VK-162 G-Mouse USB GPS Dongle Navigation Module External GPS Antenna Remote Mount USB GPS Receiver for Raspberry Pi Support Google Earth Window Linux Geekstory

Excellent GPS receiver! I had tried to use several other brands and models prior to this one, without success. Finally, this GPS installs easily and works great. I got it for ofdline mapping and navigation and timing sync for my amateur radio software. Great price, excellent performance and easy to set up.

Plugged it in and as soon as I was able to open my Serial Monitor it was already spitting out NMEA sentences. Next, its port was recognized by my BktTimeSync program and sync'd the laptop clock. I installed the u-center program, selected the port and it was off and running. After a couple minutes there were 10-12 satellites recognized and HDOP was below 1.0, a good sign. Very happy and no complaints.

I would very much like to thank Oscar for his review. My primary goal was to build a time server on a stand-alone local area network and learn how a time server works in Linux. I learned how to sync my router, RPis, and Windows machines to a Linux time server. The VK-162 acquired a signal very fast. I used some hand-held GPS units about 15 years ago and it took about 3 minutes to acquire a signal. There is a Raspberry Pi GPS application that displays satellites, lat, lon, and time. I got the simple GPS application going first to verify everything was working. Then, I got my time server going. There is plenty of easily accessible info on the internet and in the Raspberry Pi forums on USB GPS dongles. I am pleased with my purchase and I am please with the price and fast shipping from Geekstory. I had no problem getting the Raspberry Pi GPS application to work and no problem getting the Raspberry Pi Zero W time server working.

Unfortunately, this unit didn't last very long. It used to work well from the edge of my window and usually saw enough satellites to also report altitude. Now, the return window is closed and all it does is spit out empty NMEA sentences, as if it cannot see any satellites at all. It has never been used outside, on a vehicle - only indoors from my windows. I'm disappointed that taking good care of the device didn't help its longevity and I cannot recommend it.

If you want this for a time reference for a raspberry pi just know it works but you have to write the code yourself. It won’t work with Bookworm NTP and gpsd can’t be running because it hogs the serial port this thing appears on (/dev/ttyACM0). It’s got a USB connector, magnetic base and enclosure of sorts, which features all make it useful where it has to be out in an environment rather than inside some other box - like away from the pi and over by a window. The cord is pretty long but I have not tried it with a usb extension cable, other units work with them so this should too but I haven’t proven that. It does not support PPS timing so it can’t be used for Network Time Protocol a server with Debian Bookworm (which stupidly requires pps). This is the fault of the children who wrote Bookworm, not of this unit. PPS devices on pi’s require the use of gpio pins and that means long wire lengths to place the gps over to spot with a good signal. Long wires are vulnerable to induced voltages from lightning strikes blocks away and the gpio pins on rpi’s are completely unprotected MOS devices. Long gpio wires are a very good way to lose a pi and man when they go they dead short internally - I’ve had two pi’s short from lightning EM pulses in the neighborhood and draw over 1a@5v becoming hotter and hotter and hotter, easily becoming a fire risk. Anyway, gpsd recognized the unit (but REQUIRED a reboot which is when gpsd seems to search for new units) and the two gps status programs for Linux that I know about both worked: gpsmon and cgps. I prefer the latter because it’s faster, cleaner looking when started with the -s flag and more detailed concerning satellite info and signal info. These programs use curses to show the signal strengths, satellite id’s and a lot of other data on a simple console login or xterm window. I have not tried this thing on any OS besides Bookworm on pi02’s and pi4’s. So, on a machine WITHOUT gpsd, in a couple hours, I wrote a tty reader and nmea parser to extract the time/date info from gprmc messages, convert it for the local time zone plus daylight savings time setting and then apply the result to the linux system on boot using the date command. With comments and debug statements it’s about 200 lines of code. Once gpsd is installed it makes the usb/acm tty port unusable by anything else. I really, really hate systemd and the people who wrote it.

I got one of these to act as a time source for an Inovato Quadra when doing Parks On The Air in areas with no internet connection. This is a Linux based single board computer much like a Raspberry Pi3. I first set it up to work with Chrony and it worked fine. I have since gone to using Conky and it works a treat. I am able to get lock with 15 satellites from in side the house! Very good reciever once you get the software side of things sorted. Will be buying another in the future.

Usato su un cerbo cx-s riconfigurato a velocità 4800. Perfetto

Rubbish, avoid, constant driver issues on Win 11, so I binned it.

This receiver is a bit more expensive than I would have liked, but on my Victron Cerbo GX it works without any problems with very good reception of 8-9 satellites inside the camper. After plugging in I got a fix within a minute.

lo puse en varias laptops y nunca pude obtener ubicacion, incluso despues de instalar ciertos programas para que se reconozca este aparato.

Très bon rapport qualité prix et précision. Pour info je le fais fonctionner parfaitement sur tablette Androïd avec l'appli GPS connector (tuto sur le net). Pour moi c'est un excellent choix il m'a rendu une tablette sans gps utilisable pour la navigation auto.