[NTLK] Serial GPS & Newton as Speedometer?

[Morgan Aldridge]

A little back story: I have an old Land Rover which has become my
daily driver, but the speedometer has issues. Being an old Land Rover,
it has a long to-do list and I still haven't full troubleshot & fixed
that particular issue yet. I'm currently borrowing a coworkers GPS and
it make a great speedometer, but I have little need for any additional
functionality on my daily commute.

Ten months ago I did some research and asked around about using a
serial GPS w/a PDA as a speedometer and it seems very straightforward.
Any serial GPS that can spit back NMEA sentences (which should be
most; specifically, the 'VTG' sentence) will do because the 'VTG'
sentence contains the ground speed in knots and kilometers per hour.
Certainly something a Newton can handle and definitely seems like
something I could reasonably develop myself. Unfortunately, with the
long list of to-do items for the vehicle (and everything else) I
really shouldn't get distracted by another project.

It's been a while since I researched GPS on the Newton. Does anyone
know what serial GPSes work well and whether any of them support
specifying which NMEA sentences get sent (since it'd be more efficient
to only receive the 'VTG' sentences)?

Also, would anyone be interested in developing such a package? If so,
I'd happily set up a Google Code project (I'd prefer an open-source
implementation) and provide some funding (probably only $50).

Morgan
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