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Table of Contents
Introduction
The QStarz GPS Q-1000XT tracker is small encapsulated GPS tracker, similar to a G-Ray, which provides standard GPS tasks, logging, point of interest (POI) recording, and basic functionality to enable navigation on devices not containing a built in GPS. http://www.amazon.com/Q-1000XT-BT-Q1000XT-Bluetooth-Waypoints-Vibration/dp/B00144PH1S
The instrument provides a serial (over USB) interface as well as bluetooth connection capability. The communication protocol is a super-set of NMEA 183 standard NMEA sentences for GPS satellite information and location information. Additional settings controllable through the serial protocol allow the user to set
- Name, for prefacing each track
- Logging control allowing logging to start based on movement, or time
- A Vibration sensor, causing the logger to become idle if not moving.
- Control of the frequency of location updates from 0.1 to 10 seconds.
The 1000XT is structured around the Mediatek MTK GPS chip which supports the standard NMEA sentences as well as the Mediatek extensions.
Non-NMEA Protocol for AGTEK
The following MTK extensions are useful to AGTEK tracking
- Enabling/disabling the vibration sensor.
- Adjusting the location report rate.
- Setting the “log every unit distance” or “log when over speed” to zero
- Set “log memory full” to overwrite
- Turn buzzer off
| Option | Command (NB: Checksum not shown) |
| Motion Sensor | $PTSI004,2,1 (enable) and $PT SI004,2,0 (disable) |
| Log rate (time) | $PMTK220,1000 sets rate to 1Hz |
| Log distance | |
| Log speed | $PMTK397,0.0 sets rate to zero m/S |
| Log memory (overwrite) |
- Downloading tracks
Sources
QStarz is (as a company) not forthcoming with the interface capabilities of their device. Others have reverse engineered a large portion of what's going on. The MTK chip is reasonably well documented and MTK documents are plentiful on the internet.
The MTK extensions are documented by Mediatek in their protocol document: https://agtek.s3.amazonaws.com/Agtek/ksxJuUwx1MwY
Missing from the previous document is the PMTK182 (PMTK_CMD_LOG) data logging commands. The only references I was able to find on this is in GPSBabel module “mtk_logger.cc” https://code.google.com/p/gpsbabel/source/browse/trunk/gpsbabel/mtk_logger.c?spec=svn3365&r=3365 and in a Java program: https://github.com/ryantenney/geologger/blob/master/BTQ1000.java
Here is a subset of the PMTK182 commands
| CMD | Description |
$PMTK182,1,3,10 | Set the logging period to 1/sec (units are in seconds*10) |
$PMTK182,1,4,990 | Set the logging distance 99 m (units are in meters*10) |
$PMTK182,1,5,420 | Set the logging speed to 42.0 km/h (units are speed*10) |
$PMTK182,2,2 | Log format, has several sub-commands |
$PMTK182,2,7 | Log status |
$PMTK182,3,3,10 | Report logging time interval 1 second (units are seconds*10) |
$PMTK182,3,4,990 | Report logging speed to 99 m (units are in meters*10) |
$PMTK182,3,5,420 | Report logging speed set to 42 kmh (units are in speed*10) |
$PMTK182,4 | Enable logging |
$PMTK182,5 | Disable logging |
$PMTK182,6,1 | Log erase |
$PMTK182,7,00000000,00010000 | Download data, params are (hex) start, and length |
$PMTK182,8,00000000,xxxx | Downloaded data from the instrument |
The motion sensor control commands have been reversed engineered by using a serial monitor (here at AGTEK), and have been verified by others on the internet: http://www.bt747.org/de/forum/bt-q100xt-controlling-vibration-sensor
Questions
As of 2014-08-02 some questions still remain:
- What commands are needed to download tracks
- Are there other parameters that need to be set in order to make the device work?
- Can we set a unique serial number? (Track Reader for Android can easily supply a unique serial number, and alias, based on the instrument's Bluetooth MAC address).
