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General Description

Here are the procedural steps for testing GPS functionality on Siretta’s range of routers. This particular application note uses the QUARTZ-COMPACT-G11-LTE (EU) router to demonstrate the test procedure. This procedure can be used with all Siretta Industrial routers that support GPS/GNSS.

Router Configuration

1) Connect the router to a cellular network (3G/4G as appropriate). This is done by inserting a sim card in to the SIM slot of the router, and then configuring the APN details (see Router Quick Start Guide). The “Router Portal” page should be displayed on your PC. Look under the “Status” options in the blue panel on the left hand side of the page, select “Basic Network”. Now view the “Internet Status” section of the page. The “Connection Status” field should read as “Connected”.

2) From the “Status” options, select “GPS Status”, and you will be able to see the GPS parameters being reported at that time. If the status is showing “N/A”, as in the screenshot below, please follow the steps below:

  • Ensure that a suitable GPS/GNSS antenna is connected securely to the router
  • Make sure that the GPS/GNSS antenna has a clear view of the sky with no obstructions
  • Make sure that the antenna is correctly specified for use with the Siretta router

3) When the router is configured correctly, the status in the “Current” field will change from N/A to OK as seen below. The number of the satellites seen will depend on a number of factors:

  • The performance of the connected antenna
  • The physical location of the router in the world
  • Line of sight available in your immediate area
  • The vertical position of the antenna being used
  • Sources of noise and interference

4) Select “Advanced Network”, and then scroll down to select “GPS”. This will open the GPS settings page, where you will be able to select one of the three options from the “GPS Mode” pull down menu.

  • Disabled
  • Server
  • Client

Application Example with GPS/GNSS based Siretta Industrial router as a GPS Client

Application Example with GPS/GNSS based Siretta Industrial router as a GPS Server

5) CLIENT MODE: Insert a server IP address and port number into the “Server IP/Port” field. Live NMEA data will be streamed from the router to this server and port address sent using UDP data packets.

6) The screenshot below, shows the data on the server side as it is sent from the Router.

7) The table below provides the specification of the data. (Use the definition below to decode the information on your own server)

8) SERVER MODE: Server mode allows the Siretta router to act as a GPS/GNSS position server, where a remote client can dial in to the router using the configuration setup shown below to a fixed public IP address.

9) Check the Client GPS status before adding to the GPS server, it should show “OK” in the “Current” field, as seen on the screenshot below.

10) In order to connect a remote client to the GPS/GNSS server running on the Siretta Industrial Router, you will need to use a fixed public IP SIM card in the router. The fixed IP address of the SIM card in the router is the address that the client application will dial using the port number specified in step 8. To dial the GPS/GNSS server from the client machine you will need to use a terminal emulator program such as Hyper Terminal / TeraTerm as seen below. (TeraTerm has been used for this demonstration). The socket type parameter will determine whether the client is setup to use TCP or  UDP to send IP packets. For this example we are using a TCP server and therefore the client will dial the server using a TCP connection.

11) Once the TCP client running on the local machine is connected to the GPS/GNSS server, the data from the server is delivered over the socket connection to the client as shown in the screenshot below.

12) The TCP/IP GPS NMEA data stream received by the client from the GPS/GNSS server, can be routed to a serial connection through the use of Virtual COM port software.

There are a number of examples of this software application available to download, we have listed a couple below:

  • Eltima Software available at ‘https://www.eltima. com/products/vspdxp/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc
  • HW VSP3 – Virtual Serial Port available at ‘https://www.hw-group.com/software/hw-vsp3-virtual-serial-port

Example: Using HW VSP3 – Virtual Serial Port.

13) Using the Virtual driver to connect the remote TCP port 40001 on IP address 193.192.198.145 to local serial COM port 3

14) Once the the virtual COM port driver has been setup and enabled, the NMEA data stream from the GPS/GNSS server can be viewed directly by the client application on COM3 using TeraTerm.

15) Download Visual GPS Software from: ‘http://www.visualGPS.net

16) Using VisualGPSview software enables the NMEA data to be presented on the local client in an easy to read graphical format as shown below.

NOTE: This application note can be used for all Siretta Industrial Routers that have GPS Functionality. For further application notes, and documentation, please visit www.siretta.com

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