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GPS Toolkit Introduction

The Eye4Software GPS toolkit is a SDK (Software Developer Kit) which allows software developers to add GPS and coordinate conversion functionality to their programs or scripts, without the need to have any knowledge on geodesy, serial communication protocols, NMEA 0183 sentences and other GPS protocols. Some examples of applications include:

• Convert (GPS) coordinates from one map datum to another;
• Convert (GPS) coordinates from one coordinate system or map projection to another;
• Convert (GPS) coordinates between different formats ( DD.DDDDD, DD MM.MMMM, DD MM SS.SS etc );
• Convert datafiles from one coordinate system to another using a simple script;
• Retrieve GPS information such as position, course, altitude and speed;
• Retrieve GPS satellite information, such as azimuth, elevation and signal strength;
• Retrieve GPS atomic time for PC time synchronization;
• Course and distance calculations.

The GPS control can be used from many programming environments, such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual Basic .NET, Visual C# .NET, Borland C++ Builder, Borland Delphi and VBA (Excel, Access), but also web oriented applications such as ASP, ASP.NET and PHP, and all other programming environments that support ActiveX controls, can be used.

A demo application to retrieve data from your GPS is shipped with the toolkit.	Retrieve GPS position information from your (.NET) Windows applications.	Add support for coordinate conversions to your (.NET) Windows applications or scripts.	All received GPS data can be logged into a textfile for later processing or troubleshooting.

GPS Toolkit Features

Retrieve and decode position data from a GPS device

The toolkit will handle all serial data from the GPS device, and converts the received NMEA 0183 sentences into usable data, which can be used directly in your software and / or scripts:

• Latitude and Longitude coordinates;
• Altitude and geoid height;
• Course over ground ( SOG );
• Speed over ground ( COG );
• Date and time;
• GPS Fix type;
• Number of GPS satellites in view;
• HDOP, VDOP and PDOP;
• Estimated position error (Garmin only);
• DGPS beacon id, speed and frequency;
• Satellite information like signal strength, azimuth and elevation.

Speed and altitude data can be converted to various units like: Knots, Kmh, Mph and Meters per second for speed, for altitude: Meters and Feet.

Use Garmin GPS devices connected through USB

Most Garmin GPS devices are shipped with an USB connection instead of a serial port these days. The protocol used by Garmin is called PVT which means: "Position - Velocity - Time". The toolkit can communicate directly with the USB driver to read position data from these GPS devices. The data which can be retrieved over the PVT protocol is the same as described for the NMEA 0183 protocol above.

Perform GPS coordinate conversions

The latitude and longitude coordinates from either the GPS or set by the user, can be converted to any map datum or map grid around (for instance to UTM), by just using the built in "GpsProjection" object. The types of map projections supported are:

• Transverse Mercator;
• Transverse Mercator South Orientated;
• Oblique Mercator;
• Hotine Oblique Mercator;
• Swiss Oblique Mercator;
• Mercator 1SP;
• Mercator 2SP;
• Gauss Kruger;
• Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM);
• Oblique Stereographic;
• Polar Stereographic;
• Albers Equal Area Conic;
• Lambert Conformal Conic 1SP;
• Lambert Conformal Conic 2SP;
• Lambert Conformal Conic West Orientated;
• Lambert Azimuthal Equal Area;
• Krovak;
• Eckert IV;
• Eckert VI;
• Mollweide;
• Cassini;
• Polyconic.

It is also possible to convert from map grid coordinates to latitude and longitude coordinates, or from one map grid to another directly.

Advanced NMEA 0183 features

It is possible to filter incoming NMEA 0183 sentences by message type and talker-id. This can come in handy when multiple NMEA 0183 devices are connected to the same port, using for instance a NMEA 0183 data combiner, and you want to decode data only from either a GPS (GP TalkerID ) or Compass (HC TalkerID ). Using the filter, if needed you can also force the toolkit to extract the position from the GLL string rather then the GGA string.

The built in NMEA 0183 CRC check function prevents the toolkit from decoding corrupted data.

Type of NMEA 0183 messages the toolkit supports include:

$GPGGA	-	Global Positioning fix data, time, position and fix related data
$GPGLL	-	Geographic position - Latitude / Longitude
$GPGSA	-	GPS DOP and active satellites
$GPGSV	-	Satellites in view
$GPRMC	-	Recommended minimum navigation information
$GPVTG	-	Track Made Good and Ground Speed
$PGRME	-	Garmin proprietary NMEA 0183 sentence to retrieve estimated position error data from the GPS
$PGRMZ	-	Garmin proprietary NMEA 0183 sentence to retrieve elevation data from the built-in (baromethric) altimeter

All received NMEA 0183 or Garmin PVT data from the GPS can be logged directly to a textfile.

Code samples

The package includes code samples for the following programming environments:

Microsoft Visual C++	View code...
Microsoft Visual Basic	View code...
Microsoft Visual Basic .Net	View code...
Microsoft Visual C# .Net	View code...
VBScript	View code...
Borland Delphi	View code...
VBA (Excel)	View code...

Requirements

To retrieve GPS information, you need a NMEA 0183 compatible GPS device (most GPS devices around support the NMEA 0183 protocol) attached to your computer using an USB, Bluetooth or RS232 serial connection, or a Garmin GPS device connected directly to the computer using its USB interface. When the GPS Toolkit is used to perform transformations between different map datums and / or map grids only, no hardware is required.

The GPS Toolkit can be used on 32 bit and 64 bit Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 2008 Server Operating Systems. To run the .NET sample applications you must have .NET framework 2.0 or higher installed. The package includes two copies of the GPS SDK, a 32 bit or X86 version (GpsCtl32.dll) and a 64 bit or X64 version (GpsCtl64.dll).

Download

A fully functional 30-day trial version can be downloaded free of charge from the downloads page.

Pricing, licensing and ordering

Pricing, licensing and ordering information can be found on our sales page.