gpsd — a GPS service daemon
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gpsdgpsd is a service daemon that monitors one or more
GPSes or AIS receivers attached to a host computer through serial or
USB ports, making all data on the location/course/velocity of the
sensors available to be queried on TCP port 2947 of the host
computer.
With gpsd, multiple location-aware client applications
can share access to supported sensors without contention or loss of
data. Also, gpsd responds to queries with a format that
is substantially easier to parse than the NMEA 0183 emitted by most
GPSes. The gpsd distribution includes a linkable C
service library, a C++ wrapper class, and a Python module that
developers of gpsd-aware applications can use to
encapsulate all communication with gpsd. Third-party
client bindings for Java and Perl also exist.
Besides gpsd itself, the project provides auxiliary
tools for diagnostic monitoring and profiling of receivers and feeding
location-aware applications GPS/AIS logs for diagnostic purposes.
GPSD is everywhere in mobile embedded systems. It underlies the map service on Android phones. It's ubiquitous in drones, robot submarines, and driverless cars. It's increasingly common in recent generations of manned aircraft, marine navigation systems, and military vehicles.
Applications that
presently use gpsd include
Kismet,
GpsDrive,
gpeGPS,
roadmap,
roadnav,
navit,
viking,
tangogps,
foxtrot,
obdgpslogger,
geohist,
LiveGPS,
geoclue,
qlandkartegt,
gpredict,
OpenCPN,
gpsd-navigator,
gpsd-ais-viewer,
and firefox/mozilla.
In addition, the Android smartphone operating system (from version
4.0 onwards and possibly earlier; we don't know for sure when the
change happened) uses GPSD to monitor the phone's on-board GPS, so
every location-aware Android app is indirectly a GPSD client.
GPSD is also extremely widely deployed in mobile embedded systems: it's a basic building block for navigation used by UAVs, robot submarines, and driverless cars as well as more conventional applications like marine navigation and military IFF systems.
Under Linux, gpsd normally runs with zero
configuration. Binary packages for this program install hotplug
scripts that do the right thing when a USB device goes active,
launching gpsd if needed and telling gpsd
which device to read data from. Then, gpsd deduces a
baud rate and GPS/AIS type by looking at the data stream.
gpsd is high-quality, carefully-audited code; see
our notes on reliability engineering. In
January 2010, the GPSD project won
the first Good Code Grant from the Alliance for Code Excellence.
Statistics about the code volume, commit history, and contributors associated with this project are available at OpenHUB
Our development platforms are open-source Unixes — Linux, and
the *BSD family. Presently Linux, OpenBSD and NetBSD are directly
supported. The code is also extremely widely deployed on Android
phones. We'll support proprietary Unixes if it's not too much work (and
it usually isn't). Apple's OS X is supported in a limited fashion. Some
older OS X drivers are buggy and prevent gpsd from being
able to read from some USB-serial devices. No, we don't support Windows
— get a better operating system.
If you represent a GPS manufacturer interested in qualifying your device for use with Linux and other open-source operating systems, we are your contact point. We'll need (1) on-line access to interface documentation, (2) a few (as in, no more than three) eval units, and (3) an engineering contact at your firm. For more, see our page welcoming vendor cooperation.
See the FAQ for information on how to report bugs.
If you appreciate GPSD, and especially if you make money from it, please leave a remittance at Patreon.
This web page was last updated on Sun Nov 3 07:02:58 2024. Note: because of the way this website is maintained, these files reflect the state of the repository tip (development version) rather than the latest released version.
If you are using a Debian-based distribution (including Ubuntu) you
can probably install gpsd through your regular package
manager or by typing "sudo apt-get install gpsd" at the command
line.
Some of the developers hang out regularly on IRC at channel #gpsd at irc.freenode.net, and at channel #gpsd at irc.libera.chat.
There are four project mailing lists:
gpsd, including support
for application builders using gpsd as a component.gpsd developers.gpsd
repository.The gpsd project tracks issues on our issue tracker. Please read the section on Bug reporting before posting on the issue tracker.
More information on gpsd SUPPORT is available on the gpsd SUPPORT page.
The following manual pages describe the code. Note: because of the way this website is maintained, these files will describe the state and features of the repository tip (development version) rather than the latest stable version.
gpsd daemon.gpsd client and helper programs.gpsd.gegps feeds your location to Google Earth for live
location tracking.gpsd to one or more aggregation
sites via UDP.gpscsv tool for reading gpsd JSON sentences and
converting them in CSV files.gpsctl tool for tweaking GPS settings.gpscat tool dumps output from a serial
device. Optionally, it can packetize the data.gpsdecode packet decoder.gpsfake test harness simulating a GPS.gpsmon real-time packet monitor and diagnostic
tool. (This replaces the sirfmon tool in older versions.)gpsd reports and sends it to
standard output.gpsplot program for dynamically plotting scatterplots
and stripcharts of gpsd data.gpsprof program for statically plotting spatial scatter
of fixes, satellite skyview, fix latency, and other plots.gpsrinex program for outputting raw measurements
into a RINEX 3 file.gpssubframe tool for reading gpsd JSON subframe
sentences and decoding them.gpsd client to display on a 4x20 LCD screen, using
lcdproc.gpsd.gpsd daemon.gpsd over its control socket.gpsd daemon.Also, see the FAQ.
We have a list of compatible GPSses with some technical information. We also have a list of NMEA sentences.
There is a Hacker's Guide to the project philosophy, design, and code internals. You should read this if you want to contribute code.
We maintain a GPS Hall of Shame that describes particularly egregious vendor blunders.
gpsd client
written in C, and another in Python. With a focus on common mistakes. gpsd from
client applications. Explains the theory, points at working example
source code, warns you what the edge cases and gotchas are.gpsd.gpsd is about, you might find this interesting.gpsd 2.0 rants in an at least
semi-humorous way about everything that's wrong with GPS standards
and vendors.gpsd and vendor claims about binary protocols.gpsd and gpsrinex to
determine your position to the cm level.ubxtool tasks.gpsd also works with some bluetooth
GPS receivers. Warning: there are serious problems with the
firmware in at least one family of Bluetooth implementations shipped
by Holux that may result in gpsd bricking your GPS. See this
bug warning for a description
of the problem.
If you have an Android phone, it is possible to access its onboard GPS by pairing it as a Bluetooth device. Directions from Vargoville (Dead link Mar 2021). There is also a GPS Tether (Dead link Mar 2021) app designed to work with GPSD, but it seems to be in early alpha.
The GPSDproxy project is a small program which reads GPS data from a running gpsd process and forwards it to a remote server via an UDP connection. GPSDproxy is intended to be run on GPS enabled mobile devices.
You can read detailed instructions on Synchronizing ntpd to a Garmin GPS 18 LVC via gpsd. This may be a useful tutorial even if your actual device isn't a Garmin 18; many of the setup steps and caveats will be the same.
Diego Berge has written a prototype Qt-based client, basically
xgps with a Qt look and feel.
Egil Möller has written agpsd, a gpsd replication and logging daemon with support for KML.
You can find Debian-unstable packages here.
gpsd is carried in the OpenBSD ports tree.
OpenStreetMap is a wiki aiming to build a freely available, world-wide streetmap.
Freedesktop.org is hosting a project called geoclue
that aims to provide a location service layer for all D-Bus-using
applications. It can use gpsd as a source for location
info.
There used to be three Linux-based forks of gpsd in the
wild, but this GPSD project reabsorbed one and the other two are now
defunct for unrelated reasons. You can read a brief history of the gpsd project if
you are curious.
There was a project called gps3d that ships a gpsd
with similar goals to ours, but which appears to be an independent
development. There haven't been any releases since early 2002. Their
website is archived at
the Internet Archive.
There is a gpsd-like hack hosted under Microsoft
Windows. It provides gpsd service from data in netstumbler under
win32. This way programs such as JiGLE can still get GPS data from
netstumbler. This program is not genetically related to
gpsd.
gpsfeed+ is a program that simulates the output of a GPS in motion, and can be used for testing GPS-aware applications.
We aren't Green Parrot Software Development, nor are we the Greenville Public School District nor the Greater Peoria Sanitary District, nor even the Greater Portland Soccer District, nor the Green Party of San Diego, nor do we have anything to do with the General Product Safety Directive, the Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design, nor the Glatt Plagiarism Self-Detection Program.