Customer Reviews

Hacking GPS (ExtremeTech)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There are nuggets of useful information in this book, but they are somewhat thinly scattered among a lot of very clumsy sentences, some of which don't parse at all. Whoever edited this (or didn't) did a real disservice to the author. If the subject is of value to you, get a used version soon (before the info goes out of date), and don't pay a lot for it, or you'll regret the expense.

Also, I found it helpful to have some small Post-Its, to put tabs on the 30 or so pages with really useful information.

If you have spent any time with your GPS unit you will find little if any new information in here. A lot of the book covers the basics that you will already know... and there is a whole chapter devoted to how to take a screenshoot of your GPS screens. The chapter is just a lot of pictures of screens.
There are snippets of useful information but they are far and few between. It is only because of these few snippets that I give it a two.
Save your money, spend an hour online at a good GPS site and you will be further ahead.

This book offers nothing more than little tidbits of information. Even to that end, all of this information is available online at various sites. This is a complete waste of money. You won't "hack" anything, but you will waste your money. A big disappointment!!!

Most of the book is common sense, or BS to fill up pages (a good percentage of the book are pages with 1-2 pictures, e.g. "Here is a picture of some batteries", or "Here is a hard case lined with foam", or "This is how to use a label maker to organize your cables"). I'm not making this up, look through it with the Amazon online reader.

Also the author doesn't know the difference between simple GPS terms. A blog post on her website incorrectly refers to almanac and ephemeris data as the the same thing when they serve two seperate purposes. I would recommend the author read "Understanding GPS principles and Applications" to brush up on the fundamentals. GPS is a complicated subject as it is, there is no need for the author to make it harder.

If you want to learn about GPS hacking, but a SiRF-III receiver, interface it to Google Earth via RS232, or write your own application using the NMEA protocol which can be found through a web search.

The book had absolutely nothing about the GPS I use. If you have one of the models written about, it might be useful, but if you have anything else, it's worthless.

The information didn't mention that the book was out of date by a few years so most of the information was irrelevant to current gps units and TomTom is barely mentioned. Most of the information is heavily oriented to Garmin.

Don't waste your money in this book. It covers subjects like how to install gps antenna in your house. Why would you want to do that??? All the information is available for free from better sources and more in deep.

The title is mesleading. I looked up the definition of Hacking to see if I was out of line. This title is misleading. My idea of Hacking is getting something for nothing by getting into a computerized system. You will not get anything for nothing from your GPS by reading this book. I do think this book is useful. It is a good read. There is a lot there that you will never use or need for the price.