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Adafruit Ultimate GPS FeatherWing

by Adafruit

Give your Feather a sense of place, with an Ultimate GPS FeatherWing. In 2013 Adafruit designed the Ultimate GPS module to satisfy all your GPS desires - and now they have brought its power and versatility plus more to the Feather series with the Adafruit Ultimate GPS FeatherWing!

This FeatherWing plugs right into your Feather board and gives it a precise, sensitive, and low power GPS module for location identifcation anywhere in the world. As a bonus, the GPS can also keep track of time once it is synced with the satellites.

It has everything you need and more:

  • -165 dBm sensitivity, 10 Hz updates, 66 channels
  • Only 20mA current draw
  • RTC with coin battery backup
  • Built-in datalogging
  • PPS (pulse per second) output on fix
  • Internal patch antenna + u.FL connector for external active antenna
  • Fix status LED

The Wing is built around the MTK3339 chipset, a no-nonsense, high-quality GPS module that can track up to 22 satellites on 66 channels, has an excellent high-sensitivity receiver (-165 dB tracking!), and a built in antenna. It can do up to 10 location updates a second for high speed, high sensitivity logging or tracking. Power usage is incredibly low, only 20 mA during navigation.

The MTK3339-based module has external antenna functionality. The module has a standard ceramic patch antenna that gives it -165 dB sensitivity, but when you want to have a bigger antenna, you can snap on any 3V active GPS antenna via the uFL connector. The module will automatically detect the active antenna and switch over! Most GPS antennas use SMA connectors so you may want to pick up one of our uFL to SMA adapters.

Adafruit added some extra goodies to make this GPS FeatherWing better than a breakout: a FET-driven ENABLE pin so you can turn off the module using any microcontroller pin for low power use, a CR1220 coin cell holder to keep the RTC running and allow warm starts and a tiny bright red LED. The LED blinks at about 1Hz while it's searching for satellites and blinks once every 15 seconds when a fix is found to conserve power.

Comes as a fully assembled FeatherWing with GPS module and a coin cell holder. However, the 12mm coin cell is not included - it isn't required but if you would like a battery backup, a CR1220 coin battery must be purchased seperately. We also toss in some header so you can solder it in and plug into your Feather.

A full tutorial is also available, which has tons of information about the Wing, schematics, pinout diagrams, how to test and use it and more!

TECHNICAL DETAILS

  • Satellites: 22 tracking, 66 searching
  • Patch Antenna Size: 15mm x 15mm x 4mm
  • Update rate: 1 to 10 Hz
  • Position Accuracy: < 3 meters (all GPS technology has about 3m accuracy)
  • Velocity Accuracy: 0.1 meters/s
  • Warm/cold start: 34 seconds
  • Acquisition sensitivity: -145 dBm
  • Tracking sensitivity: -165 dBm
  • Maximum Velocity: 515m/s
  • MTK3339 Operating current: 25mA tracking, 20 mA current draw during navigation
  • Output: NMEA 0183, 9600 baud default
  • DGPS/WAAS/EGNOS supported
  • FCC E911 compliance and AGPS support (Offline mode : EPO valid up to 14 days )
  • Up to 210 PRN channels
  • Jammer detection and reduction
  • Multi-path detection and compensation

Breakout board details:

  • Weight (not including coin cell battery): 8.8g
  • Dimensions: 22.9mm x 51.2mm x 6.7mm / 0.90" x 2.02" x 0.26"

Downloads: