I bought a couple of dinky little $11 GPS modules, just because. That's $11 including the little antenna pucks.
Tried one out this afternoon, indoors. It found enough satellites fairly quickly, and settled down to reporting a location that was pretty close to where Google Earth thinks its actual location was.
It did wander considerably at one point, roughly corresponding to the time I was away from my desk to fetch the mail. Perhaps my presence between the window and the antenna affects the RF paths. Maybe I should really be testing it outdoors, or at least right next to the window.
Anyway, I'm pondering setting up a solar-powered DGPS reference station or two, and playing around, just to see what I can do with really cheap hardware plus a reference point and communication.
Afterthought: Earth to Google! Earth to Google! Not everybody's GPS is connected on /dev/ttyS0. Please consider updating the "GPS/Realtime" menu in Google Earth to include port selection.
Update: After I moved it to the window, it couldn't find satellites. Well... the humidity in my office remains alarmingly low, I don't have proper ground mats on desk nor windowsill, and I sometimes come down with Sith fingers in here, so, yeah, probably fried the RF end with ESD. Good thing it was only an $11 gadget.
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