Re: [gpsd-users] NMEA being discarded

[Eric S. Raymond]

Ed Simmons <address@hidden>:
> I've been using GPSD to build an automated voyage logging system on
> a boat, we have onboard a huge collection of devices that all output
> NMEA. Most of this data arrives at a Raymarine C120 chart plotter
> (by way of NMEA, seatalk etc) and is output as nmea at 38400 baud.

Apologies for the long delay in replying.  I got distracted from gpsd
work by trying to rescue notification service after CIA crashed; ever since, 
the list and the bugtracker have been so quiet that I only just got around
to excavating my back mail.
 
> I'm using ubuntu 11.04 (server and desktop releases, working on my
> desktop and running it for real on the server) and a modified
> version of GPSD, I have added extra NMEA sentence parsers to the
> driver_nmea0183.c and expanded the attitude_t struct to hold the
> extra data we need.

Hm.  Can we have that code? I'm especially interested if the additional
sentences are stock NMEA.

> I have the following observations:
> 
> The auto baud detection of GPSD fails for the 38400 baud data unless
> I increase the usleep duration from 200ms to 400-500ms in the baud
> hunting code. This took some time to discover, but still doesn't
> make the port detection 100% reliable.

You may want to try the trick documented in the FAQ entry titled "Why
is there no option to fix baud rate?".  I'm reluctant to increase the
usleep duration because doing that dramatically slows down
synchronization in the normal range of speeds (4800-19200), and many
UART/driver combinations seem to handle 38400bps without difficulty
(I've tested here, of course).

> This may be related to the next point, which is that when running
> GPSD/GPSFAKE with -D 8 it appears that a large number of sentences
> are discarded despite the fact they look ok when viewing the serial
> data directly, or logging it.

> It looks like there's some junk being detected at the end of some
> lines, but this is not visible in the log or when viewing the serial
> data in a serial port terminal.

That's disturbing. And makes me want to know at what level the 
data is being lost.  Do you see all the bytes coming through at -D8 
level?

> Any help would be greatly appreciated, since as an experienced
> programmer who's relatively new to GPSD's innards I'm finding
> there's a ton of code to grok before I realise where I should be
> looking.... this is an area where the documentation appears to fall
> a little short of the mark - for example I spent ages looking for
> how to get shared memory export working. If it is publicly
> documented, I couldn't find it.

Sorry, I didn't realize I hadn't done that yet.  I'll update the
manual page for the client-side libraries.

>                                Also, drawing people's attention to
> the provided init scripts etc. would have saved me loads of time,
> but damn am I glad I found it in the end!

Where would that pointer have been more useful?  In the FAQ, the 
source-build instructions, the INSTALL file, or somewhere else?
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>