How to get a bluetooth GPS reciever working with Mac OS X
I had an idea after getting my phone working as a gateway to the internet that I would get GPS working on my iBook, I use GPSConnect later in this article so you might want to grab it.
So first of you need to pair your computer and the bluetooth gps reciever, In your Application/Utilities you will find Bluetooth Setup Assistant for this task, Open this click Continue and select ‘Other Device’ and continue again select the device from this table of found devices and Continue on. You will have to enter a passphrase which is very likely to be ‘0000′.
So after pairing the device you must use Bluetooth Serial Utility found in the same place as the Bluetooth Setup Assistant, so we open this and set up a new serial port by clicking the New… button you’ll be confronted with a new drop-down window you need to Name it, in my case, ‘BTGPS’ the Port Direction should be ‘Outgoing’. Next you’re going to select your device. Don’t tick any of the next boxes and your Port Type should be changed to ‘RS-232′ and after this we’re all configured…kinda.
Now did you get GPSConnect? ‘Cause this is where you’re going to need it to test if all is well.
After mounting the .dmg open GPSConnect and you need to change the Serial Port to what you named your port in the Bluetooth Serial Utilitie, it will be in the drop-down menu. The Protocol should be set to ‘NMEA’ after all this work the fruits of your labour will be shown, click Connect while obviously having your gps device on. Once connected you should be confronted with a window that looks like…
From this you can see the date and time, my latitude and longitude, the speed of the wind(doesn’t seem to work unless you have a garmin receiver I think), height above sea level and the amount of satellites my receiver is tracking, the rest is always zero for me so I ignore it 
. You can now use your GPS with Kismac for wardriving if you so wish, and I’m sure some other applications will have use for it.
Thanks
Actually, this is a bit interesting to me and I may have use for it. I like to hunt, and I keep maps for my hunting locations on my laptop. I’m working on making them into overlays for Google Earth, which I believe can take information from such a GPS device. I can see plotting out good locations by putting waypoints and taking a few notes, then coming back home and making the overlays during the preseason.
Hey Jared,
What might be more useful in your case is a smart phone with bluetooth and one of these devices, you can then have a pocket size system instead of a laptop.
[...] Kyle Fleming said a few things that caused me to pause and consider. Then I got excited. Kyle provided some information on making a GPS device work with OS X. I have a computer with OS X. I also think that this could be useful for deer season scouting. Scouting? Yes. We are that serious about hunting. [...]
Hunting is serious business, part one. « Fire Like This said this on December 15, 2006 at 3:53 am |