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authorEric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>2004-09-24 16:47:00 +0000
committerEric S. Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com>2004-09-24 16:47:00 +0000
commit3fee78971e43abc6e5009c524aecfa891be35304 (patch)
tree6c73fce6b13878face63b86cafdb4a88ea22b254 /TODO
parent13b10b5c81c470fe2d363ec89ff277c936d418da (diff)
downloadgpsd-3fee78971e43abc6e5009c524aecfa891be35304.tar.gz
Updated documentation.
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-* Do the research to figure out just what the heck is going on with status bits
+* Things to do:
+
+** Do the research to figure out just what the heck is going on with status bits
NMEA actually has *three* kinds of validity bits. Mode, status, and the
Active/Void bit (some sources interpret 'V' as 'Navigation receiver warning').
@@ -29,13 +31,39 @@ Which of these override which other bits? I don't think status is ever
nonzero when mode is zero. So status overrides mode. What other such
relationships are there?
-* Mine the contrib directory for good ideas
+** Mine the contrib directory for good ideas
There is code in there that can do some interesting tricks with
SiRF-II chipsets. Lonnie Mendez is working on this.
-* gpsd.py is unsatisfactory
+** gpsd.py is unsatisfactory
It only handles straight NMEA devices. It should be replaced by a
Python extension built around libgps.a.
+* Things not to do:
+
+** Crank the update rate up past 1 per second
+
+At 50km/h (31mi/h) that's only 13.8 meters change in position between updates.
+Faster refresh might make sense for aviation applications, but not on foot
+or in a car.
+
+** Try to autodetect USB devices
+
+Sigh. USB scanning won't work.
+
+The fundamental problem is that there is no GPS device class in the
+USB standard. When you get device information about a GPS from the
+USB subsystem, all you get is info on the USB-to-serial chipset it's
+using.
+
+This means that GPSes are not distinguishable from other USB-to-serial
+devices, in particular USB-to-RS232C adaptors. This is a crash
+landing. We could live with the scanning code failing to detect a
+GPS that's there, but we can't live with having it mis-identify
+another USB device as a GPS. The least bad result from that would
+be that the daemon opens and locks up the other device.
+
+This cannot be fixed, short of USB 1.1 growing a USB device type
+and vendor firmare advertising it.