Hey Guys,
So this project isn’t actually new, I did this around a year and a half ago, but it’s still cool (I think) and still relevant so I may as well share it. This is my homebrew GPS unit!
So the first thing you may notice is it’s not exactly neat, well hey? I did it with very few resources, and for what I made it with, I think it’s quite good!
The main micro-controller I’m using is an ATMega328, in the form of an Arduino Pro Mini (available from sparkfun). Now I know I’ve talked about this before but I really love this board, it’s small, perfect for embedding in projects, and cheap! What more could you want? The GPS I’m using is the Adafruit Ultimate GPS, which I believe is THE best hobbiest GPS. The OLED screen is also from Adafruit, and again is great value for money! It’s tiny (perfect for this project) but still has really high contrast and therefore readability. Both the GPS and screen have wonderful libraries written for them too, which makes the coding so much easier! Aside from the GPS, the screen and the Micro, the only other things are the batteries (AAA) and the buttons, which I soldered onto stripboard with 10K pull-downs (though later I realised it would’ve been easier to use the ATMega328’s internal pull-ups).
Most of the effort with this project was the code, which by the way is awful. I did this code when I was 14, and well it shows. So don’t be too scared! You can find the code on my GitHub page (link up top), so go take a look!
If you can’t stand the sight of such awful code (and I wouldn’t blame you), you can browse the pictures below, which are much more sightly!