LESSON 27: Instrument Package

In this lesson we bring together a lot of the material from the first 26 lessons to create an instrument package that could be deployed in a demonstration project. We will wire wrap up an Arduino Nano, a Virtuabotix SD card reader, and the Adafruit Ultimate GPS to create a system that will track and log position and altitude, and save the data in a format that can be displayed on Google Earth.

Wire Wrapping
Wire Wrapping tools and Perforated Board

You will want to place the Adafruit GPS, the SD Card Reader, and the Arduino Nano into a perf board.  Then, you will want to carefully wire wrap the components as follows:

Connecting the Adafruit Ultimate GPS Unit to Arduino
GPS PinArduino Pin
Vin5V
GNDGND
RXPin 2
TXPin 3

 

Connecting the SD Card Reader
Sd Card Reader PinArduino PinDetails
GNDGNDCommon Ground
3.3 V – (NOT USED)
+55VPower
CS4Chip Select
MOSI11SPI Data
SCK13Clock
MISO12SPI Data
GNDGNDCommon Ground

 

Now the code you developed in LESSON 26 should run on this prototype. The code creates a Google Earth friendly set of coordinates. Just put a KML wrapper on the coordinates as described in LESSON 26.  Putting it all together, I took the system outside and walked around, and this is the data track I got.

GPS Track
GPS track generated by my wire wrapped prototype