Please do not consider this list to be exclusive or definitive as GPSy/GPSy Pro support practically all GPS units with data output capabilities. New units are being tested by our users and added constantly. Not all units support all data transfer types (some even vary by the ROM version number), so test your own unit for compatibility using the demo version of GPSy before purchasing. If your specific GPS unit isn't listed, but there's another model from another manufacturer, then your unit will most probably work fine.

NMEA 0183 Sentences

   AAM - Waypoint arrival alarm
   APA - Autopilot format A
   APB - Autopilot format B (xte,steerto,arrivalcircle,arrivalperpendicular,
         bearing (orig to dest), bearing (present to dest)
   BOD - Bearing, origin to destination
   BWC - Bearing and distance to waypoint, great circle
   BWR - Bearing and distance to waypoint, rhumb line (overridden by BWC if available)
   DBT - Depth below transducer
   DPT - Depth of water
   GGA - Global Positioning System Fix Data
   GLL - Geographic position, latitude and longitude (and time)
   GSA - GPS DOP and active satellites 
   GSV - Satellites in view
   HDM - Heading, magnetic north
   HDT - Heading, true north
   HSC - Steer to heading
   MTW - Mean water temperature
   RMB - Recommended minimum navigation info when dest. waypoint is active
   RMC - Recommended minimum specific GPS/Transit data
   VTG - Track made good and ground speed
   WCV - Waypoint closure velocity
   WPL - Waypoint location
   XTE - Cross-track error
   XTR - Cross-track error, dead reckoning (overriden by XTE if available)

Recognized and supported proprietary sentences are:

   PGRME   - Garmin Proprietary Estimated Position Error
   PGRMF   - Garmin Proprietary Position Fix Sentence
   PGRMM   - Garmin Proprietary Map Datum Sentence
   PGRMV   - Garmin Proprietary Velocity Sentence
   PGRMZ   - Garmin Proprietary Altitude Information
   PRWIZCH - Rockwell Zodiac Proprietary Channel Information

NMEA 0183 standard bps settings are 4800 bps; 8 data bits; 1 stop bit; no parity. You can use a telecommunication program at these settings to test whether your Mac is receiving the GPS NMEA sentences correctly or not.

NMEA-0182 Support

GPSy^TM 2.2 adds NMEA-0182 support to the mix. Watch this area for a list of supported NMEA-0182 devices. Feel free to if your NMEA-0182 or NMEA-0183 device works and isn't listed.

GPSy^TM 3.0 adds Rockwell Zodiac and NavCore protocols; Sony IPS protocol; and the Garmin real-time protocol as well as support for Magellan and Eagle/Lowrance data transfers.

Tested Macintosh Systems

GPSy® X and GPSy Pro X are provided as Universal Binaries. The system requirements for the Mac OS X releases:

• Apple Mac with a G3/G4/G5 or Intel chip
• Mac OS X 10.3.9 or above required.

The classic GPSy^TM is provided as a 68K+PowerPC "fat" binary and is PowerPC accelerated. The system requirements are:

• Macintosh 68020 or above; or PowerPC. See the list of tested units below.
• System 7.6 or above required. MacOS 8.1 recommended. MacOS 8.6 optimized.
  --System 7.6 requires installation of the AppearanceLib shared library.
• QuickTime 3.02 or above required; QuickTime 4.0 optimized.
• A minimum of one megabyte free memory required but viewing large images in high resolution will require a larger memory partition to be allocated. We recommend at least 10 megabytes free memory for TIFF files and 20 megabytes for USGS topo maps. GPSy can reduce resolution to fit in the available memory.
• Available serial port or PC Card (CTB compatible virtual and real serial ports supported)
• Compatible GPS unit. See above compatibility chart for a list of tested units.

GPSy uses the native QuickTime imaging libraries for full JPEG/TIFF support (not secondary translations like other software). In addition, we are also QuickTime 4 optimized, taking advantage of new, faster routines in this release.

Copyright (C) 1997-2007 by Karen Nakamura. All rights reserved. GPSy^® and GPSy.COM^® are registered trademarks and GPSy Pro^TM and GPSyLink^TM are trademarks of Karen Nakamura. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Mention of a third-party's product does not represent endorsement of or by that product.

This page was was created on May 15th, 1997. We've had hits since then, this page was last updated on August 20, 2008.