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So in India, this is the only very affordable GPS receiver I could find. It seems bizarre to me, it has a VGA port? I suppose it's used for serial communications, but there isn't any relevant information about using such GPS receivers in answers to this question. If this doesn't work with an RPi, could I interface it with an Arduino instead?

Furthermore, I plan to use the GPS for high-altitude weather balloon tracking (read 100000 feet). I don't think this GPS supports 60000+ feet tracking, so my question is, does the GPS permenantly disable itself at high altitudes? Or will it continue to work normally as soon as the GPS descends through 60000 feet?

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shortstheory
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  • Find a different GPS receiver. One powered from 12V will be very expensive to power in a balloon. Look at the overall flight cost. – joan May 22 '15 at 05:31
  • @joan It says 3-5V on the module itself. – shortstheory May 22 '15 at 08:30
  • I'd guess there might be a certain obvious logical conundrum in having the GPS automatically restart itself when it goes back below a certain altitude (in which case it would be easy to try and periodically initialize instead). I'm sure there are better places to ask that question though (e.g. [Electrical Engineering](http://electronics.stackexchange.com/)). – goldilocks May 22 '15 at 13:30

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I have checked the link to GPS and it uses regular serial port (RS232). Checking the second image, you can see 9 pins for the connector and it is regular RS232.

Regarding locking - as far as I know GPS does't lock. When there is no signal, there is no signal, and when enough satellites appear the signal gets received. The similar thing happens if you turn on GPS indoors or under water.

Check how to communicate over serial port and get some documentation about NMEA protocol (e.g. Wikipedia).

Boštjan Jerko
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  • Um IIRC it's fairly well known that at high altitudes or ground speeds (mach 1+) GPS units stop tracking to avoid crazy people making DIY intercontinental nuclear missiles – shortstheory May 22 '15 at 08:32
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    Might be an exaggeration to say it is "fairly well known", considering the number of people interested in using inexpensive consumer GPS units at stratospheric altitudes and supersonic speeds; this is the kind of fact it is better to spell out in the question rather than assume everyone else understands what you are *implicitly* referring to. – goldilocks May 22 '15 at 13:32