Location-based recipes – hooking up GPS
A common question in the IoT realm: where is that darn thing? That Internet of Things thing? Being able to track and pinpoint the location of a device is one of the most typical features of many IoT use cases. So, we will first take a look at a recipe on how to use everyone's favorite location tech: GPS. Then, we will explore one of the newer innovations that has spun out of Bluetooth 4.0, beacons, a technology for capturing more precise location-based data than GPS.
The UART background
In the galaxy of embedded systems, developers use dozens of different serial protocols. More common and familiar to most consumers are components such as USB and Ethernet. Then, there are protocols familiar to engineers, such as SPI and I2C, which we have already explored in this book. For this recipe, we will use yet another flavor of serial, UART, an asynchronous or clock-less protocol. This comes in handy in a variety of scenarios to connect IoT-centric devices.
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