How to eliminate softwareserial from a sketch

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It's actually not as hard as you are making it. The GPS library simply decodes strings that you feed it character by character. Normally the strings are fetched by reading from a GPS device via a serial port. In the example you posted it uses software serial by defining a serial object providing the pin numbers to use. To use the hardware Serial3 on your Mega, you should remove:

  • the inclusion of SoftwareSerial.h
  • the constants RXPin and TXPin
  • the software serial initialization SoftwareSerial ss(RXPin, TXPin);
    Then change:
  • the line ss.begin(GPSBaud); to Serial3.begin(GPSBaud);
  • all softwareserial activity by changing "ss." to "Serial3.".

One would use a similar idea if one was reading from an i2c or SPI connected GPS device, but serial connected GPS devices are much more common.