BCT15X GPS - What receiver?

[vma]

Hi,

What experience do you guy's have with GPS receivers for the BCT15X?

I searched eBay, but the best I could find are chinese GPS receivers with PS/2 connector. I think this connector will carry RX/TX/GND and 5V power supply. Have you tried those? Did you make the cable yourself?

I am keen to check out the GPS functionality, but I only have USB and Bluetooth GPS receivers around. I am actually considering hacking a Windows tool that will just receive the GPS data from the virtual RS-232 port created by the USB/BT device and send it out to the RS-232 port right to the BCT15X...

Does such a tool already exist?

Cheers,
vma

 

[vma]

Justto let you guys know that I have written a tool in VB .net that will:

Connect itself to a NMEA GPS receiver on a COM port and then send out those NMEA strings on a different COM port. While this sounds as an incredibly stupid thing to do, it will actually allow to connect a Bluetooth or USB GPS receiver, which create virtual COM ports and send those strings out on a real (or virtual USB) COM port.

The idea is to be able to try out the GPS features of Uniden radio scanners, without purchasing a special "NMEA v3,0 compatible GPS receiver with RS-232" (acording to the manual of the BCT-15X).

Meanwhile, a friend just gave me his old Garmin eTrex Venture GPS receiver, which is one of those outdoor tracking GPS receivers. These old Garmin models (Venture, Legend, etc.) all have serial ports and are fully compatible with Undiden scanners. You can get them cheap at eBay - at least much cheaper than a new GPS receiver with COM port. The other advantage is that they run on batteries, so that you don't have a mess of cables in your car, especially when the Uniden scanner is already beeing fed through the cigarrette lighter.

I am kind of busy right now, so I don't have time to upload the tool to my webpage (requires VPN connectrion to University and editing a webpage, etc.). As I don't know how useful people think it is, here is the deal: send me a PM and I will send you the software.

Cheers,
vma