GPS drivers not on Globalsat website

[Dsanduril]

OpenCPN will show your boat wherever the GPS says it is. On land, in the water, top of Mt. Everest, if that’s what the GPS fix says that’s where the boat will be shown. I presume the GPS icon in OpenCPN (top right normally) is red (indicates no fix)?

I would suspect that the issue is your connection setting in OpenCPN. How is it configured (maybe post a screen shot)? Should be serial, presumably 4800 baud but that could depend on settings in the GPS. Did you select “Com 4” for the drop down menu, or did you type it in? Helped someone here not long ago who had typed it in and that didn’t work, but selecting from the drop down and it started instantly.

Next step after checking those settings would be to post some log files here.

[nohal]

I confess I am still completely lost in what you are trying to do and what you say.
The NMEA debug window is shown when the user requests it, nothing to do with whether you have a GPS connected or not, whether it reposrts valid data or not or with where your physical boat is.
There is no way to "bring the boat closer to your location" when you receive the GPS data, the "boat" simply is where the GPS reports it is for OpenCPN.

If your GPS works, your configuration is correct and you are at home 20 miles inland and play with your GPS there, OpenCPN will show your boat icon 20 miles inland, not where your real boat is anchored.

To confirm that your GPS works using OpenCPN alone you may use any (or several) of the following:

- The ship position (latitude and longitude) reported in the status bar on the bottom of the window is correct
- The GPS status icon in the top right corner is green (1-3 green bars or green dot, depending on what data is available from your GPS and how good a reception it has)
- The boat icon shown on the chart is shown in the right place (of course if you are inland, that place might be hard to identify using nautical charts as there basically is "nothing" on them inlanf if tey cover that areas at all)
- The NMEA debug window vomits data that make sense

[mcm]

Post 16 is 100% correct, entering manually the port fails to work, auto selection from the dropdown box worked for me, pls have someone update the help file and clarify that step. when the device mgr points to com port # then that's what one would normally enter as mentioned in the help file, so problem solved and many thanks to those who responded,

[Dsanduril]

I know that typing in the com port used to work, but this is now the second person I’ve had that typed in the com port and it didn’t work, while selecting the same port (usually with some additional text like “USB device” or similar) from the drop down works fine.

If I remember what I read there was a major update to the serial handling in OpenCPN 5, so maybe this needs looking at (presumably an enumeration that no longer uses the “simple” name?) or a change to the manual to remove the part that says you can type it in?

mcm, thanks for reporting back the results.

[Edit] here’s the other thread, turns out the same GPS unit, I worked offline with ELC to find the solution, and my very bad for not coming back and posting it to close the thread. But it was the same, use the drop down to select the serial port.