I need help finding a GPS device that has good programming support.
What I want to do:
Send destination addresses programmatically to the GPS unit
Make it start navigation to those locations automatically
Get the current GPS coordinates from the device
Connect it to my computer using USB or Bluetooth
I checked out some options like Dash but the monthly fees are too expensive. Plus I want to keep all location data on my own servers instead of sending it to third parties.
Since I work with .NET development, an API that works well with C# would be perfect.
If anyone has experience with GPS APIs, could you share some basic code examples showing how to send location data to the device and read current position? Any suggestions would be really helpful.
Hit this same problem two years ago building a delivery route system. Commercial GPS units lock down their APIs hard, but OpenStreetMap + basic GPS receivers worked great. I used a $30 USB GPS dongle with GPSD on a small computer, then built my own nav interface with MapBox. For .NET, just use SerialPort class to talk directly to GPS receivers through NMEA protocol - pretty easy once you parse the coordinate strings. The routing logic’s a bit of work but you control everything and pay zero monthly fees. Worked solid for me and plugged right into my C# apps.
you def nailed it! a raspberry pi is gr8 for this. super flexible for coding and for about $50-70 you can get a decent usb gps. since it’s linux, you won’t face any annoying licensing stuff either!
I undertook a similar project a while ago, focusing on fleet management. Initially, I chose a Garmin eTrex with their SDK, but I found the documentation quite lacking. What I discovered is that most consumer GPS devices don’t support real-time programming as you described. Instead, using a Windows tablet equipped with GPS and a tailored application utilizing the Windows Location API provided full control over routing and data management. This approach allows direct access to coordinates, the ability to send locations directly, and no ongoing fees. While the upfront investment is higher than traditional GPS devices, the flexibility justifies the cost. For dedicated devices, I recommend looking into Garmin’s fleet solutions, as they offer significantly better SDK support for enterprise applications.