Re: gpsd with python project

[James Browning]

> On 02/12/2024 9:54 PM PST Al Grant <bigal.nz@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am looking to get started with gpsd and python - but before I go too
> far I am hopeful that some of the people here can confirm my thinking.
> 
> My setup is a RaspPI, USB GPS (Ublox based) and Python - I am however
> doing the development on Windows 10.

I think Gary would try to talk you away from the USB interface.
It does, however, make swapping out components easier.

> The python project is to do with wildlife tracking for conservation
> and running on a RaspPi will be a payload on a drone - every few
> seconds I am expecting the python code on the drone to meet certain
> conditions and record a location with some meta data.

I suggest minimizing writes to the SD card as they tend to wear out
annoyingly quickly and keeping a master image that you can just DD
onto a new SD card rather than reinstalling.

> It seems like I could program python to work with the gps directly
> (yuck), there may be other python gps libs, or I could run gpsd.
> 
> Is gpsd designed to be an easy interface for programmers to work with?
> 
> Only drawback I see at this point is I won't be able to develop with
> it on my windows PC?

Gpsd has some compatibility shims that should make it work on
Windows; they do not work. I suggest checking out the Windows
Subsystem for Linux, docker, and the gpsd website, paying
particular attention to the example clients and the build
instructions.

- https://gpsd.io/installation.html
- https://gpsd.io/building.html
- https://gpsd.io/gpsd-client-example-code.html

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