how to use GPS on Dell Wireless 5809e card

[willemb2]

My new Dell laptop has an internal "Dell Wireless 5809e Gobi(TM) 4G LTE Mobile Broadband Card" that includes a GPS chip. It works with Google Maps and Mapfactor Navigator Free, but I cannot get it working in OpenCPN 4.4.0 on Windows 10 x64.
My old laptop had a "Dell Wireless 5550 HSPA+ Mini-Card" that did work in OpenCPN. Looking in Windows Device Management, the difference is that the latter shows up as a COM port. The DW5809e GPS shows as "Sierra Wireless Location Sensor" without COM-port. So my guess is that DW5550 driver package includes a virtual COM-port and the DW5809e driver is missing this.
Does anyone know a way to work around this?

[rgleason]

On opencpn.org website. Open the user manual. Search on windows 8 or 10 gps. Find the gps program under supplimentary. Try that.

[willemb2]

To answer my own question: there is at least one tool that does the job: GpsGate Splitter Express with the Windows Location API plugin. Both can be downloaded from: GpsGate - GpsGate Client for Windows - GpsGate Client .
Choose Windows Location API as input and add a Virtual COM port with a number of your choice as output. Now you can add this as a serial connection in OpenCPN. It looks like any baudrate works.

[Capt.Don]

I know this is an ancient thread. I found this earlier when researching options for adding a GPS to my Panasonic Toughbook CF-53 (Windows 8 era laptop). I thought it would useful to reply.

The Panasonic CF-53 supports the Gobi 2000 WWAN card. Built into this card is a GPS, similar to the assisted GPS and cellular network found on phones and tablets. After installing the card and the Gobi 2000 drivers (Windows 8.1), two devices are installed: (1) WWAN drivers to connect to the cellular data networks and (2) COM port for GPS NMEA 0183 data.

Windows 8.1 networking recognizes the wireless cellular card. I suppose if I had a data plan with Verizon or AT&T, I could use this card; however, the carrier setup software wouldn't install on Windows 8.1. Windows networking seems to recognize Verizon, but not AT&T. This doesn't matter to me, anyway -- I disabled.

I installed the card and launched Putty to monitor the GPS COM port. In my case this was assigned COM10 at 9600baud. Magically, the GPS NMEA 0183 data started streaming in the Putty terminal window.

I configured OpenCPN to read the same COM port, and voila -- OpenCPN had a GPS fix. Note, it took a while for the GPS to initially acquire satellites and make a fix.

To clarify other posts/threads I viewed -- you don't need the cellular carrier software for GPS, nor do you need a SIM card, etc. Perhaps the cellular carrier data cards are more specific? The Gobi 2000 is multi-carrier.

I was expecting this process to be a lot more difficult. It turns out it, it just took a few minutes to install the card and software. I've been monitoring the NMEA 0183 GPS data and it seems fine for what I want. I don't plan on navigating with this GPS (similar to not navigating with iPad). I do want OpenCPN for periodic position updates and planning, WL2K Airmail/RMS Express position reports, etc., which should be fine.

Folks have commented that they wouldn't rely on this GPS. At this point, the GPS RMC sentences are valid and both OpenCPN and RMS Express recognize my position.

I'm happy with this $13 "upgrade" to my laptop!
Don

P.S. As a side note, on our boat, we have all the Seatalk, NMEA2K and Seatalk NG data broadcast over a local wifi network. I wanted the GPS data on my laptop for when sailing on other boats without the wifi data. I was always dragging around my old handheld Garmin GPS and a bunch of cables.