Adafruit | Technology Tutorials

In this video lesson we will connect the Adafruit Ultimate GPS to the Raspberry Pi Pico W, and will write a simple program to capture the data being sent by the GPS. In this lesson, we simply want to read and print the NMEA sentences coming off the GPS, and then in future lessons we will begin to parse the data, and turn the data into usable numbers. This is the schematic for connecting the GPS to your Raspberry Pi Pico W.

Pi Pico GPS — This schematic shows how to connect the Adafruit Ultimate GPS to the Raspberry Pi Pico W

Then this is the simple code we developed to allow reading the data coming from the GPS.

from machine import Pin,I2C,UART  #***************
import time

GPS = UART(1, baudrate=9600, tx=machine.Pin(8), rx=machine.Pin(9))
try:
    while True:
        if GPS.any():
            #myChar=GPS.read(1)
            myChar=GPS.read(1).decode('utf-8')
            print(myChar, end="") #Supress the line feed, so It continues to print across
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    print("\nStopping program... Cleaning up UART.")
    GPS.deinit()  # Properly release UART before exit
    time.sleep(1)  # Short pause to ensure clean shutdown
    print("Exited cleanly.")

from machine import Pin,I2C,UART #***************

import time

GPS = UART(1, baudrate=9600, tx=machine.Pin(8), rx=machine.Pin(9))

try:

while True:

if GPS.any():

#myChar=GPS.read(1)

myChar=GPS.read(1).decode('utf-8')

print(myChar, end="") #Supress the line feed, so It continues to print across

except KeyboardInterrupt:

print("\nStopping program... Cleaning up UART.")

GPS.deinit() # Properly release UART before exit

time.sleep(1) # Short pause to ensure clean shutdown

print("Exited cleanly.")

In this video lesson we will show you how to connect and begin to get data from your Raspberry Pi Pico W connected to an Adafruit Ultimate GPS. The circuit schematic presented below. Notice Tx on the Pi Pico goes to Rx on the GPS, and Rx on the Pi Pico goes to Tx on the GPS.

Then this is our initial code which reads the data from the GPS one byte at a time and prints it. In future lessons we will explain how to get useful information from this data, but for now, this code will allow you to read the data:

from machine import Pin,I2C,UART
import time

GPS = UART(1, baudrate = 9600, tx=machine.Pin(8), rx=machine.Pin(9))

try:
    while True:
        if GPS.any():
            myChar=GPS.read(1).decode('utf-8')
            print(myChar, end="")
    
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    print("\n . . . Cleaning Up UART")
    GPS.deinit()
    time.sleep(1)
    print("Cleanly Exited UART")

from machine import Pin,I2C,UART

import time

GPS = UART(1, baudrate = 9600, tx=machine.Pin(8), rx=machine.Pin(9))

try:

while True:

if GPS.any():

myChar=GPS.read(1).decode('utf-8')

print(myChar, end="")

except KeyboardInterrupt:

print("\n . . . Cleaning Up UART")

GPS.deinit()

time.sleep(1)

print("Cleanly Exited UART")

Making The World a Better Place One High Tech Project at a Time. Enjoy!

Technology Tutorials

Tag Archives: Adafruit

Connecting the Adafruit Ultimate GPS to the Raspberry Pi Pico W

Incorporating an Adafruit Ultimate GPS into your Raspberry Pi Pico W Project

Making The World a Better Place One High Tech Project at a Time. Enjoy!