NMEA and iPhone

[rhinorhino]

I have a PC on the boat which collects all the NMEA from GPS, wind instruments etc.
My question is; is there a way of transmitting this data over bluetooth or wireless so it can be accessed by an iPhone?
THX

 

[wotayottie]

I believe the I phone can accept wireless so what you need on board is a wireless router connected to both PC and I phone.

NMEA is nothing to do with the method of transmission - its simply a format

 

[rhinorhino]

I believe the I phone can accept wireless so what you need on board is a wireless router connected to both PC and I phone.

NMEA is nothing to do with the method of transmission - its simply a format

Yes, I follow that, but how do I get the PC to transmit the nmea data over wireless?

 

[wotayottie]

I'm no expert on this, but the way I would try and tackle it is to set up a network on board so the I phone could see what was on the lappy. Then you need a piece of software on the lappy that will look at the port and transmit the data into a file the I phone can read. You'll need to search around for that.

What are you trying to achieve? I've played with my sons I phone and plotter system on board my boat but came to the conclusion that it was a technically interesting but practically useless toy.

 

[rhinorhino]

What i need is the name of the software that will pass on the NMEA data to the wireless?

Anyone know?

 

[Wunja]

Are your NMEA applications already generating data files?

If not, a simple solution would be to use hyperterminal to listen to the port and log the output to a file.

Once you have a file, put in a directory that can be shared with the IPhone via the wireless connection.

It isn't necessary to create a network with a router, a peer to peer network should do the job well enough.

I am assuming that the IPhone has the capability to share a directory via its wireless connection.

If you want to stream the NMEA data to the IPhone in real time (why?) that is much more complex.

 

[elton]

Nobody knows.

 

[st599]

You could run a simple webserver, and put the NMEA into an HTML file. Then point Safari at that file.

 

[PembrokeshirePromise]

I'd use bluetooth - not wireless - partly beacuse it uses a bit less power (but only a bit!)

I've used one of these to get NMEA data onto a Windows mobile device that I was writing an app for. Worked fine.

http://www.netpcdirect.co.uk/rs232-serial-adapters/mini_rsr232_bluetooth_serial_adapter.html

 

[Capt'n Pugwash]

Most/all navigation software can read input from and write data to GPS plotters i.e. waypoints, tracks etc. but only when connected to a serial port, USB or RS232.

The NMEA data coming out of the back of the GPS is current data i.e. position, time etc.. This is the data used by autohelm devices and VHF radios.

The NMEA data is transmitted as a repeating data sentence, delimited with a comma I believe. So for the data to be of any use to an iPhone, it would have to have an iapp that can recognise the start and stop bits of the data sentence and be able to parse the data sentence into something useable. Otherwise you will just get repeating strings of text.

As the iPhone already has GPS capabilities, albeit limited compared to a real handheld GPS, I don't see the reason to connect the two!

 

[wotayottie]

Presumably the OP wants things like wind data, boat speed etc.

Does an IPhone has a mini usb port? If so, I would have thought it could receive data direct by wire from the PC output of the instrument network. Its then a matter of whether the program the OP wants to use on the I Phone can handle NMEA.

 

[st599]

Presumably the OP wants things like wind data, boat speed etc.

Does an IPhone has a mini usb port? If so, I would have thought it could receive data direct by wire from the PC output of the instrument network. Its then a matter of whether the program the OP wants to use on the I Phone can handle NMEA.

No, it has an iPod connector and only accepts files via iTunes (i.e. only music and video) You can download an app that allows you to send files via WiFi.

I've got code that reads NMEA strings from file, and code that generates changing webpages. I'll see if I can hack something together sometime to run on a PC. Who knows, may even have a go at writing that elusive iPhone/Android/Java Midlet app.

 

[Neil]

You could transmit the NMEA sentences via bluetooth (sending the data from the PC should be easily do-able), but you'd need to write an iPhone app to accept and decode the NMEA data and then do something useful with it. You can buy the App developer package quite cheaply. I have no experience of writing iPhone Apps, so I can't say how easy that would be, though I understand there are a considerable No. of developer routines available.

 

[Nickb]

or

http://www.inavx.net/

Maybe a little easier than startign from scratch!!!!!

 

[st599]

or

http://www.inavx.net/

Maybe a little easier than startign from scratch!!!!!

Does that not require NAVx on a Mac to forward the boats instrument NMEA though?

 

[JEJeffrey]

What about NMEA out of the iPhone?

What about the other way around - taking GPS data in NMEA format from the iPhone and using it as an input to a chart plotter (standalone or laptop-based) as a substitute for a seprate GPS receiver? I can see value in that, though I have no idea where to start.

 

[ianj99]

Its a pity Namonpc will only receive nmea data over a network. Maybe he's working on it?

http://www.navmonpc.com/

 

[Danny]

I have a PC on the boat which collects all the NMEA from GPS, wind instruments etc.
My question is; is there a way of transmitting this data over bluetooth or wireless so it can be accessed by an iPhone?
THX

I Don't know much about the Iphone but I believe you can connect it to a Windows PC running ActiveSync via a bluetooth connection. If so, I would have thought you could have the PC write the NMEA data to a text file that's on the sync list for the Iphone.

You would need some s/w in the PC to collect the NMEA data and write it to the 'shared' file in whatever format you want it to be: nicely interpreted and tabulated, or just the raw NMEA sentences.

You might also need s/w to 'share' the NMEA coming in to your PC between your existing nav s/w and the new application: eg GpsGate or NMEAgate .

 

[Boreades]

Hmmm ... deja-vu post feeling ...

Dan - It's times like this I wish we had a dedicated forum for Marine Electronics and Software. Would it make life easier?

 

[mjcp]

In a word: No.

The out of the box iphone is locked down and cannot be connected to non-approved feeds (eg a blue tooth GPS feed) or non-approved applications either.

However,

A "Jail-broken" iPhone can have 3rd party applications loaded... after a good few hours hunting the other weekend (looking to connect to my car's hands-free GPS output) the closest I got was this app: GPS Serial allows you to connect a few GPS receivers via the connector to the iphone and then feed their outputs into the std. iphone apps while masquerading as the internal iphone GPS feed. Its promising but is very limited in the supported receivers.

cheers,
mjcp