szenergy / kvh_gps_driver

:blue_book: ROS driver for KVH GPS / GNSS receivers

KVH GPS Driver

Overview

This is a C++ serial ROS driver for KVH Geo-Fog dual GPS / GNSS Receivers. This code is based on the officilal C driver provided by KVH.

Important note: we do not own the GPS anymore, this a legacy code, but for someone it may be useful. If so, please fork the repo and maintain the code.

Usage

After cloning to catkin workspace, just build the GPS packages in the workspace:

catkin build

Source setup.bash (optionally add it to your .bashrc file):

source devel/setup.bash

Run the GPS publisher node or the dummy node (which is just random GPS data for testing):

rosrun gps_kvh gps_kvh_node
rosrun gps_kvh gps_kvh_node /dev/ttyS0 115200
rosrun gps_kvh gps_kvh_dummy_node

The following rostopic will be published:

/gps/fix
/gps/kvhstatus
/gps/status
/gps/utmzone
/odom

The rostopic /odom contains e.g. the following:

header: 
  seq: 10957
  stamp: 
    secs: 1545048568
    nsecs: 161516056
  frame_id: "odom"
child_frame_id: ''
pose: 
  pose: 
    position: 
      x: 5283563.77831
      y: 696058.293832
      z: 157.0
    orientation: 
      x: 0.862203
      y: 0.006738
      z: -0.5065
      w: -0.00356
  covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
twist: 
  twist: 
    linear: 
      x: 0.0
      y: 0.0
      z: 0.0
    angular: 
      x: 0.0
      y: 0.0
      z: 0.0
  covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]

The rostopic /gps/fix contains e.g. the following:

header: 
  seq: 11062
  stamp: 
    secs: 1545054463
    nsecs: 259962916
  frame_id: ''
status: 
  status: 0
  service: 0
latitude: 47.694527854
longitude: 17.628158172
altitude: 0.0
position_covariance: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
position_covariance_type: 0

Testing the serial connection

Connect the pins:

On the PC side with HL-340:

lsusb

• you should see the following:
• Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1a86:7523 QinHeng Electronics HL-340 USB-Serial adapter

ls /dev/ttyUSB*
ls -l /dev/ttyU*
sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0

On Ubuntu, the simplest way to resolve the permissions problem, is to add yourself to the 'dialout' user group.

$ ls -l /dev/ttyU*
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 Jun 12 13:28 /dev/ttyUSB0
$ sudo adduser yourusername dialout

For the group change to take effect the first time, you need to log out and back in again.

sudo minicom

On Jetson:

sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyUSB0
sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyS0
sudo minicom

More info

• https://www.kvh.com/Military-and-Government/Gyros-and-Inertial-Systems-and-Compasses/Gyros-and-IMUs-and-INS/INS/GEO-FOG-3D-DUAL.aspx
• http://www.advancednavigation.com/product/spatial-fog-dual