The newest member of Mosaic's Wildcard series will track your instrument anywhere on the globe with a positional accuracy of less than 15 meters
This tiny 2x2.5inch board connects to any of Mosaic's controllers and single board computers, adding GPS functionality to your instrument on top of data acquisition and instrument control.
Your application program can read the current latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, course heading, time, and date.
In addition, the GPS Wildcard software reports position error estimates, GPS fix quality, and the number of satellites in use to enable real-time diagnostics.
The key component of the GPS Wildcard is the GPS-15 subsystem manufactured by Garmin.
It implements a 12-channel GPS receiver, and includes a rechargeable backup battery to maintain the contents of the subsystem's clock and memory for up to 21 days in the absence of external power.
The 3.3V supply that runs the GPS receiver can be shut down while not in use to conserve power.
For good signal reception, the GPS subsystem includes a connection for a remote-mounted active antenna, also available from Mosaic.
Mosaic's device driver functions make it easy to access the GPS data.
These functions automatically parse the GPS NMEA sentences, extract data fields, and store them in a data structure for your application program.
Using the GPS Wildcard and its pre-coded software makes it easy to create unique location-aware mobile instruments.
Up to eight mix-and-match Wildcards can be stacked onto Mosaic's controllers for a unique combination of specialised I/O.
Other Wildcards include ethernet, USB, octal 12-bit D/A and 16-bit A/D converters, signal conditioning, a 24-bit resolution analog data acquisition subsystem, compact flash card mass memory interface, fast buffered RS232/485 dual Uart, high voltage/high current isolated I/O, and AC or DC solid state relays and more.
The GPS Wildcard is available now, priced US$135 in 100s.
