UsbGps4Droid - A USB GPS provider for Android

UsbGps4Droid is a USB GPS provider application for the Android operating system, providing GPS support for devices down to android 4.0

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About

The application provides location updates to Android which allows devices without an internal GPS to still use applications which require GPS (Google Maps navigation).

I use this USB Gps with my Android Tablet Headunit, because the internal GPS does not work reliably. I have a main controller which automatically starts this application's background service when my car starts

The application is designed to work with any SiRF USB GPS device, however it has been tested as working with GlobalSat BU-353-S4 and a device based on the UBLOX LEA-M8P chip.

Features

• Android 6.0+ Permission handling
• Ability to pick which USB device is the GPS
• Automatic start on reboot
• User interface with readings from the USB GPS and a log showing NMEA data coming from the GPS
• Abilty to sync android device time with GPS time (Requires root)
• Support for any SiRF USB GPS device

Usage

USB Permissions Popup

Unless your ROM is modified then Android will ask permission to use your USB GPS device everytime you reconnect it

If your device is rooted, then you can follow this tutorial in order to surpress the USB permission popup system wide and grant permission everytime automatically.

If your device is not rooted, then there is nothing I can do. This is unfortunately a limitation of the android operating system. If this is for an embedded system I highly recommend rooting the device and following the tutoial.

Connecting a USB GPS to your device

• A USB GPS device can connect to an Android device's charging port, with a USB OTG adapter, if your device supports USB OTG

• If your device has normal USB ports (Raspberry PI, computer...) then an OTG adapter is not required.

Disclaimer

This app has only been tested on 2 of my devices, running Android 5.1 and 6.0. Any issues with this app on your device, please create a github issue and I will resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Service behaviour

The application's background service can be set to start when the device turns on. Currently the service does not automatically start when the GPS device is plugged into the Android device due to more unwanted usb popups.

For now the background service can be manually started with a start service intent.

Intent intent = new Intent();
intent.setComponent(
	new Component(
		"org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.usb.provider",
		"org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.usb.provider.driver.USBGpsProviderService"
	)
)
intent.setAction("org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.usb.provider.action.START_GPS_PROVIDER")

Or via a shell command as root.

am startservice -a org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.usb.provider.action.START_GPS_PROVIDER -n org.broeuschmeul.android.gps.usb.provider/.driver.USBGpsProviderService

The background service will automatically close itself when the USB device is disconnected for too long.

Contributing

Any contributions welcome. Please fork this repository and create a pull request notifying your changes and why.

Screenshots

Landscape tablet

Android 3.1 interface

Portrait

Device selection

Credits

Originally written by Herbert von Broeuschmeul, and I have taken over maintaining this Project (Which was originally written in 2011). You can find his orginal project at the top of this fork.

The Herbert's unmaintained version does not work on the newer android operating systems, and has several bugs with the main usb algorithm.

License

GPL v3