MicraTek GPS Freeware Products
This is a page of freeware products
for use by the Garmin GPS community and users of many other brands of GPS
receivers. These products were written by an avid Garmin GPS user. They have
been used a lot but are NOT guaranteed to be bug free. They are still under
development but that activity takes time, Time and more TIME!
But they are already working well and are
reasonably bug free. They will help you do things which will increase the value
of your GPS receiver.
NMEAgent is an averaging program (and SO much
more) designed to collect and average multiple GPS Lat/Long readings in an
effort to produce an accurate location Lat/Long. Run it with a unmoving antenna
for at least 24 hours. The reading for the various user selected time intervals
will tend to converge to a single number. This is very close to Where You Are in
the WGS84 space.
Note to Garmin Users:
Good quality cables for a VERY good price can be ordered here.
Also, be SURE to stop all running tasks before
installing this or ANY OTHER software from any vendor, whether purchased,
freeware or shareware. Stop all programs in the Start bar and the SysTray.
NOTE: The following download of NMEAgent for
Windows 98, NT, XP and later ONLY!! Do NOT install it on (not supported) Windows 95!
Current NMEAgent for
Win98/NT/XP - 32 bit program and support code (version 1.16, size: 3.7MB)
The following code runs on all platforms.
Once you have installed the full product from one of the files above, you can
download just the latest executable from here.
Latest NMEAgent.EXE file
only (ZIPped) -- no support code (version 1.25, 385KB)
NOTE: The
SOURCE CODE for
this project is on
Planet-Source-Code web site.
Search for it by name: NMEAgent. I have several loaded projects and
utilities there. You might enjoy others, too.
Another note to those running 802.11g. While running the
latest test, I noticed that when I turn on the radio in the computer (the PCI
card with the antenna) I get slightly lower signal quality on several sats.
Apparently, there is enough noise being generated to interfere slightly. I
did not try powering down the WAP to see. The amplified antenna is about 6
to 7 feet from the computer and the PCI card antenna. Don't know if this
will happen with all 11g cards. Try it and post to the Usenet forum if you
notice any degradation.
Here are some screen shots from the current NMEAgent
current version. (Updated .exe shows 16 sats)
Here's the track of
sats passing somewhere overhead from my home. As you can see, there are
some gaps. These are due to the house shadowing the view in certain
directions from where the antenna was sitting. This picture was developed
over about 24 hours. It shows very well that the sats don't go too near
the north pole. In fact, they are in an inclined orbit and always moving
with relation to us all. Funny how the combination of the sat movement and
the earth movement make some tracks convex and some tracks concave and some a
little of each. Some are seemingly straight lines. But be sure they
are moving in a circle, always. This is just an effect of the two
movements, earth and the sat. Note that this screen is round without a title bar. It
can still be moved and operates just fine. Just a silly little trick.
The title bar can be added back by double clicking on the round form, in case
you want boring mode once again. Resizing the form will erase it.
Set it to the size you want before letting it paint sats.
On this
screen, I was averaging my position for quite some time. I don't live here
any more but I do know where it is with some assurance! The maximum
deviation of Latitude is .07 or a second. Longitude is quite large by
comparison, being 1/4 of a second. Still, this is certainly not much.
I could figure it out but will leave this as an exercise for the facile student.
Here is a screen of some NMEA
being emitted by one of the Garmin units I had at the time. This gibberish
is what causes all of the other displays to happen. Well... this gibberish
and some programming to read it, decode it, save it and display it in the proper
place at the proper time. But, then, that's what I did for a living for 30
years.
Update History:
2004/08/14 -- v.1.25 -- Fixed Meters being forgotten, fixes for bad NMEA data, 16 simultaneous sats and PRNs to 50.
2003/08/xx -- v.1.24 -- Added WAAS support for sat position tracking screen.
1999/02/06 -- v1.16 -- Corrected bug which shows incorrect lat or long for some users.
1999/02/06 -- v1.16 -- Changed installation from MS VB/Zip based to Wise Installer, saving 1 MB in size
If you have comments or suggestions, email me
