Usb Gps and compass to use with VB.net?

[Jose_VB]

I want to know if you guys know any model of usb gps that can use with a vb.net program. I just only want to read the basic data (lattitude, longitude, etc...). Can you recommend any model?

I've seen this compass: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-HMC5883L...item1e7a913aec

but I don't know if it's possible to connect to a computer and pass the data to VB.

[dilettante]

Lots of these are USB devices either with embedded serial (COM port) adapters or device drivers that present them as a virtual COM port.

Some communicate over this COM port using NMEA protocol.

Here's one cheapie I've seen: GlobalSat ND-100S USB GPS Receiver, others may work quite similarly too. You'll have to dig out specs since they often come with a consumer-oriented application and little detailed documentation. In this case the page at ND-100S Support has some download links for software and docs. The FAQs link there provides some interesting info.

Given the above it shouldn't be that hard to use from a VB or a VB.Net program. More a question of digging out the specs and then some trial and error.

The checksum requirement might be the toughest thing to do by hand using a terminal program. And you'll also probably want to convert Unicode to ANSI 8-bit in order to calculate them in your programs.