PG-Star II Evaluation KiT

For PG-31 GPS Engine Boards

This is a custom PCB designed as an evaluation board for the PG-31 GPS engines. All you have to do is attach the GPS module!

A USB connection provides both power and a serial link. Opening HyperTerminal at 4800bps will show GPS NMEA data every second . All power is drawn from the USB port and is regulated to the requires 3.3V via a LDO voltage regulator.

The USB interface is based on the Silicon Laboratories CP2101 USB to UART chip. Drivers are available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS 9, and Mac OS X. The chip s powered from the USB power and communicates at 3.3V and is 5V tolerant. The CP2101 utilizes the v2.0 USB spec and auto-baud rates up to 11200bps.

There is a power led to indicated when the board is powered. A reset button is provided to momentarily reset the GPS unit. A coin cell battery holder is provided to accommodate CR12032 Li coin cells or equivalent sizes. The battery back uo will allow the GPS engine to hot start, allowing much faster lock-on times as opposed to cold-starting after each power cycle.

Four jumpers allow the user to disconnect the TX and RX lines to the USB chip. The third jumper is inline with the power supply for current consumption measurement, The forth jumpers is used with the UV-40 to select between NMEA and Sony Binary outputs. All pins of the SMD header to the GPS unit are brought out to a .1’’ standard footprint.