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Using GPS/Compatible Devices?


Lain__D

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Posted

Hi there, I was wondering if anyone has gotten a GPS receiver working with their signal owl, as it says in the description it works with them?

I've tried 2 receivers based on ublox chips, and while lusb does see them, they are only mounted under /dev/bus/usb/00#, and I can't get them to mount as serial devices.

I was able to install GPSD using opkg from the openWRT repo, and it seems to be working, but it cannot connect to the device via the bus path.

I bricked my owl messing with this, and am currently restoring it now, do I need to install gpsd-clients from the repo as well? cdc_amc is included with the wifi owl linux kernel, right?

Posted

I guess you are kind of out of luck on this one. To get access to the GPS device you will most likely need the ACM kmod and that will not install on the Owl since it has an older kernel than the packages available using opkg requires. The Owl is running kernel 4.14.140 and the kmod-usb-acm package that is available for download and install has a kernel dependency of 4.14.209 (you will get an error thrown back at you when trying to run opkg install kmod-usb-acm as per below).

root@Owl:~# opkg install kmod-usb-acm
Installing kmod-usb-acm (4.14.209-1) to root...
Downloading http://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/19.07-SNAPSHOT/targets/ar71xx/generic/packages/kmod-usb-acm_4.14.209-1_mips_24kc.ipk
Collected errors:
 * satisfy_dependencies_for: Cannot satisfy the following dependencies for kmod-usb-acm:
 *     kernel (= 4.14.209-1-342af9e4f67b3447c53216ab8e3b12a1)
 * opkg_install_cmd: Cannot install package kmod-usb-acm.

If you don't have the ACM package, you won't be able to "link" your USB GPS device to a /dev resource and hence not having it available to the system for further use.

Posted

@chrizree Thanks for the info. I was able to find an ipk for the older package in the openWRT snapshots...do you think that could possibly work if I manually installed it with opkg? I'm still restoring my owl now....jeeze this takes FOREVER

 

snapshot with the package: https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/18.06-SNAPSHOT/targets/armvirt/32/kmods/4.14.140-1-fd1a4bb4b44557e77d0d4c4c6cc14181/

ipk name: kmod-usb-acm_4.14.140-1_arm_cortex-a15_neon-vfpv4.ipk

Posted

it's not the correct architecture as it seems, that link is for arm cortex, but the Owl is a MIPS24kc, and it's not always the case that you get all the dependencies like you get when running a full blown Linux distro, so you might be left with things missing, you could try though, but it will be "trial and horror" most likely

Posted

@chrizree ah, gotcha, hmmm thats annoying...

Do you know of any GPS adaptors that DO work out of the box with it?

My other idea would be (after this finishing flashing) is that one of the GPS devices I have has raw serial pads to access...if I just wired those to the owl's serial pads, would I be able to access the receiver on ttyACM? Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm really new to Busy Box.

Posted

Well, no dumb questions here 🙂 I guess it will be some other device in /dev than ttyACM (since the ACM kernel mod isn't possible to get installed according to previous discussion in this thread). But perhaps possible via some other serial device. If the gps is identified and working it should produce some kind of output using cat /dev/<device_name>

Edit: I just tried my U-blox7 USB GPS device with my GL.iNet GL-AR150 router that shares the same architecture as many of the Hak5 devices and it was no problem installing the kmod-usb-acm package. Getting output from the GPS worked perfectly well after that with the GL-AR150. So, if getting packages that matches the current kernel, it should work on the Owl as well.

Edit 2: Another possible way is to perhaps use Bluetooth, the Owl should have what is needed (such as hciconfig, bluetoothctl, rfcomm etc.). I have no BT GPS though. I tried with an Android device as a GPS data source, but didn't have the time to dig any deeper into it. If making it possible to get a BT device to "stream" GPS data to the Owl just like a USB device would, then it's an alternative to perhaps consider.

Posted

Thanks for the info, (going to reply here instead of discord incase it helps anyone else)

I've re-flashed the firmware  and its working again. I have it connected to my RT232 and then made a quick payload that just echos to /dev/ttyATH0 and its showing up in my serial console! So I -think- if I connect my GPS receiver directly with the serial wires it -should- work if I install gpsd. Going to wire it up and see if its sending anything when I cat the device. I'm assuming/hoping the 4th pad is a VCC

Posted

I just have to add that I actually had a BT GPS device when digging a bit deeper in my "tech boxes" in the storage room. If I get some time in the near future, I will try it with the Owl and see if it works.

About the VCC, is it the TPx connectors you are using?

https://fccid.io/2AB87-OWL/Internal-Photos/Int-Photos-4547904

Edit: Oh, and another thing... set the desired bps for the serial device as well, otherwise the GPS perhaps won't produce any output at all, for example:

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB0 38400

Posted

OK, got it working now with the Owl and an Android phone as the GPS data provider via Bluetooth. So, there's an alternative way if needed. I will walk through the setup once again from scratch and write up a howto and post it if someone's interested.

  • 1 month later...
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

@chrizree OMG this is awesome! sorry for the slow reply, have been distracted with other things.

 

I actually got a very similar setup working the same way (for those who don't want to leave their phone with their Owl) using an ESP-32 dev module that has built in GPS. All it does actually it passes through the GPS module serial data to bluetooth, but the dev module I got actually has a built in OLED screen, so I think i could actually have it display feedback from the owl too, which might be cool. I'll post the code later and product links later. 

Posted

Good idea! The "sad" part is that the storage of the Owl is limited (I guess it's the politically correct word to use) and it's rather difficult to get something installed that can serve other devices with GPS data, such as gpsd. It might be possible to solve, but I haven't had time to dig deeper into it.

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