I recently purchased a NEO-6M GT-U7 GPS off amazon to use with my arduino mega 2560. I tried to run the fullexample sketch included with the tinygps++ library, however the output on the serial monitor library comes out garbled. The GPS turns on and the red LED blinks. On the arduino, the builtin led turns on and the TX led blinks. I've done some research on this issue and possible answers could be that it simply is not able to fix to a satellite and I should wait longer to see if it connects. I've tried waiting up to 30 minutes for a connection but it does not seem to come. I also changed my baudrate to 9600 as info on amazon states. What could be causing the garbled output? Maybe my solder connections were not the best?
Attached is the code from the example and my garbled output.
code
#include <TinyGPS++.h>
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
/*
This sample code demonstrates the normal use of a TinyGPS++ (TinyGPSPlus) object.
It requires the use of SoftwareSerial, and assumes that you have a
4800-baud serial GPS device hooked up on pins 4(rx) and 3(tx).
*/
static const int RXPin = 4, TXPin = 3;
static const uint32_t GPSBaud = 9600;
// The TinyGPS++ object
TinyGPSPlus gps;
// The serial connection to the GPS device
SoftwareSerial ss(RXPin, TXPin);
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(115200);
ss.begin(GPSBaud);
Serial.println(F("FullExample.ino"));
Serial.println(F("An extensive example of many interesting TinyGPS++ features"));
Serial.print(F("Testing TinyGPS++ library v. ")); Serial.println(TinyGPSPlus::libraryVersion());
Serial.println(F("by Mikal Hart"));
Serial.println();
Serial.println(F("Sats HDOP Latitude Longitude Fix Date Time Date Alt Course Speed Card Distance Course Card Chars Sentences Checksum"));
Serial.println(F(" (deg) (deg) Age Age (m) --- from GPS ---- ---- to London ---- RX RX Fail"));
Serial.println(F("----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------"));
}
void loop()
{
static const double LONDON_LAT = 51.508131, LONDON_LON = -0.128002;
printInt(gps.satellites.value(), gps.satellites.isValid(), 5);
printFloat(gps.hdop.hdop(), gps.hdop.isValid(), 6, 1);
printFloat(gps.location.lat(), gps.location.isValid(), 11, 6);
printFloat(gps.location.lng(), gps.location.isValid(), 12, 6);
printInt(gps.location.age(), gps.location.isValid(), 5);
printDateTime(gps.date, gps.time);
printFloat(gps.altitude.meters(), gps.altitude.isValid(), 7, 2);
printFloat(gps.course.deg(), gps.course.isValid(), 7, 2);
printFloat(gps.speed.kmph(), gps.speed.isValid(), 6, 2);
printStr(gps.course.isValid() ? TinyGPSPlus::cardinal(gps.course.deg()) : "*** ", 6);
unsigned long distanceKmToLondon =
(unsigned long)TinyGPSPlus::distanceBetween(
gps.location.lat(),
gps.location.lng(),
LONDON_LAT,
LONDON_LON) / 1000;
printInt(distanceKmToLondon, gps.location.isValid(), 9);
double courseToLondon =
TinyGPSPlus::courseTo(
gps.location.lat(),
gps.location.lng(),
LONDON_LAT,
LONDON_LON);
printFloat(courseToLondon, gps.location.isValid(), 7, 2);
const char *cardinalToLondon = TinyGPSPlus::cardinal(courseToLondon);
printStr(gps.location.isValid() ? cardinalToLondon : "*** ", 6);
printInt(gps.charsProcessed(), true, 6);
printInt(gps.sentencesWithFix(), true, 10);
printInt(gps.failedChecksum(), true, 9);
Serial.println();
smartDelay(1000);
if (millis() > 5000 && gps.charsProcessed() < 10)
Serial.println(F("No GPS data received: check wiring"));
}
// This custom version of delay() ensures that the gps object
// is being "fed".
static void smartDelay(unsigned long ms)
{
unsigned long start = millis();
do
{
while (ss.available())
gps.encode(ss.read());
} while (millis() - start < ms);
}
static void printFloat(float val, bool valid, int len, int prec)
{
if (!valid)
{
while (len-- > 1)
Serial.print('*');
Serial.print(' ');
}
else
{
Serial.print(val, prec);
int vi = abs((int)val);
int flen = prec + (val < 0.0 ? 2 : 1); // . and -
flen += vi >= 1000 ? 4 : vi >= 100 ? 3 : vi >= 10 ? 2 : 1;
for (int i=flen; i<len; ++i)
Serial.print(' ');
}
smartDelay(0);
}
static void printInt(unsigned long val, bool valid, int len)
{
char sz[32] = "*****************";
if (valid)
sprintf(sz, "%ld", val);
sz[len] = 0;
for (int i=strlen(sz); i<len; ++i)
sz[i] = ' ';
if (len > 0)
sz[len-1] = ' ';
Serial.print(sz);
smartDelay(0);
}
static void printDateTime(TinyGPSDate &d, TinyGPSTime &t)
{
if (!d.isValid())
{
Serial.print(F("********** "));
}
else
{
char sz[32];
sprintf(sz, "%02d/%02d/%02d ", d.month(), d.day(), d.year());
Serial.print(sz);
}
if (!t.isValid())
{
Serial.print(F("******** "));
}
else
{
char sz[32];
sprintf(sz, "%02d:%02d:%02d ", t.hour(), t.minute(), t.second());
Serial.print(sz);
}
printInt(d.age(), d.isValid(), 5);
smartDelay(0);
}
static void printStr(const char *str, int len)
{
int slen = strlen(str);
for (int i=0; i<len; ++i)
Serial.print(i<slen ? str[i] : ' ');
smartDelay(0);
}
Garbled output
FullExam****** ***** *** ******** ****** *** 0 0 0
********** *********** **** ********** ******** **** ****** ****** ***** *** ******** ****** *** 0 0 0
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