You Are Here GPS

Use an external GPS receiver via the USB port of your Android device.

This app allows you to use an external GPS receiver via the USB port of your Android device.

You can use it to provide improved performance, or to provide GPS reception to Android devices that do not contain the necessary internal hardware.

It can be used with unrooted devices that have USB host mode enabled. It can also be used with some devices that do not have USB host mode enabled provided that they are rooted and have Buzybox installed.

This means that it can be used to connect a GPS dongle to inexpensive tablets that do not have internal GPS hardware such as the many tablets based on the Allwinner A13 chip.

The GPS dongle must be based on the PL2303 serial to USB converter delivering NMEA-0183 sentences. The app has been tested with a GlobalSat ND-100S GPS USB dongle available from Maplin in the UK for less than £20. It has also been tested with an Anadigi GPS-206 GPS Antenna. The tablet must deliver power via the USB port. Unpowered USB ports will not work.

This app does not work on all devices. If it works for you - please let us know the model of Android device, the version of Android and the GPS dongle that you used, so we can update this page.

Before using this app, in Settings-> Developer options enable Allow mock locations. Then connect the dongle to your Android device (you may need a micro USB to USB converter cable). Start the app that you want to be the recipient of the GPS data, then start You Are Here GPS and when you see data arriving, wait for a fix before returning to your other app. Do not press the back button while doing this as you must leave the You Are Here GPS app running.

Sayedur Chowdhury has blogged about this app.

See http://mapsnmaps.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/using-external-usb-gps-with-android.html

Please note:

1) This app is intended for use with approved Android devices with powered USB ports.

2) The Amazon Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD devices do not have powered USB ports.

3) USB host mode seems broken in Android 4.3 on some Google Nexus devices but there are reports that a hardware reset may fix the problem.