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Using GPS-Devices on a Slackwarecomputer

I'm using a Garmin Etrex Legend HCx, my expriences in this howto refer to this device, but should also work at least for any Garmin-GPS-receiver.

The appropriate Module

When the GPS-device is connected to the computer, it becomes recognized as an USB-device by udev and the module garmin_gps is loaded. In most cases the module will not work for us

udev-rules

If you want to access the device as a non-root user, you can add the plugdev-group via an udev-rule I have the following rule in a file /etc/udev/rules.d/51-garmin.rules

ATTR{idVendor}=="091e", ATTR{idProduct}=="0003", MODE="666", GROUP="plugdev"

which allows the users of the plugdev-group to access the device.

Software

The software which allows us to access such devices from Linux is gpsbabel which is available at slackbuilds.org. As an example here the code which transfers a gpx waypoint-file to a Garmin-GPS-device.

gpsbabel -i gpx -f $file -o garmin -F usb:

Further Reading

Sources

* Originally written by User Markus Hutmacher

 howtos:hardware:gps_devices ()