GPS EM-406a not working!

I am Danish Butt and working on my final year project with my group fellow Aftab Rashid. We are facing problem with EM-406a. It gave us output on hyperterminal when we used it in the beginning but now we dont know what has gone wrong with it that it's not showing any kind of output. I mean we get nothing on hyperterminal now. Its light is also very dim wen we switch it on now. Does any1 knows what may be the problem and how we can fix it? Do we need to get a new EM-406a? If yes then plz tell us if we can get it from Pakistan. Waiting for reply....

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Permalink Reply by Chris Anderson on November 11, 2009 at 7:02am: You probably used it with the ArduPilot code, which switches it into binary mode. You can either use it in binary mode within ArduPilot or wait a week for it's capacitor to run down and it will return to default NEMA mode.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Danish Waseem Butt on November 11, 2009 at 7:05am: thnx for ur reply but we didnt used it with Ardupilot... we wr just testing it with our PC... wat we want to do is dat get data from gps n then transmit it through a wireless channel to a computer... that's all...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Danish Waseem Butt on November 11, 2009 at 7:15am: we r aslo doubting that we have burnt it by giving it more voltage than it needs.. but we r confused becoz its light still swtiches on ... although the light is dim... waiting....; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Chris Anderson on November 11, 2009 at 7:18am: dim LED usually means binary mode, but if you didn't put it in binary I don't know what's wrong.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Danish Waseem Butt on November 11, 2009 at 7:20am: umm maybe we have put it in binary mode accidentally... can u tell us how to swtich bak to its normal mode so that we can extract NMEA output again from it?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrus Kangro on November 11, 2009 at 8:07am: Hi, you can install Sirfdemo, this lets you configure your gps as you like. You can google for sirfdemo.exe and get it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Danish Waseem Butt on November 11, 2009 at 8:08am: ok i'll install it n then tell the result; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Danish Waseem Butt on November 11, 2009 at 11:20am: ok there's an option for target software in Sirfdemo .. tell me which software i have to choose in that option? or should i choose auto selection?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Andrus Kangro on November 11, 2009 at 11:49pm: Hi, I do not remember how it looked like when installing, but you want to get sirfdemo program installed, I'd advise to choose the option which provides it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Danish Waseem Butt on November 12, 2009 at 1:25am: i have installed sirfdemo but to configure my GPS it asks which target software i have to choose and i have got no idea about it... plz help me out

Permalink Reply by Andrus Kangro on November 12, 2009 at 7:52am: Hi, leave target sw to autodetect.
What you need to get right is port and baud rate; if you are not seeing gps output, then you may need to try several baud rates.

Permalink Reply by NS Rana on November 12, 2009 at 8:50am: 99.99% your EM-406A is OK and it is set in binary mode as Chris Anderson said very correctly that dim LED means Binary mode.

Month ago, I have practically seen this effect, when I powered on my EM406A for the first time with no firmware in my UAV Dev Board 2, the red LED was glowing but once I flashed the the latest firmware in the microcontroller the LED indication became dim as the firmware reconfigures the GPS module in binary mode which is more effecient.

If it happened accidently and unknowingly then it is really very difficult to know which baud is set, as Andrus said you have to try all the possible baud rates mentioned the in the manual of EM-406A.