GPS (U-Blox NEO) Hardware Support

[CodeChief]

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Device, sample and test app. Minimum support is current Navio+ NEO-MN8 model but attempt to support Navio (original) NEO7M and NEO-6T dongle if the UBLOX hardware is standardized (likely as their configuration tool supports multiple models).

[CodeChief]

Depending on GPS support in the IoT preview it might even be possible to make an ACPI table so the BIOS hooks-up the Navio uBlox GPS to the built-in driver (assuming it exists and supports uBlox). So the user mode C# code can either call the specialized GPS device or do all the serial work itself.

In the "shared mode" the framework would only get generic location data. This is probably not going to work in the current version, but the BIOS trick is worth a try.

In the "raw mode" (easiest to implent for PoC abd sure to work) the framework just wraps access to the GPS serial port, then the user applications (including our sample and test apps) will have to find some third party GPS protocol decoder in order to display any useful information.

Long term, a custom driver should be produced and support both modes. Then sensors can be used throughout Windows or directly accessed by autipilots or RTK wrappers (maybe something happens with REACH support here too). But that is really something which should be provided by the uBlox company so it may be a waste of time to jump-in here with drivers too soon.

Best get the PoC done with raw access then re-evaluate the driver situation. As GPS updates are relatively slow it is not necessary to have a driver in order to complete the drone PoC.