GPS Breakout Ublox SAM-M8Q (Qwiic)

SKU: SPX-15106 Brand: Sparkfun

Retired Product

Replaced by: GPS-15210

This product has been replaced by: GPS-15210
This product is no longer available. This page is only for reference.

Ublox makes some incredibly sophisticated GPS receivers like the NEO-M8P. The SAM-M8Q is just as high quality, with equally impressive configurability, with a much lower price point. We broke out the basic pins and added all the supporting circuitry to make it even easier to use.

The M8Q is a GNSS receiver meaning it can receive signals from the GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and constellations. This increases precision and decreases lock time. And thanks to the onboard rechargeable RTC battery you’ll have a GPS lock within seconds! Additionally, this Ublox receiver supports I2C (Ublox calls this Display Data Channel) so you can use the SparkFun Ublox Arduino Library to connect to this device over Qwiic and leave your serial port open! No more using Software Serial for GPS parsing!

Why buy this product over our Qwiic Titan X1 based product? Ublox based GPS products are configurable using the popular, but dense, windows program called u-center. All sorts of things can be configured on the M8Q: baud rates, update rate, geofencing, spoofing detection, external interrupts, SBAS/D-GPS, etc. The SAM-M8Q has a huge number of features whereas the Titan X1 has many similar features but without the easy-to-use software that u-center provides. Don’t worry, we’ve got a tutorial showing how to get started with Ublox u-center.

The Qwiic Breakout for the SAM-M8Q has two Qwiic connectors for easy I2C access and the omnipresent ‘FTDI’ style connector for any USB to Serial connection (we recommend the Serial Basic). You’ll want the USB to serial connection for configuring the module. We recommend using I2C to receive the NMEA sentences but you can also use the RX pin to receive standard NMEA sentences at 9600bps.

The onboard rechargeable battery provides power to the RTC on the SAM-M8Q. This reduces the time-to-first fix from a cold start (~30s) to a warm start (~5 seconds or faster). The battery will maintain RTC and GNSS orbit data without being connected to power for up to two weeks.

Experimental Product: SparkX products are rapidly produced to bring you the most cutting edge technology as it becomes available. These products are tested but come with no guarantees. Live technical support is not available for SparkX products. Head on over to our forum for support or to ask a question.

We do not plan to regularly produce SparkX products so get them while they’re hot!

Features

72-Channel GNSS Receiver
2.5m Horizontal Accuracy
18Hz Max Update Rate
Time-To-First-Fix:
- Cold: 26s
- Hot: 1s
Max Altitude: 50,000m
Max G: ≤4
Max Velocity: 500m/s
Velocity Accuracy: 0.05m/s
Heading Accuracy: 0.3 degrees
Time Pulse Accuracy: 30ns
3.3V VCC and I/O
- Current Consumption: ~29mA Tracking GPS+GLONASS
Software Configurable
- Geofencing
- Odometer
- Spoofing Detection
- External Interrupt
- Pin Control
- Low Power Mode
- Many others!
Supports NMEA, UBX, and RTCM protocols over UART or I2C interfaces

Documents

SparkFun SAM-M8Q Breakout Schematic
SAM-M8Q Datasheet
SAM-M8Q Integration Manual
ublox Protocol Specification
SparkFun Ublox Arduino Library - This library can be installed via the Arduino Library manager by searching ‘SparkFun Ublox’. The library is excellent for reading and parsing NMEA data over I2C.
Hardware repo

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Unit 18, 132 Garden Grove Parade
Adamstown
NSW, 2289
Australia

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