an NMEA interpreter is a function which divides NMEA sentences into individual words.)
'** Listing 1-1. The core of an NMEA interpreter
'*******************************************************
Public Class NmeaInterpreter
' Processes information from the GPS receiver
Public Function Parse(ByVal sentence As String) As Boolean
' Divide the sentence into words
Dim Words() As String = GetWords(sentence)
' Look at the first word to decide where to go next
Select Case Words(0)
Case "$GPRMC" ' A "Recommended Minimum" sentence was found!
' Indicate that the sentence was recognized
Return True
Case Else
' Indicate that the sentence was not recognized
Return False
End Select
End Function
' Divides a sentence into individual words
Public Function GetWords(ByVal sentence As String) As String()
Return sentence.Split(","c)
End Function
End Class
The next step is to perform actual extraction of information, starting with latitude and longitude. Latitude and longitude are stored in the form “DDD°MM’SS.S,” where D represents hours (also called “degrees”), M represents minutes and S represents seconds. Coordinates can be displayed in shorthand, such as “DD°MM.M’” or even “DD°.” The fourth word in the sentence, “3939.7,” shows the current latitude as hours and minutes (39°39.7’), except the numbers are squished together. The first two characters (39) represent hours and the remainder of the word (39.7) represents minutes. Longitude is structured the same way, except that the first three characters represent hours (105°06.6’). Words five and seven indicate the “hemisphere,” where “N” means “North,” “W” means “West” etc. The hemisphere is appended to the end of the numeric portion to make a complete measurement.
I’ve found that NMEA interpreters are much easier to work with they are event-driven. This is because data arrives in no particular order. An event-driven class gives the interpreter the most flexibility and responsiveness to an application. So, I’ll design the interpreter to report information using events. The first event, PositionReceived, will be raised whenever the current latitude and longitude are received. Listing 1-2 expands the interpreter to report the current position.
Listing 1-2: The interpreter can now report the current latitude and longitude.
'*******************************************************
'** Listing 1-2. Extracting information from a sentence
'*******************************************************
Public Class NmeaInterpreter
' Raised when the current location has changed
Public Event PositionReceived(ByVal latitude As String, _
ByVal longitude As String)
' Processes information from the GPS receiver
Public Function Parse(ByVal sentence As String) As Boolean
' Look at the first word to decide where to go next
Select Case GetWords(sentence)(0)
Case "$GPRMC" ' A "Recommended Minimum" sentence was found!
Return ParseGPRMC(sentence)
Case Else
' Indicate that the sentence was not recognized
Return False
End Select
End Function
' Divides a sentence into individual words
Public Function GetWords(ByVal sentence As String) As String()
Return sentence.Split(","c)
End Function
' Interprets a $GPRMC message
Public Function ParseGPRMC(ByVal sentence As String) As Boolean
' Divide the sentence into words
Dim Words() As String = GetWords(sentence)
' Do we have enough values to describe our location?
If Words(3) <> "" And Words(4) <> "" And Words(5) <> "" And _
Words(6) <> "" Then
' Yes. Extract latitude and longitude
Dim Latitude As String = Words(3).Substring(0, 2) & "°" ' Append hours
Latitude = Latitude & Words(3).Substring(2) & """" ' Append minutes
Latitude = Latitude & Words(4) ' Append the hemisphere
Dim Longitude As String = Words(5).Substring(0, 3) & "°" ' Append hours
Longitude = Longitude & Words(5).Substring(3) & """" ' Append minutes
Longitude = Longitude & Words(6) ' Append the hemisphere
' Notify the calling application of the change
RaiseEvent PositionReceived(Latitude, Longitude)
End If
' Indicate that the sentence was recognized
Return True
End Function
End Class
One thing to watch out for here is that some GPS devices will report blank values when no information is known. Therefore, it’s a good idea to test each word for a value before parsing. If you need to type the degree symbol (°), hold down the Alt key and type “0176” on the numeric keypad.
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Hi ,
I need the same program as well.Can you find any information.Please contact me.
tunc@te-mob.com
The checksum routine has been modified slightly to clarify the Select statement.
The "$" case is used to initialise Checksum and the If statement in the Else case has been removed. This works because Checksum = value gives the same result as Checksum = 0 Xor value when processing the first byte.
' Calculates the checksum for a sentence
Public Function GetChecksum(ByVal sentence As String) As String
' Loop through all chars to get a checksum
Dim Character As Char
Dim Checksum As Integer = 0
For Each Character In sentence
Select Case Character
Case "$"c
' Ignore the dollar sign
Checksum = 0
Case "*"c
' Stop processing before the asterisk
Exit For
Case Else
' XOR the checksum with this character's value
Checksum = Checksum Xor Convert.ToByte(Character)
End Select
Next
' Return the checksum formatted as a two-character hexadecimal
Return Checksum.ToString("X2")
End Function
The NMEA protocol specifies that the last parameter is immediately followed by "*" and a 2-cfharacter checksum. For example, 3.45,"W"*1A is valid as is 200804,,*1A. In the fist case there is data in the last parameter and in the second case, because the last parameter has been omitted. we effectively have "200804,," & "" & "*" & "1A". That is the data string upto the second last parameter and it's following comma, the omitted final parameter, the asterisc to denote both end of data and the start of the checksum, and finally the 2-character checksum.
Jon's excellent articles give us the start for writing our code but does say that additional error trapping is required.
My change to the GetWords function is:
Public Function GetWords(ByVal sentence As String) As String()
Dim temp As String
temp = sentence.Substring(0, sentence.IndexOf("*")) & ",*"
Return temp.Split(","c)
End Function
Try my gps string parser http://www.gpsxml.com/gpsxml/service.asmx?op=GPS2XML
I need somebody to test my mobile APP. You can download the cab file from http://gps.gpsxml.com/viewtopic.php?t=4
Please feel free to give any comments, suggestions or ideas
Thanks
Imtiyaz Momin
http://gps.gpsxml.com/
imtu80@hotmail.com
I need somebody to test my mobile APP. You can download the cab file from http://gps.gpsxml.com/viewtopic.php?t=4
Also, added new feature where I can upload picture from the phone using my application and the picture shows up on the trail where the picture was taken.
Check it out at http://gps.gpsxml.com/tracker.cfm?userID=1
Please feel free to give any comments, suggestions or ideas
Thanks
Imtiyaz Momin
http://gps.gpsxml.com/
imtu80@hotmail.com
I am a novice programmer and need to get my hands on some code for phone tracking which will plot a phones movement every (n) minutes then plot the position on a map.
Any help at all will be greatly appreciated.
Can anyone please please help me.
Thanks
Nev
http://gps.imomin.com/tracker.cfm?userID=1
Above link shows an example which I created for my brother for his carpc.
It can covertly run on mobile device and send location information via internet.
let me know what you think and anything can be done with my project.
Imtiyaz Momin
imtu80@hotmail.com
http://www.imomin.com
Regarding with GPRMC message
$GPRMC,040302.663,A,3939.7,N,10506.6,W,0.27,358.86,200804,,*1A
Some antennas (like Leadtek) See quotes, transmitt the last parameter before * char like this
$GPRMC,040302.663,A,3939.7,N,10506.6,W,0.27,358.86,200804,3.45,"W"*1A
Other antennas (like Garmin), transmit the last parameter like this
$GPRMC,040302.663,A,3939.7,N,10506.6,W,0.27,358.86,200804,3.45,"W",*1A
Note that has a colon "," before * char.
Please someone explain me this question.
Thanks.
Jean
Hi,
Can I get the c# code for this nice article?
Regards,
Ravi
Well...as soon as you write a post you figure soething out.
It seems that the error is only thrown when there isn't enough data in the nmea sentence because if I use this sentence
$GPGSV,2,2,08,14,28,047,21,28,20,259,,19,16,156,26,23,07,254,41*71
it seems to work fine. I think the problem is with the SNR for the first satellite in view as the previous NMEA didn't have a value for this.
Hope this helps someone.
Nice article, very useful except I've come across a problem with the GPGSV sentences. If you try and run this code
MyInterpreter.Parse("$GPGSV,2,1,08,11,78,132,,20,63,226,,01,46,102,,17,33,308,*71")
It will throw an error (Conversion from string "*71" to type 'Integer' is not valid.)
This is because of this line of code
SignalToNoiseRatio =
CType(Words(Count * 4 + 3), Integer)Does anyone know how to solve this problem as it's kind of a thorn in my side and I can't get rid of it.
Cheers
Jon
I like to write GPS navigating system pleas tell me what kind of hardware and signals I need, I am living in Sri Lanka, how I get that connection
If you require Ordnance Survey Grid References, I have written an article on how to do so using NMEA data derived from Jon Person's excellent NMEAinterpreter class.
GPS- Deriving British Ordnance Survey Grid Referece from NMEA data
AlexE
I spotted this slight error too and made the same correction as cprogrammingguru.
However this led to a new error as the final word in the string contained the checksum.
ie in the example sentence
$GPGSV, 3, 1, 10, 24, 82, 023, 40, 05, 62, 285, 32, 01, 62, 123, 00, 17, 59, 229, 2870
the final word would be 2870
this caused an error when trying to convert this to an int32 in the line
SignalToNoiseRatio = Convert.ToInt32(Words[Count * 4 + 3]);
My solution was to remove the checksum part of the sentence in GetWords, before splitting the sentence
public string[] GetWords(string sentence)
{
//remove the final * + checksum
sentence = sentence.Substring(0, sentence.IndexOf("*"));
//now split it up
return sentence.Split(',');
}
Assuming that I'm not talking out of my rear, I hope this proves useful
Alex
I love this product. Excellent Job on this product, Jon Person
!. I'm really excited infact I am going to go buy and support your product 360%!... I just have to correct 1 minor error. I feel you should be aware or maybe your are already....don't know might have been a typo,... I'm not much of a VB coder but, I believe during the ParseGPGSV() function, which is suppose to parse the "Satellites in View" $GPGSV sentence.... If you look closesly. During the...
Original Article: http://www.gpsdotnet.com/kb/article.aspx?id=10350
Example Sentence: $GPGSV, 3, 1, 10, 24, 82, 023, 40, 05, 62, 285, 32, 01, 62, 123, 00, 17, 59, 229, 28*70
Each Block consist of 4 words.. "24, 82, 023, 40" == "PseudoRandomCode, Elevation, Azimuth, SignalToNoiseRatio"
According to your Article... SNR values range from 0-50...where 50 means "Excellent Signal"...though SNR can go as high as 99, like you've stated.
' Yes. "Extract satellite information and report it" -- section.
' ERROR suspect
Azimuth = CType ( Words ( Count * 4 + 2 ), Integer)
SignalToNoiseRatio = CType( Words ( Count * 4 + 2 ), Integer)
'// ^--- Logical Bug, I believe it should be ....
' CORRECTION
SignalToNoiseRatio = CType ( Words ( Count * 4 + 3), Integer)
'// ^--- This would be correct.
Otherwise I believe it would return the same value from the Azimuth extraction. So you wouldn't get any SNR information to be able to base precision correctly. For the future of dependability and reliability of code production, I post this correction. As far as the Signal Strength of the satellites, within the Notification, of the Event call to,...
RaiseEvent SatelliteReceived ( PseudoRandomCode, Azimuth, Elevation, SignalToNoiseRatio )
I believe it would generate incorrect results...to what ever is going to be done with the SNR variable.
Please feel free to e-mail me at deciphered_scripturez@yahoo.com for additional details...I really Thank you, Jon Person, for your hard work and time put into this and I really would LOVE to help as much as possible...I believe in your product.
Thank You,
-- cprogrammingguru
As I understand it, that should be fine... so long as you add a GPS receiver?
Hi
Just curious, what kind of hardware and signal service will be required to make it happen?
I have a ViewSonic V37 pocket PC. Will that be a good instrument for this? Please advice.
Thanks
Pankaj
Jon Person's article is a particularly interesting look into how GPS systems work. I've been interested in GPS for a long time but not knowing how this new "black box" technology worked kept me away from delving into it. After reading Jon's article I now realize that it's not nearly as difficult as I once thought. I plan on buying his “GPS.NET Global Positioning SDK” component so I can begin writing applications utilizing GPS. Who knows, perhaps I'll stumble onto a successful application with vertical market benefit.
Thank you, Jon. I look forward to your next article.
Steve
This thread is for discussions of How to Write a GPS Application.