NAME

       gpsctl - control the modes of a GNSS receiver

SYNOPSIS

       gpsctl [OPTIONS] [serial-port]

       gpsctl -h

       gpsctl -V

DESCRIPTION

       gpsctl can switch a dual-mode GNSS receiver between NMEA and vendor-binary modes. It can
       also be used to set the device baud rate. Note: Not all devices have these capabilities.

       If you have only one GNSS receiver attached to your machine, and gpsd is running, it is
       not necessary to specify the device; gpsctl does its work through gpsd, which will locate
       it for you.

       When gpsd is running, gpsctl may be run as any user, or as root.

       When gpsd is not running, the device specification is required, and you will need to be
       running as root or be a member of the device’s owning group in order to have write access
       to the device. On many Unix variants the owning group will be named 'dialout'.

       Running under sudo will cause some loss of functionality.

OPTIONS

       The program accepts the following options:

       -?, -h, --help
           Display program usage and exit.

       -b, --binary
           Put the GNSS receiver into native (binary) mode.

       -c RATE, --rate RATE
           Change the receivers’s cycle time. Units are seconds. Note, most receivers have a
           fixed cycle time of 1 second.

       -D LVL, --debug LVL
           Set level of debug messages.

       -e, --echo
           Generate the packet from any other arguments specified and ship it to standard output
           instead of the device. This switch can be used with the -t option without specifying a
           device. Note: the packet data for a binary prototype will be raw, not ASCII-ized in
           any way.

       -f, --force
           Force low-level, direct, access (not through the daemon).

       -l, --list
           List a table showing which option switches can be applied to which device types, and
           exit.

       -n, --nmea
           Put the GNSS receiver into NMEA mode.

       -r, --reset
           Reset the GNSS receiver. Device port and type must be specified.

       -R, --rmshm
           Remove the GPSD shared-memory segment used for SHM export. This option will normally
           only be of interest to GPSD developers.

       -s SPEED, --speed SPEED
           Set the baud rate at which the receiver emits packets.

       Use the -s option with caution. On USB and Bluetooth GPSes it is also possible for serial
       mode setting to fail either because the serial adaptor chip does not support non-8N1 modes
       or because the device firmware does not properly synchronize the serial adaptor chip with
       the UART on the GPS chipset when the speed changes. These failures can hang your device,
       possibly requiring a GPS power cycle or (in extreme cases) physically disconnecting the
       NVRAM backup battery.

       -t TYPE, --type TYPE
           Force the device type.

       -T TIMEOUT, --timeout TIMEOUT
           Change the sampling timeout. Defaults to 8 seconds, which should always be sufficient
           to get an identifying packet from a device emitting at the normal rate of 1 per
           second.

       -V, --version
           Display program version and exit.

       -x STR, --ship STR
           Send the specified control string to the GNSS receiver. C-style backslash escapes in
           the string are decoded. Use \xNN for hex, \e will be replaced with ESC.

               In normal mode, through _gpsd_, the decoded string is passed through,
               unchanged top _gpsd_ which in turns sends it to the receiver. Headers,
               checksums, and suffffices must be provided.

               In low-level, (direct) mode *gpsctl* will provide packet headers and
               trailers and checksum as appropriate for binary packet types, and
               whatever checksum and trailer is required for text packet types.
               (You must include the leading $ for NMEA packets.) When sending to a
               UBX device, the first two bytes of the string supplied will become
               the message class and type, and the remainder the payload. When
               sending to a Navcom NCT or Trimble TSIP device, the first byte is
               interpreted as the command ID and the rest as payload. When sending
               to a Zodiac device, the first two bytes are used as a message ID of
               type little-endian short, and the remainder as payload in byte pairs
               interpreted as little-endian short. For all other supported binary
               GPSes (notably including SiRF) the string is taken as the entire
               message payload and wrapped with appropriate header, trailer and
               checksum bytes.

       The argument of the forcing option, -t, should be a string which is contained in exactly
       one of the known driver names; for a list, do gpsctl -l.

       Forcing the device type behaves somewhat differently depending on whether this tool is
       going through the daemon or not. In high-level mode, if the device that daemon selects for
       you doesn’t match the driver you specified, gpsctl exits with a warning. (This may be
       useful in scripts.)

       In low-level mode, if the device identifies as a Generic NMEA, use the selected driver
       instead. This will be useful if you have a GPS device of known type that is in NMEA mode
       and not responding to probes. (This option was originally implemented for talking to
       SiRFStar I chips, which don’t respond to the normal SiRF ID probe.)

       If no options are given, the program will display a message identifying the GPS type of
       the selected device and exit.

       Reset (-r) operations must stand alone; others can be combined. gpsctl will execute
       multiple options in this order: mode change (-b or -n) first, speed changes (-s) second,
       cycle rate (-c) third and control strings (-x) last.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

       By setting the environment variable GPSD_SHM_KEY, you can control the key value used to
       designate the shared-memory segment removed with the -R option. This will be useful mainly
       when isolating test instances of gpsd from production ones.

EXAMPLES

       gpsctl /dev/ttyUSB0
           Attempt to identify the device on USB serial device 0. Time out after the default
           number of seconds. Adding the -f will force low-level access and suppress the normal
           complaint when this tool can’t find a GPSD to work through.

       gpsctl -f -n -s 9600 /dev/ttyUSB0
           Use low-level operations (not going through a gpsd instance) to switch a GPS to NMEA
           mode at 9600bps. The tool will identify the GPS type itself.

       gpsctl -x '\xb5\x62\x0a\x04\x00\x00\x0e\x34'
           Send a request for UBX-MON-VER to a gpsd connected GNSS receiver.

BUGS

       SiRF GPSes can only be identified by the success of an attempt to flip them into SiRF
       binary mode. Thus, the process of probing one of these running in NMEA will change its
       behavior.

       Baud rate and mode changes work in direct mode but are not reliable in client mode. This
       will be fixed in a future release.

RETURN VALUES

       0
           on success.

       1
           on failure

SEE ALSO

       gpsd(8), gpsdctl(1), gps(1), ubxtool(1), zerk(1)

RESOURCES

       Project web site: https://gpsd.io/

COPYING

       This file is Copyright 2013 by the GPSD project
       SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-clause

AUTHOR

       Eric S. Raymond