ND-100S: GlobalSat ND-100S USB GPS Receiver

Quite sensitive maintains a fix indoors in places where we've not gotten any handheld dedicated GPS units to keep a fix.

Works out-of-box with Ubuntu, though the kernel puts it at /dev/gps0 instead of the more common /dev/ttyUSB0.

Under Windows XP, it keeps coming up as "Microsoft serial Ballpoint", and the GPS NMEA data coming from it gets interpreted as mouse movements and button clicks. The fix (although not easy to accomplish with mouse moving on its own...) is to open up Device Manager, and just after plugging in the GPS when the ballpoint device first appears in Device Manager, right-click it and select 'Disable'. Doing this over remote desktop or VNC is tons easier as you can keep the mouse cursor in one place... GlobalSat has newer Windows drivers, one explicitly saying it's for the ballpoint problem, but the only way I could fix it was to disable the ballpoint in device manager.

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I installed this device on a tablet running Windows 7. I downloaded the Windows 7 driver from Globalsat's .tw website because I couldn't get the driver on the provided CD (XP and Vista only) to work with Globalsats GPS utility (Mini-whatever). I never did get the GPS utility to work, but after a couple of hours of frustration, I downloaded MS Streets & Trips (trial version), and the device connected flawlessly. During my attempts to use the GPS utility, I did the firmware upgrade, but I'm not sure that I needed that.

The device is very sensitive. Even indoors, it picks up signals from 7 or 8 satellites. In that respect, it seems to be much more sensitive than a hand-held GPS I bought a couple years ago (and have since ruined).

The instruction manual (on-line only) is poorly written and out of date. Arguably, following the manual instructions will lead you further astray than if you wing it. Notwithstanding all the flaws, the device a good buy.

About one year later.....

I lost my original and bought a replacement. The only difference I could identify is that the first one was white and the replacement is black. After initial installation, it worked once or twice then quit. I gave up and bought a BU-353. It seems to be working perfectly.

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Item works fine and performs perfectly. But...I had to set the baud rate to 4800 to get it to work. I didn't see anything that said to do this first, but a quick google search pulled up the info.

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I gave this product 3 stars as the average of the good and the bad. First, the good. I tried it initially on a Linux netbook. After downloading and installing gpsd, the receiver quickly initialized and I could read the stream of NMEA messages.

Now, the bad. After that success, I used the supplied mini-CD to install the drivers on an XP machine. After connecting the device, I opened the COM port with Hyperterm at 4800 baud 8-N-1. The device was putting out a data stream, but the characters were garbage. No baud or parity configurations produced an intelligible stream. Searching the web, I found suggestions to download other software to set the baud rate. This failed to produce good data. With more searching, I found a discussion in the users' forum about reflashing the device, and using yet another version of the driver. This also failed. A further comment suggested installing the unified driver, which finally yielded usable data at 4800 baud.

Once the interface was ironed out, the receiver was able to initialize quickly indoors. I have evaluated similar products that functioned just as well but worked with the provided drivers out of the box. While I understand the problem of replacing obsolete media, a prominent notice on the company's homepage would eliminate the installation hassles and improve the user experience greatly.

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OK, here's the deal. I bought this to get a portable GPS that I could play with on my laptop. I recieved it, spent an hour trying to figure out how it worked (because on windows it masqueraded as a serial mouse, had to edit the registry to make it work, which was inconvenient, and on linux it was as convoluted a process as these things usually are#. It worked ok for a few hours #accuracy wasn't great, ~20m).

Then it stopped working.

I did what was suggested in the forums, and on the FAQs. No good. I contacted support, and they had me do all those things again. Now I have to pay for shipping to send it back, and because it was purchased through Amazon, they may not replace it. And the return instructions say:

"--All products deemed Out-of Warranty are subject to a minimum $35.00 USD charge, excluding freight.

--You may be subject to a $15 service fee and return shipping costs on items found not to be defective."

So it could double the cost of the thing.

NOT recommended.