Accessing the GPS shield from the Arduino IDE

The GPS shield provides the hardware interface to the GPS device. Now, you can access the GPS data from inside the Arduino IDE. To do this, perform the following steps:

1. As with most devices, the first step is to download the appropriate libraries. For this device, you'll find the libraries at www.dexterindustries.com/manual/arduino-shields/gps-shield/ under the Arduino GPS Shield Drivers (zip) selection.

2. Unzip the dGPS file and copy the dGPS file folder to your Arduino's libraries directory. You'll also need to download another three examples from this page. These aren't really set up to put in the Examples directory of dGPS and open automatically using the File | Examples process, but you can simply open them by navigating to File | Open command.

3. Once you have the library installed, let's write a simple program that reads the values from the GPS device. Open the Arduino IDE and type in the following code:

   

4. Now, upload the preceding code to Arduino...