Microsoft Surface Pro / Windows Location Services

[stevead]

Following on from a previous thread, and feeling sufficiently chastised (well not really !), I decided to create a proof of concept plugin to see if it is possible to use the built-in GPS that is available in some Microsoft Surface PC's (and quite possibly available on other brands) and running Windows 10 or Windows 11.

So announcing the beta release of the Windows Sensor Plugin.

The plugin has not been added to the Plugin Manager, but can be downloaded from this link

Once you have downloaded the tarball, it may be installed from the Plugin Manager using the "Import Plugin" button.

As I don't own a Microsoft Surface, this has been developed by guesstimation, so it is reliant on a few volunteers to report the results.

Best way of testing is to first of all, see if OpenCPN obtains a fix (make sure your computer has a view of the sky and remember that it may take some time for the GPS to download the almanac and obtain a fix), to see if any data appears in the NMEA debug window and failing that, send a copy of the OpenCPN log.

Hopefully, it works and without too many bugs.

Thanks.

[Hakan]

Impressive coding!
Hope it works.

[rgleason]

Wonderful!!!

[bcn]

Reading through the Microsoft documentation:


MS surface devices with LTE do have a GNSS (GP, GLONASS,..) sensor and only those.
Without GNSS the Location Service is WiFi based only. Not suited for navigation then.