Arduino GPS tracker

In this Arduino Tutorial, we are going to build a GPS tracker and visualize the data on Google Maps. It is a very easy project to build because we are using the Arduino Uno and a GPS shield. There is a lot to cover so let’s get started!

Intro to the Arduino GPS Tracker project

In today’s video, we are using the GPS shield from maker studio in order to store our location’s coordinates in an SD card. We read our location’s coordinates every five seconds along with date and time. All this data is then stored in a comma-separated file in a micro-SD card using the shield’s embedded SD card module. For convenience, I have also put an LED on the GPS shield in order to visually check the status of the program that Arduino is running. If the LED is lit but not flashing, there was a problem with the SD card, so our project is not saving data. If the LED is flashing quickly like it is right now, the SD card is working but we don’t have a position fix yet from GPS. If the LED is blinking once every five seconds everything is working fine and data is stored on the SD card.

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WHERE TO BUY
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1. Arduino Uno: https://educ8s.tv/part/ArduinoUno

2. GPS Shield: https://educ8s.tv/part/GPSshield

3. Multimeter: https://educ8s.tv/part/Multimeter

4. AA Battery holder: https://educ8s.tv/part/BatteryHolderAA

5. LED: https://educ8s.tv/part/LEDs

6. Resistor: https://educ8s.tv/part/Resistors

7. Wires: https://educ8s.tv/part/Wires

Full disclosure: All of the links above are affiliate links. I get a small percentage of each sale they generate. Thank you for your support!

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Of course, indoors we can’t have at GPS fix so let’s go outside, let’s go kayaking with the Arduino GPS data logger with us on the kayak (it’s a Sevylor Colorado). Ok, we are outside. Let’s go kayaking with our do it yourself datalogger using Arduino. OK. SD is working, waiting for a position fix. OK, Arduino is writing to the SD card I will now put this here in order to be stable, I’ll close the box and we are ready to go to the open sea. Let’s start. OK. Our journey has started. Let’s do it. OK. Now we have to go back there. Let’s do it.

We are back and on the SD card, there is a file with our journey’s coordinates. Αs you can see the file contains more than 800 entries. As you can see each entry has an id, the date, the time, the latitude and the longitude. Now, all we have to do is to use a tool in order to convert this file into a .kml file in order to see our journey on Google Earth. The tool we’re going to use is the GPS Visualizer, an online tool that creates .kml files from GPS data. All we have to do is to click here in order to create a Google .kml file. Then we upload the file that our Arduino GPS project created and we define some parameters for the file. For example the line width and the color. I have defined that we want the color of the line to be green. Then we click the create .kml file and that’s it. We download it from here and we open it with Google Earth. As you can see on Google Earth all the data from GPS data logger is visualized and you can see the journey I had with the kayak in the sea. That’s the starting point and that’s the journey I had and the point at which I started to return back. The distance I traveled was around 6 Km.

Building this project extremely simple. All we need is the GPS shield from maker studio a micro SD card and of course an LED. I have connected the LED to digital pin 9 because digital pin from 13 to 10 are used from the SD card module. Digital pins 2 and 3 are use by the GPS module so digital pin 9 is available to use with the LED. If we power on Arduino, we can see that SD card is initialized, OK works fine, now we wait for GPS signal fix. I went outside in order to have a GPS signal fix, so as you can see the current draw of this project is around 100 mA. So with this power bank which has a capacity of 2500 mAhs we can have this project up and running for almost a day.

Now let’s go to the computer to see the software side of the project. Now let’s see the code of the project. In order to better understand how this code works please watch our previous tutorials on how to use an SD card module, this simple datalogger tutorial, and the GPS shield tutorial. At first, we initialize the SD card module, and then we create a file in order to write data in it. Then we write a line in that file in order the file to be recognized by GPS Visualizer. Then we check if we have a GPS signal fix. If so every five seconds we get the date, time, and the coordinates of our position from the GPS module. We then create an entry from all this data and we save it to the file. The code is not very difficult but an understanding of how SD cards and GPS modules work is required. As always you can find the of the project in the description of the video. That’s today’s project. A very easy to build GPS data logger using a GPS shield. Now that we have learned how to use the GPS shield we can move on and add Bluetooth capabilities to the project and to find ways to decrease the power consumption Post any ideas that you may have in the comments section below.