The TomTom Stumbler

How nice is this for hunting down those hotspots whilst on the move? TomTom being the wonderful people they are dump out all the gps data to /dev/gpsdata ( unsuprisingly ) in the standard gps NMEA format.

Just the very format most wi-fi stumblers use to log the position a hotspot was discovered. After a little hackery pokery I’ve manage to get it streaming over bluetooth to my ibook running macstumbler. Job done. View the image below for an example.

TomTom Stumbler

I’ve a few minor issues to work out but it’s functioning a treat.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2006 at 3:25 pm and is filed under TomTom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

14 Responses to “The TomTom Stumbler”

  1. C4RtM4N Says:
    April 17th, 2006 at 10:29 pm

    Looks interesting, however I wonder if you could provide me with a little more information about how you have accessed the GPS Logs and if they are temporarily stored on the SD Card or on the device itself.

    In the picture you provided is the green text an exact copy of one of the GPS logs on the TomTom??

  2. Jim Says:
    April 25th, 2006 at 10:15 am

    The GPS NEMA data comes from the /dev/gpsdata device on the tomtom itself. I wrote a quick program to redirect it from the tomtom and over bluetooth.

    The green writing is what’s coming from the gpsdata device on the tomtom.

  3. Aimee Dev Says:
    April 30th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    Hi,

    Sounds interesting, will you be publishing the program because I have a need to get GPS data into my intel mac,no drivers for the usb gps yet :( , but bllotooth is a feature.

    Ta

    Aimee

  4. Simone Says:
    May 1st, 2006 at 6:49 am

    Cool

    Does the hack automatically startup up on boot?, and will it work on a TT GO 700?

    Are you willing to share the hack?

    Regards

    Simone

  5. Nathan Says:
    May 12th, 2006 at 7:42 am

    A forum I went on said this was impossible!!, well done

    I am intriuged, how do you get the software on the TomTom in the first place,
    does it just pick it up if you drop a file somewhere? (ttsystem directory)

    Will it work on all models, including the new ones?

    Are you going to make it available as GPL/Commercial in the near future?

    Do you want a beta tester!!

    Nathan

  6. Simone Says:
    July 25th, 2006 at 7:21 pm

    Hum, dont think he really achieved this.

    I heard someone else on a semi commercial site managed it, but as he didnt respond I can only assume that its not been achieved, but remains a possibility.

    Wish people would be more honest and helpful

    simone

  7. Paul M Says:
    September 19th, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    I can confirm that the GO devices are truly quite hackable (in the old sense of the word), and not only that, there is some encouragement from TomTom do to so.

    The GO series are linux powered, and TomTom have published all their patches at www.tomtom.com/gpl

    Check out www.opentom.org for a group of people who’ve put together packages for the GO series which do other things, such as track/event logging, mp3 player etc.

    I myself am particularly interested because I am a keen handheld linux user, owning a Sharp Zaurus (see www.oesg.org for more info)

  8. Paul M Says:
    September 19th, 2006 at 4:55 pm

    oops, that should be www.oesf.org

  9. Jim Says:
    September 20th, 2006 at 1:57 pm

    Just to respond and disappoint Simone. I did really achieve this. In fact the hack was so easy it only took a small shell script and a mini c program to make it possible.

    Because you may not understand how easy it is to do, does not mean we’re all like that.

    /J

  10. Jim Says:
    September 20th, 2006 at 1:59 pm

    Paul, I’m also a Zaurus user. Although I don’t use it as much as I’d like to because it’s Mac and iSync support is very limited.

  11. Paul M Says:
    September 22nd, 2006 at 9:34 am

    Hi James (turtlehead),
    could you consider posting the code for the tomtom hack? I would also like to get in touch with you to chat about it.

    BTW, here’s a really great tool for adding to your tomtom go - an event logger/tracker. You can track your journeys and add them as overlays on googleearth! It’s fantastic!

    http://web.tiscali.it/macri/Event_Logger/

  12. Zibri Says:
    May 19th, 2007 at 8:50 pm

    TomTom GO x10 use SIRFbinary instead of NMEA.
    As soon as TTN application starts, the output of /dev/gpsdata is sirfbinary and not nmea.

    By putting a script named “ttn” on an sdcard, the normal ttn application is not started so I put a program there resetting the SIRF to NMEA and outputting to bluetooth serial :)

  13. Brad Says:
    October 29th, 2007 at 1:59 am

    Wow, I had no idea TomTom’s were hackable. No wonder there sales are so good among the techie guys.

    -Brad
    http://www.supergpsstore.com

  14. Calvin Says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 8:13 pm

    BTW, on my TomTom one with SirfStarIII, the NMEA data is at:
    /var/run/gpsfeed

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