Franson GpsGate

My first Franson GpsGate application

Okay so now that the Franson GpsGate Client Express is FREE, I can seriously think about using it in .Net applications. Before it was a show-stopping $12! Whoa! No way I'd ever pay that... more than a few times... :-) Or recommend to more than, well, everyone who needed it. Now that it's free, I can... well, recommend it even more.

So far I've been using it to sort out bothersome problems with GPS like the fact that ESRI ArcGIS Runtime Engine stupidly cannot talk to high COM port numbers, where "high" is greater than 8, which is where typically USB based GPS receivers show up.

Now I want to try the GpsGate API so that I can talk to it directly, skipping the whole virtual COM port. Just give me the DATA!

Here we go.

Searching for the SDK

It's here SOMEWHERE, hidden well on the gpsgate.com site... I know I found it once... I found a link to it in a forum posting.

Developer's Guide v2.6

There is also documentation linked from this page on the plugin architecture, so you can theoretically do things like add support for other GPS protocols or other GPS hardware. Not doing that today though.

Build sample app

Now I have the SDK along with its samples installed. It gets installed in Program Files, so I copy the samples directory out to a place which I can write.

I wonder if I want the SimpleOutput.sln or SimpleOutput_2003.sln. I try the former.

It has a form with Open, Close, and Write buttons.

There is no reference to the DLL, which is specifically mentioned in the hints page, so I add one.

I found it in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Franson\GpsGateSDK\dotNet\GateApiNET.dll"

Still and all I get this highly pedagogic error

Error	1	Failed to execute command: 
""C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin\ResGen.exe" 
/useSourcePath "/r:C:\Program Files (x86)\Franson\GpsGateSDK\dotNet\GateApiNET.dll"
/r:C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\mscorlib.dll
/r:C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Data.dll
/r:C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.dll
/r:C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Drawing.dll
/r:C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Windows.Forms.dll
/r:C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\System.Xml.dll
/compile Form1.resx,obj\Debug\SimpleOutput.Form1.resources".
The handle is invalid.

D:\AGIProducts\GpsGate\SimpleOutput\TRACKER SimpleOutput

I had to run Corflags on ResGen.exe - WTF??? [1]

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.0A\Bin>corflags /32BIT- /Force ResGen.exe Microsoft (R) .NET Framework CorFlags Conversion Tool. Version 3.5.30729.1 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

corflags : warning CF011 : The specified file is strong name signed. Using /For ce will invalidate the signature of this image and will require the assembly to be resigned.

New error

Now I am getting "GpsGate is not properly installed. Visit franson.biz/gpsgate for instructions on how to install it."

And of course it IS properly installed but I find http://forum.gpsgate.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1199 is of no help whatsoever.