HiLetgo VK-172 USB GPS Review

U-blox 7020 in VK-172 GPS

I’m on a GPS kick lately and picked up a HiLetgo VK-172 GPS dongle ($12) from Amazon.

It claims to have a U-blox 7020 chipset inside but if I know anything it’s that most GPS modules you buy online that claim to be U-blox are usually counterfeit.

We might be in good shape here because the 7020 chipset is an older generation product according to U-blox.

The 7020 chipset is a GPS/GLONASS (Russian positioning system) and is small and low powered.  It is my understanding that it will not do GPS and GLONASS simultaneously.  You have to select one or the other in U-blox software.  United States GPS is a bit more accurate than GLONASS and it seems to be default set to GPS.  We’ll keep that setting for initial testing and toggle it to GLONASS later (if we can).

You can find these VK-172 GPS dongles all over the place but I think a large number of them have counterfeit chipsets.

Let’s test it with U-blox U-center software to see if it indeed an authentic chipset.
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USB GPS Receiver Uses

I have several blogs on GPS modules.  Most of them deal with either counterfeit modules or using a USB GPS module on an offline computer.

Then someone recently emailed me and asked,  “who the heck needs a USB GPS receiver”?  That is a perfectly good question to ask.   Most of us know right where we are, and besides, our phones and a lot of our cameras already have built in GPS.  While you know your phone has GPS and you can drop a pin to someone………when’s the last time you actually saw the coordinates?

And ask yourself if you can share that GPS with other devices on your network?
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GPS Linux GlobalSat Receiver Sirf Star IV Chipset

GlobalSat BU-353S4

This will be a quick primer on how to use a GlobalSat GPS receiver on Ubuntu Linux.

It is actually quite easy since Linux doesn’t need any drivers loaded.  Also this blog sort of augments the last blog I wrote  regarding the capabilities of using a computer offline.  In one section I used a U-blox GNSS module to capture GPS coordinates on Windows and Linux operating systems.

That U-blox module is not exactly what I’d consider to be weather proof.  My intent here is provide a GPS solution that is in some sort of reasonable enclosure that is more conducive to getting bounced around in a backpack.  Or more conducive to being used in an outdoor environment.
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I’ve been talking a lot about fake GPS Modules a lot……now let’s talk about legit GPS Modules.

First of all I’ll run over the actual legit GPS chips that I own and have dabbled with.

I have several GlobalSat BR-355S4 pucks.  These have Sirf Star IV chipsets in them which ONLY receive USA GPS system.  I use these with my Uniden Police Scanners.  Simply cut the plugs off of them and wire them to a plug that fits the Scanner.

I think it is important to note that as I mentioned above it ONLY receives GPS.  While this is probably fine for a police scanner, I don’t think I’d trust my life hiking out in the Mohave Desert with a device that had a Sirf Star IV chipset.  I’m not saying GPS would go down………but what if it did?

And I’m not knocking Qualcomm or their Sirf Star IV chipset.  I’m just saying I want redundancy in a life or death situation.

Then this leads me to my next GPS point.

DATASHEETS
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I have this on-going project to find a GPS Module that works with my Uniden SDS200 police scanner.  Obviously this is so the scanner will auto update its location when a GPS Module is connected.

Uniden sells one for $50, so the goal is to manufacture one for less than that amount of money.  Actually, I’ve succeeded several times, with my last build costing about $20.

So, what’s the problem you ask?

Almost every GPS Module I have purchased is FAKE.  The GPS Modules that I know are not fake are from Manufacturer recommended sources, and all cost more than $50.  More like in the $70 range.

The most commonly counterfeited chips are U-blox and specifically the NEO-6 series chips.  An actual, REAL NEO-6M CHIP, not module at  Mouser in the US for is $60 for one.  A NEO-7 CHIP, not module, can be purchased from Digikey for $31 and I did find that Digikey calls the NEO-6 series “obsolete”.  In fact U-blox says the NEO-6 is an old product as well.

6=OLD, 9=NEW

So how is that you can do a search for GPS Modules and find $8 NEO-6M modules all over the place? If a legit chip is $31 or more how can a complete module be $8 or $12?

Answer: It can’t. It’s fake.
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I just started dabbling with GPS modules.  I got my first one from Amazon for about $12.  I didn’t know almost anything about GPS chips but I did know that U-blox chips are pretty prevalent in the Drone community, so I set out to purchase a module with a U-blox chipset.  The Amazon one I linked above (which now shows as unavailable, and I hope I had something to do with that) indicates that it has a NEO-8M chip on it.

Let’s see.

I plugged the GPS into my computer and started U-blox U-center software.  The GPSTXT data indicated

??:??:??  $GPTXT,01,01,02,u-blox ag - www.u-blox.com*50
??:??:??  $GPTXT,01,01,02,HW  UBX-G70xx   00070000 FF7FFFFFo*69
??:??:??  $GPTXT,01,01,02,ROM CORE 1.00 (59842) Jun 27 2012 17:43:52*59

Rebranded Old Chip

Say What? I got a U-blox chip all right but it is a U-blox 7th generation with firmware from 2012. Here’s what the label indicated on the chip.

It says NEO-M8N.

Soooooo, someone took a 7th gen chip that is 10 years old and rebranded it to a current production version.

Not only that, the 7th gen chip does have a firmware upgrade however you can’t apply it because whoever made the module board didn’t include flash rom so it simply cannot be upgraded.  How cool is that?
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