USART GPS Mini4412

Can anybody help me with getting a usart GPS module working with the
Mini4412. I have it connected and when I cat /dev/s3c2410_serial2 I can see
gps data, however how do I add this support to the android image (Location
support).

I read on a forum that I needed to add the following to a /data/local.prop
file. However it doesn't appear to work. I had to create the prop file as
it wasn't there and I'm not sure its being called.

ro.kernel.android.gps=s3c2410_serial2
gps.device=s3c2410_serial2
gps.baud=9600
gps.accuracy=6

I am very disappointed with the Mini4412 board, apart from wifi over the
usb I am unable to get Bluetooth and GPS working, you would think these
would work by default as it's pretty much a standard with phones and tablet
these days.

Thanks.

Matt

Hi Matt, there is a lot with the FriendlyArm boards that don't work. They
consider them development boards and not really for commercial use but you
are right, they should provide more in the way of firmware if the hardware
exists for it.

I too have been trying to get Bluetooth working. So far I have not found a
suitable dongle for it.

GPS would be next but not so needed for this current design. 

Do you have the Android SDK installed? Can you write Android apps? It might
be a good idea to write an app that handles the GPS location and then watch
the ADB logcat output for errors etc.

If you are able to build the source, you can maybe look into the build and
make sure that GPS is being included. I am not familier with the board you
are using. I have the Tiny210 and working on adding GPRS support just now.

Hi Dave,

Yes I have the build environment setup and I can build android apps. I
purchased the Bluetooth module for the tiny210 hoping that I could get the
differences from the tiny build scripts and incorporate them into the
tiny4412. I think the issue with that is the tiny4412 is using android
4.2.1 which no longer uses bluez.

http://www.at91sam.org/Tiny210-S5PV210.html

I can get you the vid and pid of the module I purchased, it might be
cheaper than paying for the "official" one.

There are a few boards with GPS examples so I'm in the process of getting
the conf files and moving them over to the tiny4412 project. 

I went for the tiny4412 because it had a quad core and a newer version of
android, I am starting to wish I had gone with the tiny210, there appears
to be much more support for it.

I'm building a image as I write and will hopefully test it this evening. I
will let you know how it goes. 

I would love to grab the 4.3 / 4.4 source tree and see if I could get it
running on the board , but I think that is optimistic until I can get
something simple working.


Thanks

Matt

pretty sure that the serial ports on android on 3.xx or higher kernels for
samsung chips is ttySACx  (x being the number of the port you want to use).

As for it being a standard on all phones and tablets these days, it's not
:-)  A lot of devices have some hinky adapter that you have to buy.  I
agree that bluetooth should work but bluetooth on android isn't the same as
bluetooth on linux, the same as ethernet too.  

I've had bluetooth working on a mini210s, it was a cheap one I bought from
poundland (it was £1!!), I was trying to use a bluetooth keyboard, which
you'd expect to just work but no, you have to BUY a piece of software that
acts as some kind of bridge to the OS to allow you to use your own
keyboard.  This has nothing to do with friendlyarm and everything to do
with android.

Another for instance, the only reason we got ethernet on the mini210 to
work PROPERLY was because of the x86-android ethernet patches (I'd been
asking for this functionality for some time), which is nothing to do with
friendlyarm nor is it a true part of android either!!

Also, friendlyarm aren't releasing production images, these are merely to
get people started, they are pretty impressive as they stand but the clue
is in the title, development board.

Hi Reggie,

ttySACx is mapped to /dev/s3c2410_serialx I believe it's a symlink.

I understand these are development boards and I appreciate your comments.

I'll have to have a look later on, something else to remember is that these
boards were also initially designed for an asian market, they didn't really
care much about the google aspect of it because they have their own
homegrown alternatives for email, app stores etc. so until we inform them
of issues that affect our normal use, they'll never know that things need
looking at/fixing :-)

Things like ethernet, gprs? etc. work on the chinese images because they
specifically don't use the android apis, so it's likely that anything that
we don't have right now will need to be added either by us or friendlyarm
or it could be that they don't even have hooks into the google apis (like
ethernet!).

Also, I'd forgotten I'd been looking into serial a little bit over the last
couple of days, is serial even a proper 'thing' on android?  clearly you/we
are all able to get data to and from the mini boards running android but
that's kernel stuff and debug messaging, which !same as serial on linux.

From what I've read, you need a rooted device and serial-api from google
code?

I'll try and look into this over the next few days (I get a feeling I'm
going to have to), I'll also see if I can get some information off to
friendlyarm about it.

Hi Reggie,

I appreciate any help with this I can get. looking at other devices, there
is a gps.conf , gps.xml and a gpsd service within the manta folder, they
reference serial1 at 115200 but this appears to be for a "bcm475x" gps. I
have a generic NMEA UART module. I can definitely see gps data when I open
up the serial port but the android OS doesn't appear to see anything.

Thanks

Matt

Well, this will be exactly what I'm talking about, as far as I know serial
isn't much of a thing to android, if there's no calls in teh api, then
android may not see it.

https://code.google.com/p/android-serialport-api/

Oh for the good old days when GPS apps use to just access the serial port.
But obviously this method was no good because all the other apps couldn't
use the GPS data at the same time, how would we check in on facebook while
we are using the sat nav.

Looking around and you can get apps such as :-
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&...

which will allow you to use a USB GPS receiver connected via  prolific
2303. I understand that you can get a sdk for the prolific to read the
device.

Not an ideal solution but it might work. Shame I can't do something similar
with Bluetooth.

Did you get any help from Corewind? They are in internal China dealer who
improperly advertise as an international supplier (with a pile of URLs
linked to their sites). No support or warranty outside the mainland. Check
the dealer lists on http://www.arm9.net/agent.asp

Hi Matt,

Interestingly I just connected a Xbee module to CON2 on my Mini210 board
and the Logcat is showing a GPS parse error.

Are you able to get a serial output GPS module as it looks like if you
connect this to CON2 you should get GPS data.

@Reggie. The SerialPort API that's on the internet works well with Android.

I wonder if we ask nicely whether friendlyarm would consider putting the
serial-API onboard as a feature for us?  It's in their interests to push
forwards any kind of development work like this.

I can receive GPS data using a serial console such as the one built into
the image (test program). I have to change the permissions on the tty dev
port before I can open it using a pc with telnet access. But the port does
open and you can clearly see the GPS data. However this is a far cry from
getting Android to see the GPS data. The USB GPS receiver and program to
inject gps data onto android works fine, but its far from perfect as it
means running another app and enabling one of the developer options to
simulate location data.

I did try an contact corewind but as I didn't buy the board from them they
where less than helpful, pretty much stating that you didn't buy the board
from us as we don't supply to the uk so go away. I think the issue with
these boards are that nobody really takes ownership and as such can't offer
any support. I did purchase 2 USB dongles from corewind , as I was hoping
that these would be supported but I paid £15 pound each for the dongles and
then around £15 for import. the dongles aren't anything special and look
very similar to one I got from ebay for around £2.00

My idea of a development board is very different to friendly arm. I
purchased a keil cortex m4 board, it has everything you could want on board
along with a shed loads of examples with great documentation. The android
boards are very different, lots of GPIOS and serial ports on the hardware
but missing the basics in my opinion. Sure there is a bit of a tutorial on
how to build Android and I have managed to do it, but if you want to do
anything else your down to hunting the internet. In my opinion you would be
better saving your money and getting a beagle board, the support looks much
better with a much larger community. I'm sure I will receive some flames
for this, but it is just my opinion. I think most people buy a development
board so they can learn and play, but I personally feel the resources to
learn and play are missing. Maybe I just haven't found them....

Hi Matt, Considering the issues I have with the FA boards I have (except
the Tiny210 CAP as this has been running faultlessly for over a year now
and is on 24/7) I've switched to Olimex boards for Android. Although the
source was lacking to start with I am a few others have managed to get them
working with a custom Android build of 4.2.2

After a few months work I now have a capactitive LCD working along with a
RTC, GPRS modem and 6 serial ports and GPIO. They also have a battery
charger built in so this makes them far more usable out of the box, so to
speak.

The good thing with their boards is that they are in Europe so less issues
to deal with in regards to translated manuals. Their Forum is also pretty
good.

They are also open source, both hardware and software and you can even
purchase the CPU's from them. Try getting any of the Samsung processors
used in the FA boards :)

It's a real pity about the FA issues as Andahammer in the USA has been
great support to me, even though I only ordered a few boards to try and
develop with them.

I read the entire thread,
Seems no one got a solution...



Any chance to make Android see the GPS data??