GPS Software

I read in the Dragonboard Hardware Manual that there is GPS onboard. But I can find absolutely no mention of how to use it in any documentation. Do I have to modify the kernel to talk to the WGR7640 on board? Is it a work in progress?

Oh man, I hate you. Because of this message, I had to go and check, and indeed, it is not working.

Woohoo! Now we can both suffer until someone writes the GPS driver!

Its not that bad. The driver is written, it must just be misconfigured.

@doitright: what driver are you referring to? could you point me to the source code?

There is an android GPS app note coming soon (it will show how to use the GNSS test APK for GPS along other shielding considerations to optimize the GPS accuracy).

The same gps driver that is used on all qualcomm gps hardware. I.e., the one that handles the gps hardware on my nexus 6. There is nothing magic or secret about it.

please let me know the driver that you checked for this post.

I have no idea what you are asking.

Above you posted the following.

  1. “Its not that bad. The driver is written, it must just be misconfigured.”
  2. “The same gps driver that is used on all qualcomm gps hardware. I.e., the one that handles the gps hardware on my nexus 6. There is nothing magic or secret about it”

I simply want to know what driver specifically are you referring to.
And since the driver is “written” I am asking you to just point me to source the code that you checked.

let me know if the question is still unclear.

Does this help you?
https://www.codeaurora.org/cgit/quic/la/platform/hardware/qcom/gps/

No not really. That seems to be an API just to communicate to the GPS after the initialization has been done in EL1.

The way typical GPS hardware is accessed at platform level is via UARTs; the GPS UART is usually configured in the device tree and the GPS hardware is enabled via GPIO. I thought you might have checked this.

Wait, so as is, the device’s GPS isn’t functional with the included Android build?

Last time I checked I believe it was working on Android with release 15.06 (not so on Ubuntu)

I used google maps to request the location after enabling the GPS device in “device only” mode and the coordinates were correct.

Ok thanks!

Google Maps does not come standard on the Dragonboard 410c. Is there another way to verify coordinates? I downloaded AndroSensor but the GPS information shows as “unavailable”, even after I changed GPS to “Device only” mode and turned Qualcomm iZat on.

I’m going to try again later with a better view of “outside”, but I strongly suspect that coordinates obtained from google maps are actually based on NETWORK rather than GPS. Google maps does this, and really doesn’t distinguish well between the two.

One of the things that can exacerbate the problem, is if you are on a static IP that gets a lot of google maps communications. Its likely that the network location will be extremely accurate, as within the range of the wifi connected to that IP.

FWIW: In exactly the same location, my Nexus 6 reports time to first GPS lock of 7 seconds.

Try with GPS Status:

Note: for anyone who doesn’t have play store installed on their db410c (which I hope is most of you, since it isn’t actually legal), install it to your OTHER Android device, and pull the apk off with adb in root mode, then install to db410c.

Hi,

I am trying to validate GPS on Q410 with Android. But it is not
working with Android release. As per discussion still there
are some issues. Have they been resolved?

Please share your inputs on same.

Regards,
Amit Shah.

There is definitely something misconfigured in handling the GPS on this hardware. I am not aware of any way to make it work at this time, which is a shame, since my application requires it to work.

I can understand that there is some problem in GPS validation? But can you please tell me whether problem is at Android Application layer or at hardware level? I want to validate hardware so is there any way to validate hardware using Linux kernel without using Android HAL or application layer?

Is there any news on this?
I am running the latest Ubuntu image from the Download area here and would love to know of ANY
(user) way to access the GPS of the board.
Any help is highly appreciated!