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GPS/NMEA simulator for the Android Emulator

GPS/NMEA simulator for the Android Emulator

Welcome to the simple and straightforward online NMEA stream simulator for Android Virtual Devices (a.k.a. Android Emulator).

You can specify postion and altitude as well as horizontal movement and vertical speed.

The simulator works by sending the standard NMEA sentences $GPRMC and $GPGGA to the emulated Android device twice per second.

Please enter your parameters in the form below and hit 'Submit'. A command line will be generated which you have to paste into your shell.

Position
Motion

Requirements

The only requirement is you have the 'netcat' (nc) command line tool installed. This is a standard tool on most UNIX systems and is also available on Windows via Cygwin.

Notes

  • If ever Google decides to add mock GPS support to ADB for use with real devices, I'll add support.
  • If I find the time, I will add other sensors like baro, magnetometer and orientation.
  • The fix time in $GPRMC and $GPGGA is the current server time (UTC) plus the specified time difference. See the bug note below.
  • Feel free to use the simulator without the web interface!
  • You can filter out the Android-specific 'geo nmea' from the NMEA stream using sed: 
    sed -e 's/geo nmea //'
  • Please have the decency not to hack, tamper, DOS or do other malicious things to the server. If you do (or even try), we'll track you down and [censored]. You have been warned.
  • The simulator was very helpful for developing RowingCAS.

Bugs in the emulator

  • Certain versions of the emulator seem to interpret the speed from $GPRMC as meters/second, not the correct knot. Please adjust your values accordingly.
  • Certain versions of the emulator interpret the fix time as local time, not UTC. You can use the time difference field to compensate.