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OA47 Guru Joined: 11/04/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1046
Posted: 12:22am 11 Apr 2026
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I purchased some GPS modules from AE and have found that they don't output NMEA. From my research it is possible they are outputting UBX. Are these units usable at all with MMBASIC ?
OA47
phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3127
Posted: 12:55am 11 Apr 2026
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It depends on how the module configures the NEO-6 chip.
Elsewhere in the data sheet it says the COM pins can be configured for SPI instead of TTL serial.
Try to get some data about the module configuration or circuit from the seller or manufacturer.
Armed with that it may be possible to modify the module to output NMEA on TTL serial. I don't think MMBasic built-in functions can use anything else.
Edit. I notice all the GPS() functions that have been removed from the MMBasic manual have not been added to the GPS and Astronomical Commands Reference PDF. Edited 2026-04-11 11:44 by phil99
matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 11166
Posted: 07:57am 11 Apr 2026
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They are in the Option_GPS_User_Manual
phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3127
Posted: 08:33am 11 Apr 2026
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Thank you, my mistake. Looked down the file list to "G" and stopped.
Sasquatch Guru Joined: 08/05/2020 Location: United StatesPosts: 385
Posted: 06:17pm 11 Apr 2026
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It sounds like you may have purchased some used modules that may have a custom configuration stored in flash memory. Note that there are also fake modules coming out of China that may not be fully compatible with a genuine u-Blox module. Some of the fakes are so good that you may never know or care.
The easiest way to configure your NEO-6 module is by using the free u-Blox u-center software. The first thing I would do is to restore the module to factory default state. This will give you a known starting point and should give you NMEA messages at 9600 baud. You should also be able to update the module to the latest firmware version.
Then you can use u-center to change the baud rate, NMEA messages, and other configuration to suit your needs. If you store your configuration changes in flash memory, they will be restored each time the module starts up. These GPS modules have lots of configuration settings (probably over 100) and some of them are inter-dependent. The u-center software will also display the byte sequence for each configuration change in hex format. Otherwise you would need to hand-code each message using the documentation and calculate the checksum.
Note that MM-Basic only uses the $GNGGA (or $GPGGA) and $GNRMC (or $GPRMC) NMEA messages, disabling the other NMEA messages will reduce the serial traffic and parsing overhead.-Carl
OA47 Guru Joined: 11/04/2012 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1046
Posted: 05:00am 12 Apr 2026
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It was unexpected as the solder pins seemed to be unused, but playing around last night I found 2 units responded at 115K with a mass of $GP strings that I had not seen before, so it seems you are right.
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