A couple of days ago, I received a new toy, a GPS-logger. The device is a GT-750F/L-Lite. It is really fun to use it to measure distance when running. I got it as a gift when trying a Swedish magazine called ‘Aktiv träning’. I noticed the offer this spring, but as a Linux-user I was sceptic that it would work on my machine. But I found a nice blog post from another Swedish Linux user which had been able to connect to the device from a Linux box.
The logger contains a skytraq chip, and just as the original blogger, I had to get the sources and build gpsbabel myself (which was a no-brainer). Once this was done, I could download data just as suggested:
./gpsbabel -D 9 -i skytraq,initbaud=38400,baud=38400,erase \ -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F out.gpx
For convenience, I put together this little script:
#!/bin/bash
[ -z "$1" ] && { printf "\nUsage: ${0##*/} outputfile [-erase] \n\n"; exit; }
output_file=$1
shift
[ "$1" = "-erase" ] && { command=',erase'; }
# echo $output_file
# echo $command
./gpsbabel -D 9 -i skytraq,initbaud=38400,baud=38400${command} \
-f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F ${output_file}.gpx
Here I got a bit stuck, until I realized that the logger had to be ‘on’ before it was possible to download data from it.
Once I have the gpx-file on my machine, I can add it to Google earth and get information about distance, speed and so on. Kewl!
