#GOOGLE EARTH REAL TIME GPS HOW TO#

Most (but not all) of the free and cheap real-time trackers I’ll be discussing won’t work directly with these Garmin units, though Google Earth Plus will. But don’t forget to set it back to the proprietary protocol for other software NMEA transmits position and hardware data only, so you can’t use it to upload and download tracks and waypoints.īut what if your GPS only has a USB interface? Some GPS units with USB interfaces come with special software that will convert the USB connection into a virtual serial port that programs like Google Earth can recognize and use with the NMEA protocol, while others (notably some Garmin units) don’t.

#GOOGLE EARTH REAL TIME GPS HOW TO#

Check your owner’s manual to find out how to enable the NMEA interface, and set it to the default speed of 4800 baud. Most GPS units with a serial connection let you set it for either a proprietary interface or for NMEA. If your GPS has a serial connection, and your computer has a serial port for it to plug into, you should be set. Depending on what kind of GPS you have, and what kind of computer ports you have, that may be straightforward, but may not. While Google Earth supports both NMEA and the Garmin USB PVT interface, most of the free and cheap options I’ll be talking about require an NMEA serial connection. Note: The free version of Google Earth now supports GPS, but all this info is still relevant.īefore I post about the options for doing real-time GPS tracking in Google Earth Free, there are potential complications to talk about: getting your GPS to communicate both with your computer, and with Google Earth.

Google earth real time gps