This guide will cover an installation of a bluetooth GPS on a netbook under Ubuntu Linux.

If you have a netbook, you may be tempted to utilize it as a GPS navigation device.
I tried successfully the following hardware on an Eee PC 701 4G and on an eeebox.

You will need a bluetooth adapter and a bluetooth GPS receiver.

I have an MSI Btoes bluetooth. It is really tiny, didn’t need any driver installation under Linux or Windows.

I bought a Holux M1200 bluetooth GPS receiver recently. It is inexpensive (about $50), and also has a sleek and compact design.

The Holux M1200 works really well. The Li-Ion battery produces a 23h autonomy, and can be recharged by the included car charger, or by any USB mini cable.
I also used it paired with a phone and a WM5 PDA, the results were better than a Nokia N95’s built-in GPS.

How to pair a bluetooth GPS under Intrepid Ibex

I’ve had the same problem on an eee pc with eeebuntu 2, and on my Eeebox under Ubuntu 8.10. For some annoying security reasons, the bluetooth pairing software doesn’t let you set your pin code, but assigns a random one. As a result, if you have an external piece of bluetooth hardware with a fixed pin code, which is the case with most of bluetooth GPS or audio headsets, you’re out of luck.
Well, there’s always a solution.

1) Plug in your bluetooth USB adapter, turn on your GPS, open the terminal and run the command
hcitool scan

Your computer will discover active bluetooth devices. I had as a result
00:1B:C1:04:0B:0E     HOLUX_M-1200
You need to copy the MAC address of your GPS (00:1B:C1:04:0B:0E in my case)

2) Open gedit as a root user to configure rfcomm.conf:

sudo gedit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

You need to uncomment lines, set the bind option to yes and paste your device’s MAC address.
My rfcomm.conf looks like this:

rfcomm0 {
# Automatically bind the device at startup
bind yes;

# Bluetooth address of the device
device 00:1B:C1:04:0B:0E;

# RFCOMM channel for the connection
channel    1;

# Description of the connection
comment “Holux M1200 GPS”;
}

3) Install the GPS Daemon:

sudo apt-get install gpsd

4) Start gpsd with your bluetooth device
gpsd -n /dev/rfcomm0
I have created a video to summarize the installation.

The second part of this guide will be about GPS software on netbooks.