Overview

HsGpsDll is a Windows Dynamic Link Library which provides access to any NMEA-183 compliant GPS receiver via a serial communications port.

HsGpsDll is designed for use from Visual C, C++, Visual C Sharp .NET, Visual Basic or other programming languages, capable of calling DLL functions.

HsGpsDll allows a user application to easily read from a GPS device the current GPS position fix and current velocity over ground (speed in kilometers per hour).

GPS position fix obtained via HsGpsDll contains:

• Latitude coordinate in degrees, minutes, seconds and direction (South / North)
• Longitude coordinate in degrees, minutes, seconds and direction (East / West)
• Coordinates in decimal degree format
• Fix quality - valid or invalid
• Number of satellites in view
• Speed in kilometers per hour
• Altitude (Mean Sea Level)
• UTC date and time

The use of HsGpsDl Library is Royalty Free.

The demo application shows current GPS location on a map provided over internet connection (if available) from Google Maps map server. The map zoom level is adjustable from 16 to 0. The map is updated every 10 seconds if the coordinates of GPS receiver change.

The HsGpsDll library allow a user to configure the settings of the serial communication port to which GPS receiver is connected (COM port number, selectable from COM1 to COM32, speed, data size, number of stop and data bits, parity)

Features

• Interfaces a GPS receiver over COM ports COM1 - COMn (any port number can be used)
• To obtain GPS information, HsGpsDll decodes the following sentences of NMEA-183 (National Marine Electronics Association, Interface Standard 0183:
  - $GPGGA - geographical position fix data
  - $GPRMC - Recommended minimum specific GPS data
  - $GPVTG - velocity over ground

Supported Equipment

• Supports any NMEA-183 Compliant GPS device with serial RS232, USB, Bluetooth or IRDA interface, or any physical interface presented by the OS as a COM port

Applications

• Navigation
• Security
• Telematics
• Fleet Tracking
• Asset Tracking
• Any customer applications requiring access to a NMEA-183 compliant GPS receiver

HsGpsDll Software Architecture

HsGpsDll product consists at the top level from HsGpsDll.Dll which provides API to user applications as a standard DLL. Also there is HsGpsDllCs.Dll which is a wrapper to enable C Sharp .NET applications to use HsGpsDll. Internally HsGpsDll.Dll talks to HsGps.lib - core GPS NMEA 183 parsing and decoding component. HsGps.lib interfaces to HsCom.lib - serial communications library. HsGpsDll is supplied with demo applications including source code for Visual C, Visual Basic and C Sharp .NET

How It Works

HS GPSDLL continuously reads asynchronous data stream from a serial port and analyses the information to recognize and decode NMEA-183 Protocol sentences. After each message is received it is checked for integrity by comparing the received and the calculated checksum. The NMEA sentence fields are then converted from ASCII values into C structure variables and ready to be retrieved with an API call.

Customization

Hillstone Software provides additional services for customization, porting and integration of the library code to better suit the needs of your products