Re: [Gpsbabel-misc] Garmin GPS on a Mac with a serial-to-USB cable

[Robert L. <rob...@gp...>]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 5:22 PM, Roderick Stewart <
rod...@gm...> wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience using gpsbabel on a Mac to read data from a
> serial Garmin GPS?
>

Yes.   Unlike Garmin themselves, we support that though I have thought about
dropping it as it's a problematic combination.  The state of drivers for
USB/serial adapters is poor.



> Garmin eTrex Vista GPS
> Mac OS/X Snow Leopard 10.6.3
> PL2303 driver for serial-to-USB cable
> gpsbabel 1.4.1
>

The Prolific units are a crapshoot.    Some of them are flaky and will lose
the first few bytes of a conversation.   Others work flawlessly.  We've seen
this on multiple OSes.


> I worked how to do it under Linux with gpsbabel 1.3.6, but the Mac is
> flummoxing me.
>

The serial code path for us is the same on both Mac and Linux; it's all
POSIX serial I/O to us.   The special case is Windows.

When I plug the serial-to-USB cable in, the OS thinks it's a new network
> connection and asks me if I want to proceed. I cancel.
>
> The device shows up in the new gpsbabel GUI.
>
> I get an error when I try to run it:
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> gpsbabel -w -i garmin -f usb: -o csv -F /Users/stewart/temp.csv
> Found no Garmin USB devices.
> Error running gpsbabel: Process exited unsucessfully with code 1
>

Right. You don't have a USB Garmin device.




>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> If I try to run gpsbabel from the command line using the proper /dev/tty*
> for the connection, there is no response. gpsbabel hangs until I break out.
>
> I'm not certain the serial-to-USB driver works properly. It installed with
> no problems, but I don't have any serial devices to hand to test it.
>
> I'd be grateful for any ideas or suggestions.
>

I'm traveling and don't have a prolific here to confirm it, but a lot of
drivers create multiple device names.   So there may be a tty.WeirdName and
a cu.WeirdName and the second may succeed while the first is awaiting an
incoming modem connection and will hang on open as you describe.

(Conversations like this are probably why Garmin decided it was easier to
just say "no"....)

RJL

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