[Turb02]

I was thinking last night how nice it would be to be able to plug my iPhone into my laptop and use its GPS capabilities as an antenna for a GPS software that I have installed on my laptop.

Has this been done or is there an app for something like this? Im not sure what comm port it needs to talk on (between the PC and phone) for it to be used as the antenna for the GPS software.

Can anyone point me in the right direction with this? Having this capability would be awesome.

[reanimationxp]

Seconded, this would kick ***.

[Turb02]

I thought so too, I wonder if anyone will run with this to get it to work soon?

Do I need to PM a moderator to get someone to look at this?

[Turb02]

any news on this being produced? I think this would be a very useful app for field technicians or for fun. People that build car PC's wouldnt have to buy the $50 GPS antenna and SW if this could be done...

[Turb02]

Bump? anyone think this is a good idea? at least worth checking into?

[volatile-dev]

I'm intrigued by this request. I've started to do some digging, and I think this can be done. My first thought was to see if there's a way to perform this task over the USB connection. After a bit of research, I deemed that to be in the too hard category.

However, while performing that research, I stumbled upon an iPhone to Serial cable and software to talk over the serial cable from the iPhone. THe only problem is that the cables are in the $35 range and Apple may not let an app communicate over the serial lines.

I then thought that maybe there's a way to emulate a serial port on the host computer that the iPhone can talk to over wifi. It may not be the simplest solution, but there are no extra parts to buy. Just an app on the iPhone that sends data over the wifi and an app on the host computer that received that data and sends it to the GPS application over a virtual serial port.

I found an app that'll create the virtual serial port (HW VSP3) and I don't think it'll be too difficult to create the corresponding iPhone app.

I'll play around a little more this afternoon and see how far I get.

Thomas

Well, in case anyone's following this thread, I've managed to get basic position and altitude information from the iPhone to VisualGPS running on my computer via the wifi connection.

The Location SDK does nor provide satellite information, so there's no way to get that data into a GPS application.

Not bad for a few hours work. If anyone's still interested, I may continue working on this.

Thomas

[Turb02]

that's awesome work in a couple of hours! Would it be able to be used for a car pc based navigation system? I'm still really interested

[reanimationxp]

Outstanding work! I'm also very interested in this and would love to see some betas or even help out on the project. Keep it up! This could be quite a breakthrough.

[Turb02]

essentially my setup will be a car PC running centrafuse (dont know the name of the navigation tool that is with it) and using the iPhone for its PDAnet teather capability.

That is why I am wanting to get the iPhone to be used as a GPS antenna. Would your solution be ablt to use the iPhone for PDAnet teathering, a GPS antenna thru centrafuse AND be ablt to make and recieve calls all at the same time?

[volatile-dev]

Originally Posted by Turb02

essentially my setup will be a car PC running centrafuse (dont know the name of the navigation tool that is with it) and using the iPhone for its PDAnet teather capability.

That is why I am wanting to get the iPhone to be used as a GPS antenna. Would your solution be ablt to use the iPhone for PDAnet teathering, a GPS antenna thru centrafuse AND be ablt to make and recieve calls all at the same time?

While I haven't tried using all three features at one, I don't see any reason it wouldn't be possible. I'll be sure to keep that in mind as I continue to experiment.

[tssouthpark]

to be honest with you thats stupid the iphone map is just find

[volatile-dev]

Originally Posted by tssouthpark

to be honest with you thats stupid the iphone map is just find

Maybe for you. In fact, I probably won't even ever use this if I get it working. Sometimes it's just fun to see if something can be done that has the remote possibility of being useful.

[Turb02]

the maps might be fine but if I have a nav system that has turn by turn directions and can use the iPhone for it's antenna, why not? In the same breath, why would someone want to teather to the iPhone when they can just plug it in to a LAN or connect to a wifi network? Well because some people just want to use the phone for as much as possible...and the apps are there. It may not be for everyone just like some of the apps in cydia

[dapaintballer331]

This is easy!

Jailbreak your phone, and install Erika Utilities (should be included in initial install of cydia).

Run "findme" via wifi ssh and you'll get GPS cordinates.

[volatile-dev]

Originally Posted by dapaintballer331

This is easy!

Jailbreak your phone, and install Erika Utilities (should be included in initial install of cydia).

Run "findme" via wifi ssh and you'll get GPS cordinates.

All that does is print the GPS coordinates to the screen. How could an existing application on a PC make use of this data?

The purpose here is to allow an existing PC-based application to utilize the iPhone's GPS in a manner transparent to that application.

Besides, there are plenty of free GUI-based apps in the app store that can give you your GPS coordinates without the need to jailbreak you phone.