Re: [gpsd-dev] GPDS hand hardware fault/alarm reporting

[Gary E. Miller]

Yo Michael!

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 09:48:15 +0000
"Michael J. Tubby B.Sc. MIET" <address@hidden> wrote:

> We have been using GPS receivers in vehicle location systems since
> the early 1990s and the Trimble Advanced Navigation Sensor (TANS) -
> if anyone remembers that - and have worked through multiple
> generations from SVeeSix, ACE to Lassen-iQ and have always used
> Timble's TSIP binary code.

Yeah, a common story.

> We have a new product design and we've switched to Ublox MAX-M8W and

Ublox is getting quite popular.

> While I'm
> impressed with the quality and ease of use of both GPSD and libgps it
> leaves us with a challenge for GPS receiver and antenna fault
> monitoring and reporting.

gpsd understands ublox binary. gpsd would like to add support for more
specialized ublox sentences, and some patches have been tried. past
time for gpsd to nail this down.  If one of our devs had a MAX-M8W the
process would be easier.

> I am only across the Trimble and Ublox GPS/GNSS receivers that we 
> currently use but an approach for adding generic support these 
> faults/alarms would be to add a new set of flags as a uint32_t called 
> 'gps.fault' or similar and define a set of values:
> 
>      GPS_FAULT_BATTERY_BACKUP_FAIL 0x00000001
>      GPS_FAULT_SYSTEM_RAM_CORRUPT0x00000002
>      GPS_FAULT_DSP_FAILURE             0x00000004
>      GPS_FAULT_ANTENNA_OPEN 0x00000008
>      GPS_FAULT_ANTENNA_SHORT           0x00000010
>      GPS_FAULT_JAMMING_DETECTED        0x00000020

By far most people use the JSON interface to gpsd.  We'd need to eventually
support both.  There needs to be a mapping from one to the other.

> Before we go off hacking GPSD and libgps too much I thought I'd check
> if we're going in the right direction or overlapping with anyone else.

I think once we get going we can find consensus, nothing set in
stone.

> Does anyone else want to work on this?  Does anyone want to
> contribute to the list of faults/fault codes for other receivers?

This list is low volume, but there has been repeated interest in this.

let's get a discussion going.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 109 NW Wilmington Ave., Suite E, Bend, OR 97703
        address@hidden  Tel:+1 541 382 8588

            Veritas liberabit vos. -- Quid est veritas?
    "If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it." - Lord Kelvin

pgp3gpdAW5_Ck.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature