- Antenna for FZ-M1 4G GPS
- Configuring the FZ-M1 for GPS
- Configure EM7355 GPS
- Output GPS Strings to gpsd
My latest side-project has been toying with Panasonic Toughpads to replace the Raspberry Pi that’s so vital to my station. When I began I was envisioning my station mounted in a Pelican box or something of the like but I ended up looking for other options because the more I’ve hiked and camped and traveled the more I realize I’d rather travel with a backpack than a briefcase. I now have a FZ-G1 and FZ-M1 I am working with and one advantage of the M1 is it came with an on-board 4G cellular modem with GPS that I’ve been working to activate and link to GPSD for position services. It took weeks but now that it’s working I’ve got to put my notes in a series of posts for future reference.
To start with I needed to open the case and see what I was up against. Here’s a video I found about how to get device opened up:
Once inside I realized the first hurdle was that even though there is an onboard GPS capability Panasonic didn’t attach an antenna for it. There were two paths here. Some research revealed that the GPS can use a passive antenna with your standard IPEX MHF4 connector. Also, the 4G main antenna (not the Auxillary!) was rated for receive on GPS frequencies. I settled on using the 4G main because I never intend to add cellular service to this device. The intent has always been for a this tool to work offline because some places I travel/hike/off-road/camp have no service and secondly because in the event of a disaster I cannot expect service to be available.
For me, opening the device up and moving the connector for the antenna from Main to GPS was all it took. If you do this just take your time and be reasonable with the connector. From a strictly hardware point of view these connectors are only rated for something like 30 connections/disconnections.
For the sake of argument, I could have added separate antenna. It appears the only route out of the alloy case (that I imagine is a faraday cage) is just above the wireless card and to the left as you are looking at it. There’s a pass-through for a ribbon cable that connects to some sort of surround of the main 4G antenna that would fit the cable and connection. You’d need at least 3″ of cable to make the run and I don’t know what issues may arise if 1)you pass the antenna cable through along with the ribbon cable or 2) you remove the ribbon device and just pass the cable. If you go option two it appears some sort of sealant would be needed to maintain the watertight seal.
After putting the screws back in all the right holes and reassembling the case, it was time to go about seeing how get NMEA streams from the device.