#Putty portable pi serial
#Putty portable pi Patch
#Putty portable pi code

The second is WinSCP to transfer files between the PC and the Zero. To get started I downloaded three open-source applications to my PC: The first is Putty to communicate with the Zero through SSH over a USB cable and avoid having to hook up a keyboard or HDMI monitor to the Zero.

#Putty portable pi code

I am no expert in linux so I relied heavily on cutting and pasting various pieces of code from different tutorials I found online. I did this using a Windows PC but I imagine it would not be very different if you are using another machine. I will describe the process I went through to connect the receiver to the Zero and to configure the Zero to automatically start collecting data when power is applied.

#Putty portable pi Patch

The total cost for a basic logger with an M8N receiver and basic patch antenna is just under $50, using an M8T receiver and/or higher quality antenna will increase the price. The 2600 mAh units are sufficiently large to run the Zero and GPS receiver for many hours. Both include USB cables but they are power only, you will need a power and data cable for communication between PC and Zero. I have bought 10000 mAh units for $10 on Amazon and 2600 mAh units for $5.

The last things you will need are a USB portable charger (battery pack) to power it and a USB cable. I believe any size 4 GB or larger will work. I used an 8 GB card available for $5 or less from many sources. In addition to the Pi Zero, you will need a microSD card to use as non-volatile storage for the operating system, programs, and data. Here’s a stock photo of one in case you haven’t already seen it. Still, this is less than half the price of the least expensive version of the Beaglebone.

I paid $13.50 including shipping for the last one I bought from Adafruit. The Pi Zero is supposedly a $5 computer but at least at the moment you can only order one at at time and the shipping costs are significant relative to the board price.

Like the Beaglebone, it does have an I2C port which can be used to collect magnetometer (digital compass) data if your receiver includes that feature. This is important for example if you want to add a radio link for real-time data collection. The other is that it only has a single UART port, so does not have the flexibility of the Beaglebone. One of the disadvantages is that it does require soldering since there are no host USB ports or headers on the board. The advantages of the Pi Zero over the Beaglebone are it’s lower price and smaller size. In this post I will describe setting up a Pi Zero for this purpose. I have used both Beaglebone and Pi boards to do this and find they each have their advantages.

They can also be used to process the data but in this post I will focus on collecting the data for post-processing later. Of course, if you want to collect base and rover data, that means lugging around two laptops, which if added to the cost of the system, start to make it not look so low cost and also not so convenient since the laptops are so much larger than the receivers.Īn inexpensive alternative to the laptop is to configure one of the many linux-based single board computers that are available to collect the data.

#Putty portable pi serial

The easiest way to collect GPS data from the u-blox receivers is simply to plug the receiver into a laptop PC through an FTDI serial to USB converter and run STRSVR or RTKNAVI as I’ve previously described.