[time-nuts] Satellites in the Sky

Don Lewis dlewis6767 at austin.rr.com
Tue Jun 7 12:51:40 EDT 2016


I thought I would share a tip for those interested in ’visualizing’ the GPS constellation overhead – ‘seeing’ the satellites you are currently tracking.

While there are many GPS monitor apps available, ...some free - some not  ...each app will have various means to depict which satellites are overhead.  Many have just tables of data.

I find the U-Blox, U-Center monitor app (free) most enlightening.

Besides being very well written and documented, it of course supports its’ proprietary U-Blox modules as well as many standard, NMEA-formatted ones.

Put your GPS module in NMEA mode.

While in U-Center, bring up the ‘World’ graphic and it will show you which satellites are visible to your location and which ones are being tracked.  Very educational to see them progress across the ‘earth’ .

Good use of colors for status.

You can get instant feedback from moving and relocating your antenna by watching which sats come and go and their color ‘status’.

All this makes the hobby more pleasurable, realistic and not so ethereal.

-Don
N5CID



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