NEMA is the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, at least in the States, except when you go GPS; you're talking about NMEA (the National Marine Electronics Association). On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 9:11 PM, RussellMc wrote: > Results will depend on your receiver model. A receiver that gets UTC > with one satellite may decide not to tell you so. > I concur with that! Reading the rough ("only" to fractional seconds!) time should be easy, but I've never seen a GPS module admit it knows the time until it "acquires". This may be due to the fact that the firmware is single-mindedly trying to find 3 satellites, first. Kind of a chicken-and-egg problem: Once you know where you are and what time it is, you can use the ephemeris data to tell you which satellites to look for! By the way, if you have GPRS, you may be able to use "assisted GPS" where the data network hands you time, approximate location, and ephemeris data without your having to gather it from the satellites. But I bet this is way overkill for what you seek. I believe we used a chip from SiRF which ran about 25 dollars (not sure) but you still need an antenna (more dollars) beyond that. And once it had gathered enough data, I could get a lock using nothing more than a paperclip (I was trying to see what it did with weak signals). For evaluation purposes, there are the "earth-mouse" GPS "puck on one end and USB plug on the other" style devices that run 30 or 40 dollars. Final note: Be wary of interference if your intended application uses (a) computers or (b) RF transmitters. Admittedly, (a) implies (b) anyway :) --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .