Chapter 5. Where in the World Am I?

I hope you enjoyed the projects so far, but now its time to get into some serious prototyping. Does the idea of connecting your project to satellites orbiting the earth tingle your creative senses? It certainty gets me going, and this is just what we will be doing in this chapter. The goal is to make your own a watch, which besides telling time, it will also give you your exact GPS position, with some added information about how fast you are traveling and your altitude above sea level. GPS stands for Global Positioning System. The development of GPS started in the 1970s, but was not completed until 1992. Today there are 27 satellites orbiting the earth. These satellites give anyone with a GPS receiver the possibility to access their own position, in coordinates of longitude and latitude. Today, you can find GPS in a range of devices for cars, airplanes, boats, and soon in your own watch.

In order to be able to actually see the information, we...