I bought a RB-SPA-135 antenna with an Adafruit GPS breakout module v3. I have everything working except the module seems to refuse to use the external antenna. From the documentation on the module it states:
“The ultimate GPS with automagically detect an external is attached and switch over. You do not need to send any commands”
When polling the device for the antenna status with the antenna attached it always returns
“$PGTOP,11,2*6E”
This indicates (indicated by the “2”) that the internal antenna is in use and the external is not being used. If the external was in use that “2” should be a “3”.
Has anyone used this combination of products. Is the RB-SPA-135 a passive antenna (it does not specifiy one way or another)?
The RB-Spa-135 is an activate antenna with an Low Noise Amplifier with a gain of 27 dB. Based on the documentation of the Adafruit GPS, that seems to be what’s needed.
We’re not sure however why the board wouldn’t use the external antenna. We’ve contacted Adafruit to ask them if they have any ideas…
Hi,
I’m just wondering if you heard anything. Perhaps I got a defective antenna or adapter cable? I should be able to do a quick test of the adapter cable with a multimeter, but I don’t have another GPS with which to test the antenna. I don’t think its the module that is defective because it is otherwise working, but its still a possiblity.
We’ve heard back from Adafruit. They say that based on the datasheet the Sparkfun antenna should work, but they don’t have one to test.
They point out this part of the datasheet of the GPS module:
And the datasheet for the antenna says that it consumes 8 mA typical @ 2.7V, so the current should be high enough.
Can you double-check that all your connections are fitting properly? If there’s a poor connection, that might be why the antenna isn’t detected…
If that doesn’t work, we can try replacing the antenna and adapter wire for the equivalent models from Adafruit to see if that works better: we’re currently adding them to our catalogue and they should be available soon.
Jeffery,
Before you posted this I had already purchased a new u.FL adapter cable & antenna from Adafruit. I just got them today and it turns out the issue is/was a bad adapter cable (the one I purchased from you). Either GPS antenna works with the new cable.
We’re glad to see you got it working properly and apologize for the defective adapter. If you would like to exchange or return it, please send us a message in our Support Center with a link to this forum and your order number.
