Jean-Michel.Bouffard, who is at CRC in Canada says that he's using the Socket Bluetooth GPS receiver with gpsd. Here are his notes. The Bluetooth protocol is including a serial profile that makes the use of the Bluetooth GPS almost like a serial GPS.

  1. First, the Bluez protcol stack must be installed and all the documentation can be found on http://bluez.sourceforge.net/. In my case, I installed it on a Linux PC with a BT USB dongle but I'm still trying to install it on my 3850 iPaq with a BT Sleeve. But once BT is installed, the rest is the same.
  2. Install bluetooth for your device with the "rfcomm" module which is the Serial profile (http://bluez.sourceforge.net/).
  3. Next, load the modules : 
         # modprobe hci_xxx (xxx depend on your type of device)
     # modprobe bluez
     # modprobe l2cap
     # modprobe rfcomm
  4. Note : you must be the root user for the next part...
  5. If the modules have loaded successfully, type "hciconfig" and you should see your BT device listed under the "hci0" name.
  6. Create the BT serial device (To do once, it will still be there after a reboot): 
         # mknod /dev/rfcomm0 c 216 0
  7. Start your device and scan for remote BT device: 
         # hciconfig hci0 up
     # hcitool scan
  8. Write down the adress of the newly found BT GPS receiver (looks like xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)
  9. Connect to the device: 
         # hcitool cc xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
  10. You can chack if the connection is done by doing : 
         # hcitool con
  11. Start the serial protocol over BT : 
         # rfcomm /dev/rfcomm0 xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
  12. After that, your BT GPS should be connected to /dev/rfcomm0 and you can check by doing : 
         # cat /dev/rfcomm0
    to see the NMEA GPS output
  13. You can then start gpsd like this: 
         # gpsd -p /dev/rfcomm0
    to specify the path of the GPS and it will work exactly like a serial GPS

If something is unclear, write me back and I will try to help you...

Jean-Michel Bouffard