GPSD(8)
NAME
gpsd - interface daemon for GPS receivers
SYNOPSIS
gpsd [-F control-socket] [-S listener-port] [-b] [-l] [-G] [-n] [-N] [-h] [-P pidfile] [-D debuglevel] [-V] [[source-name]...]
QUICK START
- If you have a GPS attached on the lowest-numbered USB port of a Linux
system, and want to read reports from it on TCP/IP port 2947, it will
normally suffice to do this: - gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0
- For the lowest-numbered serial port:
gpsd /dev/ttyS0- Change the device number as appropriate if you need to use a different
port. Command-line flags enable verbose logging, a control port, and
other optional extras but should not be needed for basic operation; the one exception, on very badly designed hardware, might be -b (which see). - On Linux systems supporting udev, gpsd is normally started
automatically when a USB plugin event fires (if it is not already
running) and is handed the name of the newly active device. In that
case no invocation is required at all. - For your initial tests set your GPS hardware to speak NMEA, as gpsd is
guaranteed to be able to process that. If your GPS has a native or
binary mode with better perfornance that gpsd knows how to speak, gpsd will autoconfigure that mode. - You can verify correct operation by first starting gpsd and then xgps, the X windows test client.
- If you have problems, the GPSD project maintains a FAQ[1] to assist troubleshooting.
DESCRIPTION
gpsd is a monitor daemon that collects information from GPSes,
differential-GPS radios, or AIS receivers attached to the host machine.
Each GPS, DGPS radio, or AIS receiver is expected to be
direct-connected to the host via a USB or RS232C serial device. The
serial device may be specified to gpsd at startup, or it may be set via
a command shipped down a local control socket (e.g. by a USB hotplug
script). Given a GPS device by either means, gpsd discovers the correct
port speed and protocol for it.
gpsd should be able to query any GPS that speaks either the standard
textual NMEA 0183 protocol, or the (differing) extended NMEA dialects
used by MKT-3301, iTrax, Motorola OnCore, Sony CXD2951, and
Ashtech/Thales devices. It can also interpret the binary protocols used
by EverMore, Garmin, Navcom, Rockwell/Zodiac, SiRF, Trimble, and uBlox
ANTARIS devices. It can read heading and attitude information from the
Oceanserver 5000 orv TNT Revolution digital compasses.
The GPS reporting formats supported by your instance of gpsd may differ
depending on how it was compiled; general-purpose versions support
many, but it can be built with protocol subsets down to a singleton for
use in constrained environments. For a list of the GPS protocols
supported by your instance, see the output of gpsd -l
gpsd effectively hides the differences among the GPS types it supports.
It also knows about and uses commands that tune these GPSes for lower
latency. By using gpsd as an intermediary applications avoid contention
for serial devices.
gpsd can use differential-GPS corrections from a DGPS radio or over the
net, from a ground station running a DGPSIP server or a Ntrip
broadcaster that reports RTCM-104 data; this will shrink position
errors by roughly a factor of four. When gpsd opens a serial device
emitting RTCM-104, it automatically recognizes this and uses the device
as a correction source for all connected GPSes that accept RTCM
corrections (this is dependent on the type of the GPS; not all GPSes
have the firmware capability to accept RTCM correction packets). See
the section called "ACCURACY" and the section called "FILES" for
discussion.
Client applications will communicate with gpsd via a TCP/IP port, 2947
by default). Both IPv4 and IPv6 connections are supported and a client
may connect via either.
The program accepts the following options:
- -F
- Create a control socket for device addition and removal commands.
You must specify a valid pathname on your local filesystem; this
will be created as a Unix-domain socket to which you can write
commands that edit the daemon's internal device list. - -S
- Set TCP/IP port on which to listen for GPSD clients (default is
2947). - -b
- Broken-device-safety mode, otherwise known as read-only mode. Some
popular bluetooth and USB receivers lock up or become totally
inaccessible when probed or reconfigured. This switch prevents gpsd from writing to a receiver. This means that gpsd cannot configure
the receiver for optimal performance, but it also means that gpsd
cannot break the receiver. A better solution would be for Bluetooth to not be so fragile. A platform independent method to identify
serial-over-Bluetooth devices would also be nice. - -G
- This flag causes gpsd to listen on all addresses (INADDR_ANY)
rather than just the loopback (INADDR_LOOPBACK) address. For the
sake of privacy and security, TPV information is now private to the local machine until the user makes an effort to expose this to the world. - -l
- List all drivers compiled into this gpsd instance. The letters to
the left of each driver name are the gpsd control commands
supported by that driver. - -n
- Don't wait for a client to connect before polling whatever GPS is
associated with it. Many GPSes go to a standby mode (drawing less
power) before the host machine asserts DTR, so waiting for the
first actual request saves battery power. - -N
- Don't daemonize; run in foreground. Also suppresses
privilege-dropping. This switch is mainly useful for debugging. - -h
- Display help message and terminate.
- -P
- Specify the name and path to record the daemon's process ID.
- -D
- Set debug level. At debug levels 2 and above, gpsd reports incoming sentence and actions to standard error if gpsd is in the foreground (-N) or to syslog if in the background.
- -V
- Dump version and exit.
- Arguments are interpreted as the names of data sources. Normally, a
data source is the device pathname of a local device from which the
daemon may expect GPS data. But there are three other special source
types recognized, for a total of four: - Local serial or USB device
- A normal Unix device name of a serial or USB device to which a
sensor is attached. Example: /dev/ttyUSB0. - TCP feed
- A URI with the prefix "tcp://", followed by a hostname, a colon,
and a port number. The daemon will open a socket to the indicated
address and port and read data packets from it, which will be
interpreted as though they had been issued by a serial device.
Example: tcp://data.aishub.net:4006. - UDP feed
- A URI with the prefix "udp://", followed by a hostname, a colon,
and a port number. The daemon will open a socket listening for UDP datagrams arriving on the indicated address and port, which will be interpreted as though they had been issued by a serial device.
Example: udp://127.0.0.1:5000. - Ntrip caster
- A URI with the prefix "ntrip://" followed by the name of an Ntrip
caster (Ntrip is a protocol for broadcasting differential-GPS fixes over the net). For Ntrip services that require authentication, a
prefix of the form "username:password@" can be added before the
name of the Ntrip broadcaster. For Ntrip service, you must specify which stream to use; the stream is given in the form "/streamname". An example DGPSIP URI could be "dgpsip://dgpsip.example.com" and a Ntrip URI could be
"ntrip://foo:bar@ntrip.example.com:80/example-stream". Corrections from the caster will be send to each attached GPS with the
capability to accept them. - DGPSIP server
- A URI with the prefix "dgpsip://" followed by a hostname, a colon,
and an optional colon-separated port number (defaulting to 2101).
The daemon will handshake with the DGPSIP server and read RTCM2
correction data from it. Corrections from the server will be set to each attached GPS with the capability to accept them.Example:
dgpsip://dgps.wsrcc.com:2101. - (The "ais:://" source type supported in some older versions of the
daemon has been retired in favor of the more general "tcp://".) - Internally, the daemon maintains a device pool holding the pathnames of
devices and remote servers known to the daemon. Initially, this list is
the list of device-name arguments specified on the command line. That
list may be empty, in which case the daemon will have no devices on its search list until they are added by a control-socket command (see the
section called "GPS DEVICE MANAGEMENT" for details on this). Daemon
startup will abort with an error if neither any devices nor a control
socket are specified. - Clients communicate with the daemon via textual request and responses.
It is a bad idea for applications to speak the protocol directly:
rather, they should use the libgps client library and take appropriate care to conditionalize their code on the major and minor protocol
version symbols.
REQUEST/RESPONSE PROTOCOL
The GPSD protocol is built on top of JSON, JaveScript Object Notation.
Use of this metaprotocol to pass structured data between daemon and
client avoids the non-extensibility problems of the old protocol, and
permits a richer set of record types to be passed up to clients.
A request line is introduced by "?" and may include multiple commands.
Commands begin with a command identifier, followed either by a
terminating ';' or by an equal sign "=" and a JSON object treated as an
argument. Any ';' or newline indication (either LF or CR-LF) after the
end of a command is ignored. All request lines must be composed of
US-ASCII characters and may be no more than 80 characters in length,
exclusive of the trailing newline.
Responses are JSON objects all of which have a "class" attribute the
value of which is either the name of the invoking command or one of the
strings "DEVICE" or "ERROR". Their length limit is 1024 characters,
including trailing newline.
The remainder of this section documents the core GPSD protocol.
Extensions are docomented in the following sections. The extensions may
not be supported in your gpsd instance if it has been compiled with a
restricted feature set.
Here are the core-protocol responses:
- TPV
- A TPV object is a time-position-velocity report. The "class" and
"mode" fields will reliably be present. Others may be reported or
not depending on the fix quality. - Table 1. TPV object
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "TPV" |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|tag | No | string | Type tag |
| | | | associated with |
| | | | this GPS |
| | | | sentence; from |
| | | | an NMEA |
| | | | device this |
| | | | is just the NMEA |
| | | | sentence type.. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|device | No | string | Name of |
| | | | originating |
| | | | device |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|time | No | numeric | Seconds since |
| | | | the Unix epoch, |
| | | | UTC. May have a |
| | | | fractional |
| | | | part of up to |
| | | | .01sec |
| | | | precision. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|ept | No | numeric | Estimated |
| | | | timestamp error |
| | | | (%f, seconds, |
| | | | 95% confidence). |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|lat | No | numeric | Latitude in |
| | | | degrees: +/- |
| | | | signifies |
| | | | West/East |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|lon | No | numeric | Longitude in |
| | | | degrees: +/- |
| | | | signifies |
| | | | North/South. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|alt | No | numeric | Altitude in |
| | | | meters. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|epx | No | numeric | Longitude error |
| | | | estimate in |
| | | | meters, 95% |
| | | | confidence. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|epy | No | numeric | Latitude error |
| | | | estimate in |
| | | | meters, 95% |
| | | | confidence. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|epv | No | numeric | Estimated |
| | | | vertical error |
| | | | in meters, 95% |
| | | | confidence. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|track | No | numeric | Course over |
| | | | ground, degrees |
| | | | from true north. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|speed | No | numeric | Speed over |
| | | | ground, meters |
| | | | per second. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|climb | No | numeric | Climb (positive) |
| | | | or sink |
| | | | (negative) rate, |
| | | | meters per |
| | | | second. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|epd | No | numeric | Direction error |
| | | | estimate in |
| | | | degrees, 95% |
| | | | confifdence. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|eps | No | numeric | Speed error |
| | | | estinmate in |
| | | | meters/sec, 95% |
| | | | confifdence. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|epc | No | numeric | Climb/sink error |
| | | | estinmate in |
| | | | meters/sec, 95% |
| | | | confifdence. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mode | Yes | numeric | NMEA mode: %d, |
| | | | 0=no mode value |
| | | | yet seen, 1=no |
| | | | fix, 2=2D, 3=3D. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert validity bits in the top-level set member for each field
actually received; see gps.h for bitmask names and values. - Here's an example:
{"class":"TPV","tag":"MID2","device":"/dev/pts/1","time":1118327688.280,"ept":0.005,
"lat":46.498293369,"lon":7.567411672,"alt":1343.127,
"eph":36.000,"epv":32.321,
"track":10.3788,"speed":0.091,"climb":-0.085,"mode":3} - SKY
- A SKY object reports a sky view of the GPS satellite positions. If
there is no GPS device available, or no skyview has been reported
yet, only the "class" field will reliably be present. - Table 2. SKY object
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "SKY" |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|tag | No | string | Type tag |
| | | | associated with |
| | | | this GPS |
| | | | sentence; from |
| | | | an NMEA |
| | | | device this |
| | | | is just the NMEA |
| | | | sentence type.. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|device | No | string | Name of |
| | | | originating |
| | | | device |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|time | No | numeric | Seconds since |
| | | | the Unix epoch, |
| | | | UTC. May have a |
| | | | fractional |
| | | | part of up to |
| | | | .01sec |
| | | | precision. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|xdop | No | numeric | Longitudinal |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|ydop | No | numeric | Latitudinal |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|vdop | No | numeric | Altitude |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|tdop | No | numeric | Time dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|hdop | No | numeric | Horizontal |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | a circular |
| | | | error estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|pdop | No | numeric | Spherical |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|gdop | No | numeric | Hyperspherical |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|xdop | No | numeric | Longitudinal |
| | | | dilution of |
| | | | precision, a |
| | | | dimensionsless |
| | | | factor |
| | | | which should be |
| | | | multiplied by a |
| | | | base UERE to get |
| | | | an error |
| | | | estimate. |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
|satellites | Yes | list | List of |
| | | | satellite |
| | | | objects in |
| | | | skyview |
+-----------+---------+---------+------------------+
Many devices compute dilution of precision factors but do nit
include them in their reports. Many that do report DOPs report only HDOP, two-dimensial circular error. gpsd always passes through
whatever the device actually reports, then attempts to fill in
other DOPs by calculating the appropriate determinants in a
covariance matrix based on the satellite view. DOPs may be missing if some of these determinants are singular. It can even happen that the device reports an error estimate in meters when the
correspoding DOP is unavailable; some devices use more
sophisticated error modeling than the covariance calculation. - The satellite list objects have the following elements:
- Table 3. Satellite object
+-----+---------+---------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +-----+---------+---------+------------------+
|PRN | Yes | numeric | PRN ID of the |
| | | | satellite |
+-----+---------+---------+------------------+
|az | Yes | numeric | Azimuth, degrees |
| | | | from true north. |
+-----+---------+---------+------------------+
|el | Yes | numeric | Elevation in |
| | | | degrees. |
+-----+---------+---------+------------------+
|ss | Yes | numeric | Signal strength |
| | | | in dB. |
+-----+---------+---------+------------------+
|used | Yes | boolean | Used in current |
| | | | solution? |
+-----+---------+---------+------------------+
Note that satellite objects do not have a "class" field.., as they are never shipped outside of a SKY object. - When the C client library parses a SKY response, it will assert the SATELLITE_SET bit in the top-level set member.
- Here's an example:
{"class":"SKY","tag":"MID2","device":"/dev/pts/1","time":1118327688.280"xdop":1.55,"hdop":1.24,"pdop":1.99,
"satellites":[{"PRN":23,"el":6,"az":84,"ss":0,"used":false},
{"PRN":28,"el":7,"az":160,"ss":0,"used":false},
{"PRN":8,"el":66,"az":189,"ss":44,"used":true},
{"PRN":29,"el":13,"az":273,"ss":0,"used":false},
{"PRN":10,"el":51,"az":304,"ss":29,"used":true},
{"PRN":4,"el":15,"az":199,"ss":36,"used":true},
{"PRN":2,"el":34,"az":241,"ss":43,"used":true},
{"PRN":27,"el":71,"az":76,"ss":43,"used":true}]} - ATT
- An ATT object is a vehicle-attitude report. It is returned by
digital-compass and gyroscope sensors; depending on device, it may include: heading, pitch, roll, yaw, gyroscope, and magnetic-field
readings. Because such sensors are often bundled as part of
marine-navigation systems, the ATT response may also include water depth. - The "class", "mode", and "tag" fields will reliably be present.
Others may be reported or not depending on the specific device
type. - Table 4. ATT object
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "ATT" |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|tag | Yes | string | Type tag |
| | | | associated with |
| | | | this GPS |
| | | | sentence; from |
| | | | an NMEA |
| | | | device this |
| | | | is just the NMEA |
| | | | sentence type.. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|device | Yes | string | Name of |
| | | | originating |
| | | | device |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|time | Yes | numeric | Seconds since |
| | | | the Unix epoch, |
| | | | UTC. May have a |
| | | | fractional |
| | | | part of up to |
| | | | .01sec |
| | | | precision. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|heading | No | numeric | Heading, degrees |
| | | | from true north. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mag_st | No | string | Magnetometer |
| | | | status. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|pitch | No | numeric | Pitch in |
| | | | degrees. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|pitch_st | No | string | Pitch sensor |
| | | | status. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|yaw | No | numeric | Yaw in degrees |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|yaw_st | No | string | Yaw sensor |
| | | | status. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|roll | No | numeric | Roll in degrees. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|roll_st | No | string | Roll sensor |
| | | | status. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|dip | No | numeric | Roll in degrees. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mag_len | No | numeric | Scalar magnetic |
| | | | field strength. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mag_x | No | numeric | X component of |
| | | | magnetic field |
| | | | strength. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mag_y | No | numeric | Y component of |
| | | | magnetic field |
| | | | strength.. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mag_z | No | numeric | Z component of |
| | | | magnetic field |
| | | | strength.. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|mag_len | No | numeric | Scalar |
| | | | acceleration. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|acc_x | No | numeric | X component of |
| | | | acceleration. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|acc_y | No | numeric | Y component of |
| | | | acceleration. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|acc_z | No | numeric | Z component of |
| | | | acceleration.. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|gyro_x | No | numeric | X component of |
| | | | acceleration. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|gyro_y | No | numeric | Y component of |
| | | | acceleration. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|depth | No | numeric | Water depth in |
| | | | meters. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|temperature | No | numeric | Temperature at |
| | | | sensir, degrees |
| | | | centigrade. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
The heading, pitch, and roll status codes (if present) vary by
device. For the TNT Revolution digital compasses, they are coded as follows: - Table 5. Device flags
+-----+----------------------------+
|Code | Description | +-----+----------------------------+
|C | magnetometer calibration |
| | alarm |
+-----+----------------------------+
|L | low alarm |
+-----+----------------------------+
|M | low warning |
+-----+----------------------------+
|N | normal |
+-----+----------------------------+
|O | high warning |
+-----+----------------------------+
|P | high alarm |
+-----+----------------------------+
|V | magnetometer voltage level |
| | alarm |
+-----+----------------------------+
When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert ATT_IS. - Here's an example:
{"class":"ATT","tag":"PTNTHTM","time":1270938096.843,"heading":14223.00,"mag_st":"N",
"pitch":169.00,"pitch_st":"N", "roll":-43.00,"roll_st":"N", "dip":13641.000,"mag_x":2454.000,"temperature":0.000,"depth":0.000} - And here are the commands:
- ?VERSION;
- Returns an object with the following attributes:
- Table 6. VERSION object
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "VERSION" |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|release | Yes | string | Public release |
| | | | level |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|rev | Yes | string | Internal |
| | | | revision-control |
| | | | level. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|proto_major | Yes | numeric | API major |
| | | | revision level.. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
|proto_minor | Yes | numeric | API minor |
| | | | revision level.. |
+------------+---------+---------+------------------+
The daemon ships a VERSION response to each client when the client first connects to it. - When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert the VERSION_SET bit in the top-level set member. - Here's an example:
{"class":"VERSION","version":"2.40dev","rev":"06f62e14eae9886cde907dae61c124c53eb1101f","proto_major":3,"proto_minor":1} - ?DEVICES;
- Returns a device list object with the following elements:
- Table 7. DEVICES object
+--------+---------+--------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +--------+---------+--------+------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "DEVICES" |
+--------+---------+--------+------------------+
|devices | Yes | list | List of device |
| | | | descriptions |
+--------+---------+--------+------------------+
When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert the DEVICELIST_SET bit in the top-level set member. - Here's an example:
{"class"="DEVICES","devices":[{"class":"DEVICE","path":"/dev/pts/1","flags":1,"driver":"SiRF binary"}, {"class":"DEVICE","path":"/dev/pts/3","flags":4,"driver":"AIVDM"}]} - The daemon occasionally ships a bare DEVICE object to the client
(that is, one not inside a DEVICES wrapper). The data content of
these objects will be described later in the section covering
notifications. - ?WATCH;
- This command sets watcher mode. It also sets or elicits a report of
per-subscriber policy and the raw bit. An argument WATCH object
changes the subscriber's policy. The responce describes the
subscriber's policy. The response will also include a DEVICES
object. - A WATCH object has the following elements:
- Table 8. WATCH object
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "WATCH" |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|enable | No | boolean | Enable (true) or |
| | | | disable (false) |
| | | | watcher mode. |
| | | | Default is |
| | | | true. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|json | No | boolean | Enable (true) or |
| | | | disable (false) |
| | | | dumping of JSON |
| | | | reports. |
| | | | Default is |
| | | | false. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|nmea | No | boolean | Enable (true) or |
| | | | disable (false) |
| | | | dumping of |
| | | | binary |
| | | | packets as |
| | | | pseudo-NMEA. |
| | | | Default is |
| | | | false. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|raw | No | integer | Controls 'raw' |
| | | | mode. When this |
| | | | attribute is set |
| | | | to 1 for a |
| | | | channel, gpsd |
| | | | reports the |
| | | | unprocessed |
| | | | NMEA or AIVDM |
| | | | data stream from |
| | | | whatever device |
| | | | is attached. |
| | | | Binary GPS |
| | | | packets are |
| | | | hex-dumped. |
| | | | RTCM2 and RTCM3 |
| | | | packets |
| | | | are not dumped |
| | | | in raw mode. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|scaled | No | boolean | If true, apply |
| | | | scaling divisors |
| | | | to output before |
| | | | dumping; |
| | | | default is |
| | | | false. Applies |
| | | | only to AIS |
| | | | reports. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
|device | No | string | If present, |
| | | | enable watching |
| | | | only of the |
| | | | specified device |
| | | | rather than |
| | | | all devices. |
| | | | Useful with raw |
| | | | and NMEA modes |
| | | | in which |
| | | | device responses |
| | | | aren't tagged. |
| | | | Has no effect |
| | | | when used |
| | | | with |
| | | | enable:false. |
+-------+---------+---------+------------------+
There is an additional boolean "timing" attribute which is
undocumented because that portion of the interface is considered
unstable and for developer use only. - In watcher mode, GPS reports are dumped as TPV and SKY responses.
AIS and RTCM reporting is described in the next section. - When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert the POLICY_SET bit in the top-level set member. - Here's an example:
{"class":"WATCH", "raw":1,"scaled":true} - ?POLL;
- The POLL command requests data from the last-seen fixes on all
active GPS devices. Devices must previously have been activated by ?WATCH to be pollable, or have been specified on the GPSD command
line together with an -n option. - Polling can lead to possibly surprising results when it is used on
a device such as an NMEA GPS for which a complete fix has to be
accumulated from several sentences. If you poll while those
sentences are being emitted, the response will contain the last
complete fix data and may be as much as one cycle time (typically 1 second) stale. - The POLL response will contain a timestamped list of TPV objects
describing cached data, and a timestamped list of SKY objects
describing satellite configuration. If a device has not seen fixes, it will be reported with a mode field of zero. - Table 9. POLL object
+---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "POLL" |
+---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
|time | Yes | Numeric | Seconds since |
| | | | the Unix epoch, |
| | | | UTC. May have a |
| | | | fractional |
| | | | part of up to |
| | | | .001sec |
| | | | precision. |
+---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
|active | Yes | Numeric | Count of active |
| | | | devices. |
+---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
|fixes | Yes | JSON array | Comma-separated |
| | | | list of TPV |
| | | | objects. |
+---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
|skyviews | Yes | JSON array | Comma-separated |
| | | | list of SKY |
| | | | objects. |
+---------+---------+------------+-----------------+
Here's an example of a POLL response:
{"class":"POLL","timestamp":1270517274.846,"active":1,"fixes":[{"class":"TPV","tag":"MID41","device":"/dev/ttyUSB0","time":1270517264.240,"ept":0.005,"lat":40.035093060, "lon":-75.519748733,"track":99.4319,"speed":0.123,"mode":2}],"skyviews":[{"class":"SKY","tag":"MID41","device":"/dev/ttyUSB0","time":1270517264.240,"hdop":9.20,
"satellites":[{"PRN":16,"el":55,"az":42,"ss":36,"used":true},{"PRN":19,"el":25,"az":177,"ss":0,"used":false}, {"PRN":7,"el":13,"az":295,"ss":0,"used":false}, {"PRN":6,"el":56,"az":135,"ss":32,"used":true}, {"PRN":13,"el":47,"az":304,"ss":0,"used":false}, {"PRN":23,"el":66,"az":259,"ss":0,"used":false}, {"PRN":20,"el":7,"az":226,"ss":0,"used":false}, {"PRN":3,"el":52,"az":163,"ss":32,"used":true}, {"PRN":31,"el":16,"az":102,"ss":0,"used":false}]}]}Note
Client software should not assime the field inventory of the
POLL response is fixed for all time. As gpsd collects and
caches more data from more sensor types, those data are likely to find their way into this response. - ?DEVICE
- This command reports (when followed by ';') the state of a device,
or sets (when followed by '=' and a DEVICE object) device-specific
control bits, notably the device's speed and serial mode and the
native-mode bit. The parameter-setting form will be rejected if
more than one client is attached to the channel. - Pay attention to the response, because it is possible for this
command to fail if the GPS does not support a speed-switching
command or only supports some combinations of serial modes. In case of failure, the daemon and GPS will continue to communicate at the old speed. - Use the parameter-setting form with caution. On USB and Bluetooth
GPSes it is also possible for serial mode setting to fail either
because the serial adaptor chip does not support non-8N1 modes or
because the device firmware does not properly synchronize the
serial adaptor chip with the UART on the GPS chipset whjen the
speed changes. These failures can hang your device, possibly
requiring a GPS power cycle or (in extreme cases) physically
disconnecting the NVRAM backup battery. - A DEVICE object has the following elements:
- Table 10. CONFIGCHAN object
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "DEVICE" |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|path | No | string | Name the device |
| | | | for which the |
| | | | control bits are |
| | | | being |
| | | | reported, or for |
| | | | which they are |
| | | | to be applied. |
| | | | This |
| | | | attribute |
| | | | may be omitted |
| | | | only when there |
| | | | is exactly one |
| | | | subscribed |
| | | | channel. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|activated | At device | numeric | Time the device |
| | activation and | | was activated, |
| | device close | | or 0 if it is |
| | time. | | being closed. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|flags | No | integer | Bit vector of |
| | | | property flags. |
| | | | Currently defined |
| | | | flags are: |
| | | | describe |
| | | | packet types seen |
| | | | so far (GPS, |
| | | | RTCM2, RTCM3, |
| | | | AIS). Won't |
| | | | be reported if |
| | | | empty, e.g. before |
| | | | gpsd has seen |
| | | | identifiable |
| | | | packets from |
| | | | the device. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|driver | No | string | GPSD's name for |
| | | | the device driver |
| | | | type. Won't be |
| | | | reported before |
| | | | gpsd has seen |
| | | | identifiable |
| | | | packets from |
| | | | the device. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|subtype | When the daemon | string | Whatever version |
| | sees a delayed | | information the |
| | response to a | | device returned. |
| | probe for | | |
| | subtype or | | |
| | firmware-version | | |
| | information. | | |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|bps | No | integer | Device speed in |
| | | | bits per second. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|parity | Yes | string | N, O or E for no |
| | | | parity, odd, or |
| | | | even. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|stopbits | Yes | string | Stop bits (1 or |
| | | | 2). |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|native | No | integer | 0 means NMEA mode |
| | | | and 1 means |
| | | | alternate |
| | | | mode (binary if it |
| | | | has one, for SiRF |
| | | | and Evermore |
| | | | chipsets in |
| | | | particular). |
| | | | Attempting to set |
| | | | this mode on a |
| | | | non-GPS |
| | | | device will |
| | | | yield an error. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|cycle | No | real | Device cycle time |
| | | | in seconds. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
|mincycle | No | real | Device minimum |
| | | | cycle time in |
| | | | seconds. Reported |
| | | | from |
| | | | ?CONFIGDEV |
| | | | when (and only |
| | | | when) the rate is |
| | | | switchable. It is |
| | | | read-only and |
| | | | not settable. |
+----------+------------------+---------+--------------------+
The serial parameters will be omitted in a response describing a
TCP/IP source such as an Ntrip, DGPSIP, or AIS feed. - The contents of the flags field should be interpreted as follows:
- Table 11. Device flags
+-----------+-------+---------------------+
|C #define | Value | Description | +-----------+-------+---------------------+
|SEEN_GPS | 0x01 | GPS data has been |
| | | seen on this device |
+-----------+-------+---------------------+
|SEEN_RTCM2 | 0x02 | RTCM2 data has been |
| | | seen on this device |
+-----------+-------+---------------------+
|SEEN_RTCM3 | 0x04 | RTCM3 data has been |
| | | seen on this device |
+-----------+-------+---------------------+
|SEEN_AIS | 0x08 | AIS data has been |
| | | seen on this device |
+-----------+-------+---------------------+
When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert the DEVICE_SET bit in the top-level set member. - Here's an example:
{"class":"DEVICE", "speed":4800,"serialmode":"8N1","native":0} - When a client is in watcher mode, the daemon will ship it DEVICE
notifications when a device is added to the pool or deactivated. - When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert the DEVICE_SET bit in the top-level set member. - Here's an example:
{"class":"DEVICE","path":"/dev/pts1","activated":0}- The daemon may ship an error object in response to a syntactically
invalid command line or unknown command. It has the following elements: - Table 12. ERROR notification object
+--------+---------+--------+----------------+
|Name | Always? | Type | Description | +--------+---------+--------+----------------+
|class | Yes | string | Fixed: "ERROR" |
+--------+---------+--------+----------------+
|message | Yes | string | Textual error |
| | | | message |
+--------+---------+--------+----------------+ - Here's an example:
{"class":"ERROR","message":"Unrecognized request '?FOO'"}- When the C client library parses a response of this kind, it will
assert the ERR_SET bit in the top-level set member.
AIS AND RTCM DUMP FORMATS
AIS support is an extension. It may not be present if your instance of
gpsd has been built with a restricted feature set.
AIS packets are dumped as JSON objects with class "AIS". Each AIS
report object contains a "type" field giving the AIS message type and a
"scaled" field telling whether the remainder of the fields are dumped
in scaled or unscaled form. Other fields have names and types as
specified in the AIVDM/AIVDO Protocol Decoding[2] document; each
message field table may be directly interpreted as a specification for
the members of the corresponding JSON object type.
RTCM2 corrections are dumped in the JSON format described in
rtcm104(5).
GPS DEVICE MANAGEMENT
gpsd maintains an internal list of GPS devices (the "device pool"). If
you specify devices on the command line, the list is initialized with
those pathnames; otherwise the list starts empty. Commands to add and
remove GPS device paths from the daemon's device list must be written
to a local Unix-domain socket which will be accessible only to programs
running as root. This control socket will be located wherever the -F
option specifies it.
A device may will also be dropped from the pool if GPSD gets a zero
length read from it. This end-of-file condition indicates that the'
device has been disconnected.
When gpsd is properly installed along with hotplug notifier scripts
feeding it device-add commands over the control socket, gpsd should
require no configuration or user action to find devices.
Sending SIGHUP to a running gpsd forces it to close all GPSes and all
client connections. It will then attempt to reconnect to any GPSes on
its device list and resume listening for client connections. This may
be useful if your GPS enters a wedged or confused state but can be
soft-reset by pulling down DTR.
To point gpsd at a device that may be a GPS, write to the control
socket a plus sign ('+') followed by the device name followed by LF or
CR-LF. Thus, to point the daemon at /dev/foo. send "+/dev/foo\n". To
tell the daemon that a device has been disconnected and is no longer
available, send a minus sign ('-') followed by the device name followed
by LF or CR-LF. Thus, to remove /dev/foo from the search list. send
"-/dev/foo\n".
To send a control string to a specified device, write to the control
socket a '!', followed by the device name, followed by '=', followed by
the control string.
To send a binary control string to a specified device, write to the
control socket a '&', followed by the device name, followed by '=',
followed by the control string in paired hex digits.
Your client may await a response, which will be a line beginning with
either "OK" or "ERROR". An ERROR reponse to an add command means the
device did not emit data recognizable as GPS packets; an ERROR response
to a remove command means the specified device was not in gpsd's device
pool. An ERROR response to a ! command means the daemon did not
recognize the devicename specified.
The control socket is intended for use by hotplug scripts and other
device-discovery services. This control channel is separate from the
public gpsd service port, and only locally accessible, in order to
prevent remote denial-of-service and spoofing attacks.
ACCURACY
The base User Estimated Range Error (UERE) of GPSes is 8 meters or less
at 66% confidence, 15 meters or less at 95% confidence. Actual
horizontal error will be UERE times a dilution factor dependent on
current satellite position. Altitude determination is more sensitive to
variability in ionospheric signal lag than latitude/longitude is, and
is also subject to errors in the estimation of local mean sea level;
base error is 12 meters at 66% confidence, 23 meters at 95% confidence.
Again, this will be multiplied by a vertical dilution of precision
(VDOP) dependent on satellite geometry, and VDOP is typically larger
than HDOP. Users should not rely on GPS altitude for life-critical
tasks such as landing an airplane.
These errors are intrinsic to the design and physics of the GPS system.
gpsd does its internal computations at sufficient accuracy that it will
add no measurable position error of its own.
DGPS correction will reduce UERE by a factor of 4, provided you are
within about 100mi (160km) of a DGPS ground station from which you are
receiving corrections.
On a 4800bps connection, the time latency of fixes provided by gpsd
will be one second or less 95% of the time. Most of this lag is due to
the fact that GPSes normally emit fixes once per second, thus expected
latency is 0.5sec. On the personal-computer hardware available in 2005,
computation lag induced by gpsd will be negligible, on the order of a
millisecond. Nevertheless, latency can introduce significant errors for
vehicles in motion; at 50km/h (31mi/h) of speed over ground, 1 second
of lag corresponds to 13.8 meters change in position between updates.
The time reporting of the GPS system itself has an intrinsic accuracy
limit of 0.000,000,340 = 3.4x10-7 seconds. A more important limit is
the GPS tick rate. While the one-per-second PPS pulses emitted by
serial GPS units are timed to the GPS system's intrinsic accuracy
limit,the satellites only emit navigation messages at 0.01-second
intervals, and the timestamps in them only carry 0.01-second precision.
Thus, the timestamps that gpsd reports in time/position/velocity
messages are normally accurate only to 1/100th of a second.
USE WITH NTP
gpsd can provide reference clock information to ntpd, to keep the
system clock synchronized to the time provided by the GPS receiver.
This facility is only available when the daemon is started from root.
If you're going to use gpsd you probably want to run it -n mode so the
clock will be updated even when no clients are active.
Note that deriving time from messages received from the GPS is not as
accurate as you might expect. Messages are often delayed in the
receiver and on the link by several hundred milliseconds, and this
delay is not constant. On Linux, gpsd includes support for interpreting
the PPS pulses emitted at the start of every clock second on the
carrier-detect lines of some serial GPSes; this pulse can be used to
update NTP at much higher accuracy than message time provides. You can
determine whether your GPS emits this pulse by running at -D 5 and
watching for carrier-detect state change messages in the logfile.
When gpsd receives a sentence with a timestamp, it packages the
received timestamp with current local time and sends it to a
shared-memory segment with an ID known to ntpd, the network time
synchronization daemon. If ntpd has been properly configured to receive
this message, it will be used to correct the system clock.
- Here is a sample ntp.conf configuration stanza telling ntpd how to read
the GPS notfications:
- server 127.127.28.0 minpoll 4 maxpoll 4
fudge 127.127.28.0 time1 0.420 refid GPS - server 127.127.28.1 minpoll 4 maxpoll 4 prefer
fudge 127.127.28.1 refid GPS1 - The magic pseudo-IP address 127.127.28.0 identifies unit 0 of the ntpd
shared-memory driver; 127.127.28.1 identifies unit 1. Unit 0 is used
for message-decoded time and unit 1 for the (more accurate, when
available) time derived from the PPS synchronization pulse. Splitting
these notifications allows ntpd to use its normal heuristics to weight them. - With this configuration, ntpd will read the timestamp posted by gpsd
every 16 seconds and send it to unit 0. The number after the parameter time1 is an offset in seconds. You can use it to adjust out some of the fixed delays in the system. 0.035 is a good starting value for the
Garmin GPS-18/USB, 0.420 for the Garmin GPS-18/LVC. - After restarting ntpd, a line similar to the one below should appear in
the output of the command "ntpq -p" (after allowing a couple of
minutes):
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ========================================================================= +SHM(0) .GPS. 0 l 13 16 377 0.000 0.885 0.882- If you are running PPS then it will look like this:
remote refid st t when poll reach delay offset jitter ========================================================================= -SHM(0) .GPS. 0 l 13 16 377 0.000 0.885 0.882 *SHM(1) .GPS1. 0 l 11 16 377 0.000 -0.059 0.006- When the value under "reach" remains zero, check that gpsd is running;
and some application is connected to it or the '-n' option was used.
Make sure the receiver is locked on to at least one satellite, and the receiver is in SiRF binary, Garmin binary or NMEA/PPS mode. Plain NMEA will also drive ntpd, but the accuracy as bad as one second. When the
SHM(0) line does not appear at all, check the system logs for error
messages from ntpd. - When no other reference clocks appear in the NTP configuration, the
system clock will lock onto the GPS clock. When you have previously
used ntpd, and other reference clocks appear in your configuration,
there may be a fixed offset between the GPS clock and other clocks. The gpsd developers would like to receive information about the offsets
observed by users for each type of receiver. Please send us the output of the "ntpq -p" command and the make and type of receiver.
USE WITH D-BUS
On operating systems that support D-BUS, gpsd can be built to broadcast
GPS fixes to D-BUS-aware applications. As D-BUS is still at a pre-1.0
stage, we will not attempt to document this interface here. Read the
gpsd source code to learn more.
SECURITY AND PERMISSIONS ISSUES
gpsd, if given the -G flag, will listen for connections from any
reachable host, and then disclose the current position. Before using
the -G flag, consider whether you consider your computer's location to
be sensitive data to be kept private or something that you wish to
publish.
gpsd must start up as root in order to open the NTPD shared-memory
segment, open its logfile, and create its local control socket. Before
doing any processing of GPS data, it tries to drop root privileges by
setting its UID to "nobody" (or another userid as set by configure) and
its group ID to the group of the initial GPS passed on the command line
-- or, if that device doesn't exist, to the group of /dev/ttyS0.
Privilege-dropping is a hedge against the possibility that carefully
crafted data, either presented from a client socket or from a subverted
serial device posing as a GPS, could be used to induce misbehavior in
the internals of gpsd. It ensures that any such compromises cannot be
used for privilege elevation to root.
The assumption behind gpsd's particular behavior is that all the tty
devices to which a GPS might be connected are owned by the same
non-root group and allow group read/write, though the group may vary
because of distribution-specific or local administrative practice. If
this assumption is false, gpsd may not be able to open GPS devices in
order to read them (such failures will be logged).
In order to fend off inadvertent denial-of-service attacks by port
scanners (not to mention deliberate ones), gpsd will time out inactive
client connections. Before the client has issued a command that
requests a channel assignment, a short timeout (60 seconds) applies.
There is no timeout for clients in watcher or raw modes; rather, gpsd
drops these clients if they fail to read data long enough for the
outbound socket write buffer to fill. Clients with an assigned device
in polling mode are subject to a longer timeout (15 minutes).
LIMITATIONS
If multiple NMEA talkers are feeding RMC, GLL, and GGA sentences to the
same serial device (possible with an RS422 adapter hooked up to some
marine-navigation systems), a 'TPV' response may mix an altitude from
one device's GGA with latitude/longitude from another's RMC/GLL after
the second sentence has arrived.
gpsd may change control settings on your GPS (such as the emission
frequency of various sentences or packets) and not restore the original
settings on exit. This is a result of inadequacies in NMEA and the
vendor binary GPS protocols, which often do not give clients any way to
query the values of control settings in order to be able to restore
them later.
If your GPS uses a SiRF chipset at firmware level 231, reported UTC
time may be off by the difference between 13 seconds and whatever
leap-second correction is currently applicable, from startup until
complete subframe information is received (normally about six seconds).
Firmware levels 232 and up don't have this problem. You may run gpsd at
debug level 4 to see the chipset type and firmware revision level.
When using SiRF chips, the VDOP/TDOP/GDOP figures and associated error
estimates are computed by gpsd rather than reported by the chip. The
computation does not exactly match what SiRF chips do internally, which
includes some satellite weighting using parameters gpsd cannot see.
Autobauding on the Trimble GPSes can take as long as 5 seconds if the
device speed is not matched to the GPS speed.
If you are using an NMEA-only GPS (that is, not using SiRF or Garmin or
Zodiac binary mode) and the GPS does not emit GPZDA at the start of its
update cycle (which most consumer-grade NMEA GPSes do not) and it is
after 2099, then the century part of the dates gpsd delivers will be
wrong.
Generation of position error estimates (eph, epv, epd, eps, epc) from
the incomplete data handed back by GPS reporting protocols involves
both a lot of mathematical black art and fragile device-dependent
assumptions. This code has been bug-prone in tbe past and problems may
still lurk there.
FILES
- /dev/ttyS0
- Prototype TTY device. After startup, gpsd sets its group ID to the owner of this device if no GPS device was specified on the command line does not exist.
APPLICABLE STANDARDS
The official NMEA protocol standard is available on paper from the
National Marine Electronics Association[3], but is proprietary and
expensive; the maintainers of gpsd have made a point of not looking at
it. The GPSD website[4] links to several documents that collect
publicly disclosed information about the protocol.
gpsd parses the following NMEA sentences: RMC, GGA, GLL, GSA, GSV, VTG,
ZDA. It recognizes these with either the normal GP talker-ID prefix, or
with the GN prefix used by GLONASS, or with the II prefix emitted by
Seahawk Autohelm marine navigation systems, or with the IN prefix
emitted by some Garmin units. It recognizes some vendor extensions: the
PGRME emitted by some Garmin GPS models, the OHPR emitted by
Oceanserver digital compasses, the PTNTHTM emitted by True North
digital compasses, and the PASHR sentences emitted by some Ashtech
GPSes.
Note that gpsd JSON returns pure decimal degrees, not the hybrid
degree/minute format described in the NMEA standard.
Differential-GPS corrections are conveyed by the RTCM-104 proocol. The
applicable standard for RTCM-104 V2 is RTCM Recommended Standards for
Differential NAVSTAR GPS Service RTCM Paper 194-93/SC 104-STD. The
applicable standard for RTCM-104 V3 is RTCM Standard 10403.1 for
Differential GNSS Services - Version 3 RTCM Paper 177-2006-SC104-STD.
AIS is defined by ITU Recommendation M.1371, Technical Characteristics
for a Universal Shipborne Automatic Identification System Using Time
Division Multiple Access. The AIVDM/AIVDO format understood by this
progeam is defined by IEC-PAS 61162-100, Maritime navigation and
radiocommunication equipment and systems
SEE ALSO
gps(1), libgps(3), libgpsd(3), gpsprof(1), gpsfake(1), gpsctl(1),
gpscat(1), rtcm-104(5).
AUTHORS
Remco Treffcorn, Derrick Brashear, Russ Nelson, Eric S. Raymond, Chris
Kuethe. This manual page by Eric S. Raymond esr@thyrsus.com. There is a
project site[4].
NOTES
- 1. FAQ
- http://gpsd.berlios.de/faq.html
- 2. AIVDM/AIVDO Protocol Decoding
http://gpsd.berlios.de/AIVDM.html - 3. National Marine Electronics Association
http://www.nmea.org/pub/0183/ - 4. GPSD website
http://gpsd.berlios.de/