HiLetgo VK172 G-Mouse USB GPS/GLONASS USB GPS Receiver for Windows 10/8/7/VISTA/XP

As an Amateur Radio Operator (Ham Radio), location reporting is very useful as we support public events, search & rescue, disaster response, etc. This wonderful little dongle makes position reporting simple and easy. Based on my personal use, it works on Apple IOS (MacBook Pro 2015) and on Windows 10 (a virtual machine running via Parallels Software on my MacBook). I have also used it with other Apple & Windows, GPS-aware apps, and everything seems to get along and work fine.Just be aware that this dongle provides GPS information only. What you can do with that data is up to you and other apps you may have that can use GPS data. No software is provided with this dongle...it is intended to simply be a source of GPS data.When used with GPS-aware apps like Winlink (ham radio software that allows emails to be sent/received via the Internet and via radio signals), position reporting is super simple with this little dongle. GPS coordinates are acquired then other apps like Winlink pass them along to other location tracking software and apps like APRS.fi. This dongle opens up a world of capabilities. It also seems to work well even in interior environments (as within our home) so don't let the small size fool you. It does work.For the money and small size, this is a great inexpensive investment in GPS technology that has practical real-world uses.

This is a great little GPS receiver for the money. It's based on the u-blox 7 chipset. I have it working on a Mac and Windows. I think it's compatible with the FTDI drivers that I already had installed for USB to serial adapters, because I didn't have to download a driver on either OS. On Mac, it showed up as /dev/cu/usbmodem14201. It worked perfectly with "GPS Dashboard" from the Mac App Store. On Windows, you can access it through a standard COM port. By default, the device was set up for the GPS satellites, and starts sending out NMEA messages when the serial port is opened.To configure its settings, you can use the U-Center eval software (only for Windows) from u-Blox. On the View-Configuration menu you can change the options. You can enable GLONASS but you have to uncheck the GPS and SBAS types, otherwise it won't accept the changes. Either GPS or GLONASS can be selected, but not simultaneously. Note that it goes back to GPS when power is lost unless you save the configuration to the device NVRAM. The options for Beidou and Galileo are greyed out, so I don't think it works with those - even though the package insert says "Galileo".With GPS, it outputs NMEA strings starting with $GP.... and with GLONASS it outputs strings starting with $GL...Using the GLONASS, it takes longer to lock on to satellites. Maybe gets 5 sats total. GPS will lock onto 8 to 10 in the same spot. I can use it in GPS mode indoors but GLONASS is hit or miss.Bonus: you can configure this for 10Hz output in the rate settings. But I also bumped up the baud rate to 19200.All in all, a pretty cool little receiver!

I've been in the GPS business since 1994 so I was anxious to try a few of these and evaluate their performance with my companies GPS software products. I've watched GPS receivers shrink in size for many years now and this form factor is interesting to me. I received the devices that I ordered and plugged one directly into a Windows 10 PC without doing anything. Windows found the device, loaded drivers and it was up and running in seconds. I opened a terminal program connected to COM3 (where Windows assigned it), configured for 9600,N,8,1 and I had instant NMEA sentences. Once the almanac and ephemeris downloaded from the constellation, the receiver quickly got a fix inside my office. I was able to then use the data in our software products and the performance of the device was at least as good as, if not better than, some of the other GPS receivers we've used over the years. Size, price and performance - this device would be hard to beat!!