HTML5 Geolocation with External GPS

Question

We used HTML5s navigator.geolocation and found that it is very good on iOS and Android smartphones. Now users want the same HTML5 web application to run on a laptop with external GPS. Using Windows 7 on a laptop, I just can't figure out how to share this location with an HTML5 browser (tried Safari, FF, IE, Chrome). For testing, I use the GlobalStat BU-353 GPS receiver, which works autonomously, and I found GPSDirect (cool freeware) to send this signal to the Win7 sensor search services, but HTML5 browsers still do not see GPS.

Is anyone lucky with this?

Answer 1

I was looking for a similar solution and found this: GpsGate . This is a standalone application that connects to almost any GPS device and publishes it in several forms, including browsers (via the Javascript API, which in turn calls a jsonp call to http: // localhost: 12175 / gps / [getVersion | getGpsInfo ]? Jsonp = padding). It is not compatible with the Geolocation API, but I think that writing a simple adapter does not cost much time. Another thing is that Express Edition is free for both private and commercial use ( link ).

EDIT: after some digging, I found this patch that adds a geolocation compatible adapter for GpsGate to another geolocation library.

Answer 2

Problem 45535 begins to examine this in Chromium feature requests. As of January 5, 2012, this feature has been marked as "launched."

Feature Request: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=45535

As long as you only need one browser to solve your client (and not a universal solution), this will solve your problem.

A great way to start testing and monitor this problem is to download Chrome Canary, which is usually 2 versions earlier than the Chrome version. I am currently using v18 on Canary, and this is great since I am following the changes to the layout of the web layout.

You can find Canary here: http://tools.google.com/dlpage/chromesxs