[DebianGIS-dev] Bug#456149: Bug#456149: gpsdrive: Doesn't display my altitude

[Mark Robinson]

Andreas Putzo wrote:
> On Dec 13  21:59, Andrew McMillan wrote:
>> GPSDrive is not displaying any altitude reading from my GPS (a Garmin
>> 60CSx).  If I telnet to the gpsd port on my local machine I definitely
>> do see my altitude coming through on the various data streams available.
> 
> Does the GPS Status bar in the bottom right corner sometimes displays a 3D Fix 
> which is needed to determine the altitude? The problem might be that
> gpsdrive switches to n/a in the altitude widget as soon as your gps
> device loses its 3D fix. If this happens frequently it might look as if
> there were no altitude information altogether.
> It would be helpful if you could provide a sample of collected nmea
> data for example by starting gpsd with -D2 or by reading nmea sentences
> directly from the device.

Some GPSes send sentences containing 2D and 3D information every second.

If your GPS sends a 2D sentence last, that could be what you are seeing most of 
the time.