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Review on ๐ŸŒ Enhanced GPS Accuracy with GlobalSat ND-105C Micro USB GPS Receiver by Robert Pierce

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Works with Android charts/maps but needs some serious tweaking.

I'm using it on a Chuwi Hi10 pro Android 5.1 tablet without an internal GPS receiver. Navionics mobile nautical charts are installed for charts. BTW it should work on any android from 3.1 to 5.1 and maybe later. Installation is key: use Revain's free You Are Here GPS download. Prefer this app/driver over "Prolific P2303 usb uart" as it will give you Lon/Lat fix along with NMEA suggestions. Important! My ND-105C only achieved GPS fix when connected via the supplied USB cable. Couldn't get a GPS fix at all when plugged directly into the tablet's micro USB port - there may be RF interference from the laptop! Check the blinking red light on the ND-105 to confirm the correction. After installing "You are here GPS", turn off Wi-Fi and uncheck "Scan Always available" in the "WLAN/Advanced" section. This ensures that your ND-105 receiver is used and not Google's location service if you have WiFi or an internal GPS receiver. Now go to "About tablet", click "Built-in number" 7-10 times. This will bring up "Developer Options". Enable developer options and allow mock locations. This will replace the internal GPS (or Google location service in my case) with an external ND-105 GPS receiver. Now run Are You Here GPS and you will see NMEA and LON/Lat suggestions. Use the circle icon on your tablet to send it to the background without killing it. Now run Maps/Charts and you should see the location icon on the map. It may happen that "You are here GPS" stops working. In this case, disconnect and reconnect the ND-105, launch "You are here, GPSโ€ and click "Connect to deviceโ€. Note that the baud rate is 4800 baud. Long setup and not documented for Android OS, coupled with unreliable USB pigtail reception, it's not plug and play but it works!

Pros
  • MediaTek high-performance GPS chipset Very high sensitivity (chip tracking sensitivity: -165 dBm). Extremely fast TTFF (time to first fix) with low signal strength. Micro USB interface.
Cons
  • I vaguely remember