Hi peeps, I have been wanting to make a small GPS device (GPS receiver and some sort of screen) that I could carry around for a while now, but I didn’t want it to be too big, so I made this. Mission accomplished.

This unit is explained in the video above, but is basically a GPS receiver, 1 CR1220 battery for the RTC on the GPS breakout, one of my Square Inch of Goodness boards, one 128×32 OLED display, three 6mm buttons, and a 400mAh Li-Po Battery (from Sparkfun). It even has FTDI headers on it so I can update the firmware with ease (with my own FTDI adapter!). The awesome part is that all of those things fit in an Altoids Smalls tin, measuring 2.15″ (W), 1.35″ (L), and .56″ (H), or 55mm (W), 34mm (L), and 14mm (H).

The GPS breakout board is from Adafruit and uses the MTK3339 GPS module, and man does it work well. I have had other GPS modules that worked, but it was a fight. If you’re thinking about putting GPS in a project, use this. They also have a great library for it. They even have the raw MTK3339 GPS module if you want to use your board. Read the Adafruit product page for all the features, there are many.

The 128×32 OLED display is also from Adafruit, it works well and has the typical OLED crispiness. Very easy to read, even in sunlight, for the size and you can even multiply the text size if you want to.

So I’m going up to NY in a few days, and I wanted a new and exciting way to talk with the TSA folks, so I figured this would work. (kidding) If only Hollywood had not trained everyone to think a gadget with a few wires and a flashing red LED, that they didn’t understand, was a bomb.. ugh. (not kidding)

*UPDATE – there is a set on Flickr for this with teardown pictures.

*UPDATE #2 – Oops, I forgot to put the link to the code on Github. 0_0